Nov. 6, 1909.] 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
739 
ext meal. We left these people reluctantly, 
nd my fifty cents ought to have been a dollar, 
'ou never regret giving too much, and one 
ught never to think of those travelers who fol- 
)W in his footsteps. However, my companions 
bay have been more liberal, as the whole family 
earned on us at our departure. 
There are many places to fish, but we went 
> South Branch where for four days I indus- 
iously whipped the waters. The first morning 
le guide carried me to the boat; the next time 
1 let me drop off his shoulders into the water, 
hich proves to me he was of sound mind. A 
cotchman sent us a fourteen-pound salmon for 
reakfast. He had been fishing on the Pacific 
last for salmon, was spending a month in New- 
mndland and hoped to be home for another 
onth of the sport. He was sixty-five years old, 
s straight as an Indian, and three times as big 
’> Izaak Walton in body and heart. On his de- 
rrture he left his tents to dry and at our dis¬ 
mal. It was an outfit of the Log Cabin Com- 
my on Harry’s Brook; one tent with a couch 
id fly screen for himself, another for the guide, 
dining tent, and a fourth to be used as a pro- 
sion tent. Everything, including food, guide 
id transportation is furnished by this enter- 
ising English company and at reasonable rates. 
At first I was startled and the guides said I 
mped when those big salmon and grilse jumped 
gh in the air, going down again nose foremost, 
here was room for ten rods in this pool. One 
an who had a bungalow and course dinners 
nded three salmon of good size, and several 
ilse which he threw back in the stream as un- 
orthy of his larder. Grilse often furnish more 
ort than salmon, being about two years old, 
d have only been to sea for a few months, in 
rich time they attain a tremendous growth, yet 
’e excellent food. When the salmon and the 
ilse first come from the sea they are bright 
d lively, but in a short time become dark and 
iggish. The guide often poked the latter for 
2 with his gaff. 
The second day one of my companions caught 
twenty-one-pound salmon and we put him in 
e brook so he could be cooked for breakfast, 
le next morning what the ravens left two eels 
voured, so we breakfasted on bacon. We 
ould have put boughs of pine over the fish, 
le salmon shipped to the Montreal and New 
irk markets from the west coast, as it is called, 
t which is in fact the south coast of New- 
undland, are first covered with a coat of moss 
d then ice is placed on the outside of this 
)SS. 
On the third day one of our party, a guide 
d myself started early for Winter Pool, over 
ii State road and seven miles up the South 
anch. The first mile of the State road, con- 
ucted for the benefit of the eleven families in 
f: neighborhood of South Branch station, is 
rty feet wide and full of stumps; the next 
le is a rough logging road and after that a 
die path. It was a charming walk, the guide 
imbling along with a gaff in one hand while 
': other hand held the strap of the fish basket, 
11 of food, on his shoulder. At times we were 
ir the river and then through pine of dense 
; ide to a rustic bridge over a brook—scenery 
: ‘t seemed to repeat itself for our special de- 
tation. Often we stopped on the river bank 
: try our luck in a favorable pool. There are 
■ ir houses on the route and the last house sent 
three small children whom we met at least five 
miles to the parish school at South Branch. The 
homes all had a dog and some two or more, 
rough, fierce black animals—a cross between the 
Newfoundland dog and a wolf. The fiercer they 
are the better for the sledge and the arctic 
snows. To see them dive to the bottom of the 
ocean on the coast for a stone again and again 
A SALMON ANGLER AND HIS PRIZE. 
Courtesy J. L. Pratt. 
with a howl of pain and bring it to you is a 
test of fidelity that almost disproves their savage 
ancestry. 
Winter Pool is about seven or eight miles from 
the source of the South Branch, with room for 
two rods. The water pours into the pool like 
ten mill races and below is still and deep for 
two hundred feet. Here the mountains seem to 
hang over the stream and that long quiet day 
is sweet to remember, although we did not catch 
a salmon, though ten barrels of them were with¬ 
in two hundred feet of us all the time. Once 
my companion had one and I waded out up to 
my arms to poke it out of the rocks, but it got 
away. Lunch was served, on dishes of the clean¬ 
est birch bark, with plenty of tea, and it all 
tasted so good that we were like the boy who 
defined appetite: “I am happy when I am eat¬ 
ing, and tight when I am done.” 
We caught sea trout, although it was early 
for them. They furnish better sport than opr 
brook trout and are twelve to seventeen inches 
in length. I toasted one, splitting the end of 
a stick and putting the fish in like a wedge, and 
when it was cooked it tasted better than wild 
strawberries and cream. We went to a pool 
two miles further up the stream and found three 
boys there and the largest one was fishing from 
a boat tied to a tree, with a home made rod and 
regular salmon hook on which were two big 
fat worms. The English have taught us to use 
a trout hook for salmon. The fisherman said 
he had caught a seven-pound salmon an hour 
before, and it must have been almost as long 
as the boy himself. He further said that he 
would fish no more that day. It is the native 
way to cease fishing, and it is a delicate cour¬ 
tesy to the stranger within their gates. I cast 
my fly and got two or three trout which I threw 
in the boat. As we went further up the river 
I saw those three boys examine those trout care¬ 
fully. I realized at once that they were true 
fishermen and that, gentle as they were, they 
knew too well that no self respecting salmon 
would take my fly after refusing their bait. To 
give up the pool was no sacrifice, but only kind¬ 
ness kindly expressed. 
The wa’.k home was all the way on the river 
bank, crossing and recrossing the swift waters 
which were like a hundred brooks in one. The 
sunset was perfect and the afterglow like “a 
magic casement opening on the foam of perilous 
seas in fairy lands forlorn.” It was 10 o’clock 
and still twilight when we arrived at camp, tired 
and happy, defeated but not discouraged. 
The next morning I was up and fishing again 
in front of the Scotchman’s camp, and after 
two hours a salmon took my fly. He pulled, 
then ran thirty feet and jumped out of the 
water, and did this again and again after I had 
pulled him in with the reel, each time much to 
my edification. The guide came to my assist¬ 
ance and in twenty minutes we had a clean fresh 
salmon on the shore. I felt a supreme satisfac¬ 
tion, but as the guide told it, “I just laid down 
on the shore and laughed,” for it was in some 
language he did not know and “Alice Through 
the Looking Glass” was not there to read: 
“ ‘And hast thou slain the Jabberwock? 
Come to my arms, my beamish boy! 
O frabjous day! Cal loo h ! Callay!’ 
He chortled in his jay.” 
I love the open, a fisherman’s independence 
with two big crackers in his pocket, the smell 
of the pines, which is like the smell of “that 
jasmine flower,” and even the hum of the flies. 
In Newfoundland, as everywhere else, the dogs, 
the cattle, the sheep and all nature seem to say 
in every movement, “I am not afraid, for it is 
now the pageantry of summer.” You can cast 
at a salmon as long as your leg for an hour 
and see the female fish burrowing in the gravel, 
as it were, for a place for her spawn, sometimes 
turning lazily toward you, while the big male 
swims around seemingly unconscious of both you 
and her. You see them swim toward you and 
away from you in those swift clear waters, and 
to rest your eyes you turn to the mountain and 
see the fog climbing its side with the morning 
sky beyond, and then you look at your patient 
guide on the bank, and turning again to the fish 
in the stream you believe this is not their abid¬ 
ing place, so for you it is only a practice ground 
and a faint glimpse of your future beatitude. 
i Clarence B. Dille. 
