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Ouananiche and Grand Lake Stream. 
Concluded from page 940. 
It is a curious fact that when an angler 
catches many ouananiche, the guide declares 
most of them “racers,” thin, only fit to be re¬ 
leased, whereas, when you catch no fish, he 
solemnly asserts that they are where your pot 
of gold was when you were young—at the far 
end of the rainbow. Some men like to catch 
fish, but do not care to eat them. After the 
fish is taken, it may be retained to show when 
you get back to camp, returned to the water, or 
given to the man who runs the camp, or to 
the guide for his home consumption. Practices 
and opinions vary. In May, ouananiche are 
sometimes pickled like herrings, in kegs or bar¬ 
rels of brine or vinegar. White perch are rated 
as high as ouananiche. 
What makes a ouananiche leap? Is it pain, 
pleasure, parasite or just for fun? In the rapid 
stream one gets dizzy watching the strips of 
wavy bark at the bottom. A fish startles you 
by leaping. It is like chasing a rainbow to 
think of catching certain magnificent ouana¬ 
niche that occasionally project aerial flashes 
across your line of vision near the falls, in the 
rapids, or in the lake. We know that the six- 
pounder is there. Who will catch him? 
The question of guides is a serious one. 
Formerly he studied the interests and eagerly, 
zealously, helped his employer to secure winged 
game, fish, deer, etc. He was an optimistic, 
truthful companion and good fellow. He acted 
as stoker, fuel-bearer and fire tender and 
builder for you, and whistled while he worked. 
There is danger that he will join the union and 
split hairs about subdivisions of duties. Knowl¬ 
edge of city practices on his part will not help 
possible future patrons. 
A guide should be what the name indicates— 
indicator, director, adviser, tutor. He examines 
and inventories your tackle, rates your quali¬ 
fications and practical experiences, imparts in¬ 
formation, practically illustrates with your 
tackle what to do and how to do it, conveys 
ideas, educates you as to the ways of getting 
into or out of his canoe, takes you in hand 
generally, initiates and introduces you to the 
most promising places to secure results. He is 
your Mentor, Nestor and model for imitation, 
communicates ideas, is expositor, pilot, super¬ 
visor, manager, overseer, camp-keeper and 
cook, your inspector, lookout, mate, factor, 
foreman, prompter, predictor, sentinel, con¬ 
servator, pundit, philosopher and friend. He is 
your servant and assistant at $3 per day and 
subsisted at your expense. He carries your 
rented canoe on his head—portages of half 1 
mile at a rest. The rubric of silence as to your 
failures, doings, habits, is imposed upon him 
so long as he is in your service. He must not 
be surly, selfish, stupid nor lazy. He must be 
temperate and truthful. He amuses you by 
tales about deer and moose shooting. If you 
are unsuccessful in fishing or shooting, he is 
not, and will keep mum. He knows all the 
game laws, their penalties and the cost of 
licenses. 
What is in Arizona called a ranch; in Indian 
Territory, a wickey-up; in Texas, a hacienda or 
rancheria, is here in Maine called a camp. 
When guides wore moccasins instead of Oxford 
ties, places where an angler could be sheltered 
and given a shake-down and be fed were termed 
camps. Now, some of the old guides say, 
“Grand Lake Stream is getting too blamed 
civilized! A bowling alley has been built; 
a penny-in-the-slot machine has got here; ma¬ 
chine-impelled launches are threatening to rank 
out paddled canoes; automobile parties run 
over the stream bridge; the livery of fashion 
has invaded our cottages. Perhaps somebody 
will wear a high silk stovepipe dress hat at 
Grand Lake Stream!” 
Even on a cushion with a back-seat, it is irk¬ 
some to sit on a canoe bottom for many con¬ 
secutive hours, trolling Or casting, with your 
knees as high as your breast. Unless one 
straightens out his legs, he will get a misery 
in his stomach, and after a week’s constraint 
dyspepsia results. The lake is dotted with 
islands, and there are several handy shore 
places, too, where lunch can be eaten. It is 
then that your guide, after hauling his canoe 
ashore to dry, makes evident his ability as a 
cook, especially in the neat, quick way of 
dressing a freshly-caught ouananiche, and broil¬ 
ing or planking it. Jo Sprague excels in fish 
chowders. After your noonday meal, and a 
fragrant pipe, your tired leg muscles feel better 
and you can go fishing again. Grand Lake 
Stream has conveyances expressly made for 
hauling canoes when wheeled transportation is 
desired. They are the best I have ever seen. 
Pug Brook flows out of Pug Pond, forty-five 
minutes’ walk from Grand Lake Stream. I 
heard that it was tenanted by many muskrats 
and a few speckled, square-tail trout. Pitying 
the Salvelinus fontinalis their alleged habitat 
amid common things, I made a trip there, 
carrjdng worms for bait in case flies should 
fail. 
Over the thistle fields and the bearing blue¬ 
berry hills, among boulders worthy of the New 
Hampshire Grants, under spruce, cedar, larch, 
juniper, tamarack, pines, beech, silver Birch, 
white birch, rock and sugar maple, stately oak, 
dogwood, hemlock and popple; brushing 
against curly ferns, reverently tramping on 
evergreens, the kind mother used for decora¬ 
tions Christmas, nodding at yellow marigold 
and golden rod because yellow, smiling at 
larkspur because it is blue, or the cardinal be¬ 
cause it is red, through thoroughwort, I 
tramped into the swampy sloughs of the Pug, 
where bay and labrador and high blueberries 
grow, also parti-colored Michaelmas daisies and 
everlasting. The walk was swampy at the further 
end. Beyond the quagmire and slough, honey¬ 
combed by muskrats, were other paludal fens 
of marsh grounds treacherously squashy with 
bush-covered craters into which I occasionally 
stepped, sinking abruptly into the mud slush. 
“Just like pie,” Stephen Henry Sprague said. 
He is thirty-nine, was born here, and has never 
been anywhere else. He eats pie, doughnuts 
and like delicacies for breakfast after the habit 
of Grand Lake Stream plantation. We saw 
deer, moose and bear tracks, and flushed 
partridges. 
The Pug is a pond dotted with white water- 
lilies, the most exquisite flower in America. 
I caught ten trout, using worms for bait. It 
was not finesse nor clever, but the wife for 
whom I got the pond lilies had tired of 
ouananiche and wanted trout for breakfast. In 
catching trout with worm bait I stultified my 
conscience and put into practice the native 
method of trouting. 
One Saturday an automobile brought to a 
Grand Lake camp three men whose united 
weight was 750 pounds. They had a demijohn 
of what they called “bait.” At this season, the 
stream is prolific with parr, smolt, grilse and 
fingerling ouananiche, all under the legal limit 
of one pound in weight. The fat men did not 
engage a guide. Possibly they were full of en¬ 
thusiasm and theories as to how to catch 
ouananiche. They cut salt pork into strips 
shaped somewhat like a minnow, and used 
these strips as lures. A small but interested 
audience joined them. A fish weighing about 
ten ounces was sighted by the fat men sunning 
himself nearly under the bridge. They bent all 
of their energies to the capture of that finger- 
ling. They baited frequently and wafted that 
strip of white salt pork at the little indifferent 
fish all of Sunday. He did not rise to the lure. 
The patience of the obese ones was commend¬ 
able. They did not leave the bridge; Horatius- 
like, they heaved and baited all day long, stop¬ 
ping only for meals and bait. Toward sunset 
they seemed to get excited, but they did not 
get that fish or any other, yet they seemed 
real happy. 
A tenderfoot arrived one day. He had never 
caught any kind of fresh-water game fish. He 
smashed my theories by a successful catch from 
the bridge. Ignorant of the fact that no ouan¬ 
aniche of size were to be taken by a bridge 
fisherman—knowing nothing about the delicate 
art of dry-fly methods—he found a hungry 
ouananiche and surprised the vagrant and him¬ 
self by hooking him with a No. 4 hook. The- 
fish had his awkward, gaudy bass-fly in his jaw 
before either man or fish knew it. The tender¬ 
foot tried his best to lose the fish. At a time 
when the ouananiche was madly rushing away 
from him, he tugged his best to get the line 
out of the mouth of the fighting fish. The fish 
simply could not get free. For a wonder, the 
tackle stood the abuse, and the greenhorn 
yanked a four-and-a-quarter pounder on to the 
dusty planks of the bridge as if it had been a 
sucker or a mud turtle. All this within a hun¬ 
dred yards of my rod rack on the side of 
Pioneer Cottage. I was more mad than 
envious; was inarticulate; did not congratulate 
the man who had shut his eyes and hit the 
bullseye. Philip Reade. 
