March 28, 1908 ] 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
499 
soaked, flies carefully selected for the existing 
conditions, a lunch carefully tucked away in the 
pockets of our fishing coats, and expectation 
high, we “hit the creek’’ about a quarter of a 
mile from the house and started the day’s sport. 
Here and there we fished, now some swiftly 
running rift, where the waters dashed over 
hidden boulders, now some inviting pool, where 
they whirled and eddied near the bank over¬ 
hung with the branches of balsam, soft maple 
or beach. Varying success attended our efforts. 
We fished leisurely, now and then stopping to 
admire the beauties of the stream and our sur¬ 
roundings, or to spin a yarn about a big one 
that once got away. 
By the time the sun had marked high noon 
I was commencing to feel that a bite to eat 
would not come amiss, and suggested that we 
partake of our lunch. “Oh, it’s not time yet.” 
said the Senator, “wait until we fish that next 
long rift just a little way below here. I ex¬ 
pect to get a couple of good ones there.” So 
we continued fishing, now bringing to creel a 
good-sized trout, and now and then saving & 
“rifter” just to chink in with. Finally about 2 
o’clock, seeing no signs of the Senator relin¬ 
quishing in favor of lunch, I struck and informed 
him that I must eat or faint of hunger. After 
making four or five more casts he reluctantly 
gave in, and coming over to the bank where I 
was waiting we proceeded to select an appro¬ 
priate place to spread the banquet. And what 
a banquet we had! In all my fishing experiences 
I had never thought of cooking along the stream 
any of the trout I had caught. I always liked 
to bring them home and show them up, and in 
places other than in the North Woods, where I 
had fished I hardly ever caught enough in one 
day to indulge in the luxury of broiled trout on 
the bank of the stream. 
“Now,” said the Senator, “you select about 
a dozen of those rifters and clean them. I will 
start a fire and we will have trout for dinner.” 
He soon had a good fire going, then he cut 
two crotched sticks and a straight willow 
switch, and the parts to construct the broiler 
were assembled. I had cleaned a dozen small 
trout, and as soon as the crackling fire had re¬ 
solved itself into a bed of hot coals he strung 
them one by one on the switch; then standing 
the sticks one on either side of the bed of coals, 
crotch end up, he placed the switch supporting 
the dozen trout, strung through the gills, in the 
crotches of the sticks, so that the tails of the 
trout were about six inches from the coals. 
Then we sat down, opened our lunch, spread it 
out and patiently waited for the trout to broil. 
In a few minutes their tails commenced to curl 
up, and the Senator announced that they were 
done. It was a dish fit for the most fastidious 
epicure. Never before or since have I tasted 
brook trout of like flavor. 
Did we enjoy that banquet? Who would not? 
With the great outdoors on a balmy spring day 
for a dining room; curtains of balsam and 
spruce and maple adorning its windows as broad 
and as high as the eye could see; the warm 
glint of sunlight through its blue canopied roof, 
and for music nature’s own orchestra, the rip¬ 
pling cadence of a wild and beautiful mountain 
stream with the accompaniment of sweet bird 
notes everywhere playing without intermission; 
with this setting who indeed would not enjoy 
such a banquet? * 
Those dozen rifters disappeared like magic, 
and, together with the lunch we brought, satis¬ 
fied two pretty healthy appetites. After we had 
finished and lighted our pipes the Senator 
asked, “Do you think that banquet could be 
beaten at Delmonico’s?” And I freely admitted 
that I did not think it could. 
Concluding our smoke, we resumed fishing; 
we soon reached a likely looking spot and the 
Senator fished it thoroughly. At about the third 
cast he hooked and landed a trout hardly large 
enough to keep, and as he carefully replaced the 
little fellow in its natural element, I heard him 
say, “I don’t want you; go back and tell your 
grandfather I am after him.” 
In a few minutes his hands were full, for sure 
enough he had hooked the grandfather. He had 
carefully fished the rift which broke over into 
deeper water, forming a large pool. On one 
side of the creek was a high bank covered with 
spruce and soft maples, and on the other side 
the bank gradually sloped to the water s edge; 
a large boulder partly submerged against which 
a log had lodged occupied the far end of the 
pool near the high bank, and here the water 
ran quite swift and boiled and foamed around 
the log, leaving just below it and the boulder a 
swirling eddy. 
Toward this point the Senator carefully di¬ 
rected his casts, gradually releasing a little more 
line each time. He was throwing about sixty 
feet of line, when with a well directed cast he 
let his flies fall as lightly as a dewdrop just be¬ 
hind the boulder in the center of the eddy. 
They had hardly touched the surface of the 
water when splash! I saw the glistening sides 
of a mighty trout as it leaped into the air. 
The Senator also saw it, struck at the right 
moment, and hooked the trout; the reel sang 
as back to his retreat the old fellow rushed. 
Quickly the Senator put the tip of his rod to 
the water and commenced carefully to play the 
trout. How his rod did bend and twist! 
Back and forth across the pool, now leaping 
into the air in a mad effort to free the hook, 
now sulking at the bottom, all the while being 
carefully coaxed away from the log, where 
danger lurked, the trout fought and struggled; 
but the strain soon commenced to tell, the lithe 
rod held him in relentless embrace and met 
every move with counter move, until at last the 
old fellow gradually gave up, and was piloted 
safely to the shore, where I slipped the landing 
net under it and lifted it to safety. It weighed 
2 14 pounds. 
Then we sat down and lighted our pipes; I 
congratulated the Senator, and he congratulated 
me upon the fact that we would not have to 
go home that night and tell about the big one 
that got away. We could deliver the goods. 
F. J. D. 
Bass in Oklahoma. 
Muskogee, Okla., March 17 .—Editor Forest 
and Stream: I tried a little bait-casting the other 
day in a lake near here, and bass and crappie 
struck freely. One 2l4-pound big-mouth gave me 
nearly ten minutes of strenuous exercise. 
The weather is very warm and the fishing sea¬ 
son is on in full blast. Paul H. Byrd. 
ROUGHING IT 
soon grows tiresome unless the food is good. 
Good milk is one item indispensable to a cheer¬ 
ful camp, and Borden’s solves the problem. 
Eagle Brand Condensed Milk and Peerless Brand 
Evaporated Milk keep indefinitely, anywhere, and 
fill every milk or cream requirement.— Adv. 
THE “SENATOR" INTERESTED. 
From a photograph by Fred D. Barton. 
