EMERSON HOUGH’S WILD WATERS 
The Water That Inspired His Greatest Angling Epic 
W HEN I picked up the Forest 
and Stream of June (that 
delightful number with its 
story of basses and its song of sweet 
waters and whispering woodlands) and 
turned to the editorial page, my mind 
flashed back over an old, old trail to 
the everlasting mutter of the great- { 
est rapids in all the world. 
Emerson Hough had passed on 
over the timber line. And with that 
sadness that comes only when we 
lose one of the circle of the trail and 
campfire, I traveled back to the place 
where this great soul had laughed, 
gossiped, lived and loved with his 
favorite sport of the rod and reel. 
Back to the muttering rapids of the 
far famed Sault St. Marie rapids, 
the home of the greatest battling 
fish in the world—the rainbow trout. 
The news of Emerson Hough’s 
death tore from my brain a veil that 
had grown there with the passing of 
time, and I was swept back to the 
tumbling, tossing, wild waters where 
Hough’s masterpiece of angling lit¬ 
erature, “The Wildest Fishing In 
the World,” was born one August 
night. 
It would be well worth the time 
and the space in the columns of this 
dear old magazine, wherein Emer¬ 
son Hough smiled, chatted and bud- 
died with we old rangers of wood 
and water, to tell of the birth of his 
great stories—and incidentally of 
many other things that are strange, 
thrilling and full of the romance of 
arching bamboo and screaming reel. 
For the benefit of those who have 
not traveled the trails that lead to 
the great rapids I shall deviate a 
bit to lay before them a rough sketch 
of the wild waters that surge 
through the narrows of the rugged 
neck of land that separates Superior 
_mighty autocrat of the northern 
border—from Huron, a seething 
stretch of white-crested waters as 
unmanageable to-day as it was cen¬ 
turies ago when rugged, half-wild 
explorers carried their canoes of 
bark about its devilish maelstrom 
and leering pitfalls. 
I have sat at night in the soft, 
delicious shadow of maples, where but 
a few years agone the lodges of Jack 
Cadreau’s people stood. Lodges of 
hides and long, light birch poles, greasy 
and worn, to be sure, but the home of 
By BEN C. ROBINSON 
men who really loved the shouting, 
brawling waters. I have sat there 
when the evenings sport was over and 
watched the great, iron and steel-sided 
monsters of Commerce glide down, with 
many a wild bellow, through the im- 
THIS TROUT IS REPPORTED IN THE STORY AS 
HAVING BEEN TAKEN ON A FLY ROD WITH A 
SPECIALLY CONSTRUCTED BUCKTA1L FLY. WE 
NOTE, HOWEVER. THAT IT HAS BEEN PHOTO¬ 
GRAPHED WITH A WELL-KNOWN MAKE OF 
BAIT-CASTING ROD AND AN EQUALLY WELL- 
KNOWN TYPE OF LEVEL-WINDING REEL. 
mense locks. The locks of the Soo that 
carry millions of our dollars and an 
equal number of millions of the golden 
hoard of the great wheat districts of 
the Saskatchewan and the Dakotas 
through to the far horizon that lays 
to the east—aye! even beyond that sky 
line, to the elusive blur of European 
headlands. This is the gateway of the 
wheat lands of the Northwest. The 
throat of the great iron ore ranges 
that cling to the bleak shores of 
wild Superior. It is the land of Ro¬ 
mance even to-day. 
We have harnessed the Great 
Lakes. Superior, even, has been 
broken to trace and trail, so to speak, 
and yet she is wild, dancing full of 
sunlight on dimpling waters, cold 
and unrevealing. Not a boisterous 
autumn that goes by, but what the 
terrible toll of Whitfish Bay, of the 
mouth of the Sault St. Marie, takes 
its awful harvest of lives and ships. 
It is noted and feared among those 
who float through the great locks 
on the wings of the night. I would 
not attempt to say the tonnage of 
ore, grain and lumber that passes 
through the American Locks of the 
Soo Canal. It is tremendous. And yet 
the rapids below roar and gnash their 
teeth and turn the wheels of the 
great light and storage plants that 
feed upon their ferocity. They can¬ 
not be conquered—they are the 
greatest rapids in the world—and 
they are the home of the greatest 
game nsh in the world, the rainbow 
trout. 
From one end of the country to 
the other the name of this brawl¬ 
ing piece of water has come to be 
known among those who fish for the 
trouts. Rainbow, speckled brook 
trouts and the greatest muskellunge 
and pike fishing in the world are to 
be had in the eddying, placid cur¬ 
rents below the swift, tumbling 
waters. The trouts live directly in 
the current of the rapids themselves, 
in water that swirls, leaps, yeasts 
and sucks about the great boulder 
ledges that clutter the millrace in a 
strength that the novice trout stu¬ 
dent would imagine impossible for 
a fish to live in at all. Yet, in this 
swirl of green and white water, that 
actually tears the line from a well 
set reel, the large rainbow trout of 
the entire fishing ranges stay. 
To fish the wild waters of the Soo 
is to experience a phase of angling 
that comes but rarely to the wielder 
of rod and reel. There are two dif¬ 
ferent methods of casting the fly over 
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