1 
1 
the haunts of the great fish; both are 
exciting and equally effective. One is 
what is known among the guides as 
rock fishing,” that is, wading out with 
the shore currents into the shallow, but 
eddying pools that lay for some dis¬ 
tance out toward the center of the rap¬ 
ids. A long-handled landing net is used 
as a guiding staff to make sure that 
one does not step into a treacherous 
and deadly pool among the rocks. The 
fly rod is the usual tool of the “rock 
fisherman,” and the rather large size 
bass fly the most efficient lure. 
The rock fisherman usually fishes 
down the current or rather works down 
with the current in the rapids. The fly 
is cast across the current or even up 
stream and then drawn back at an 
angle over the swift flow, touching the 
curling, white 
The other phases of rapids fly fish¬ 
ing and bait fishing (both of which are 
practiced in this strip of water) are 
woi ked from a large canoe, which 
places the fisherman in the very fury 
of the wild waters themselves. This 
last phase of the sport is far from 
the general ideas of the “gentle pas¬ 
time. Instead of being a gentle rec- 
i eation the trout ang'ler who invades 
the sacred precincts of the Gods of 
the Rapids will find himself immersed, 
immediately after entering the canoe 
and being shoved off into the current 
b.\ the Indian guide, in a pandemonium 
or roaring, leaping and intimidating 
waters, a welter of sound, a world of 
fury and of haunting menaces that 
leap toward the very soul of the angler. 
Jack Cadreau, one of the Soo guides, 
Sill* 
fangs of a swirl 
at the lower 
base.of a black 
boulder that 
stands guard 
over a little 
pool, at the head 
of a rocky bar¬ 
rier to a long, 
wide pool, or 
floated down 
over a smoothly 
flowing stretch 
with a sharp, 
twitching 
retrieve. It is 
the dainti- 
est sport in the 
world; this lur¬ 
ing the cunning 
and powerful 
rainbows of the 
Soo from their 
rock bound 
haunts. 
I have seen 
trout of eight pounds and 
over taken from shallows 
along the rocky shores 
where the bottom could 
easily be seen in the wan¬ 
ing afternoon sun for rods 
about, and yet under a 
hidden ledge of rock, from 
some haunt that had es¬ 
caped the eye, the lightning-like flash 
of the vicious gamesters would cut the 
sun-honey of the rock bottomed pools 
as the light bucktail fly struck the 
water. It is a bit of fishing that one 
never knows what it will result in. Per¬ 
haps a four-pound speckled trout will 
come to the first cast, perhaps it will 
be a full mornings casting of the fly 
into a regular fury of feeding, surface 
fish without a single rise, and then 
again as one is not looking the mighty 
smashing blow of the pugnacious and 
bulldog-like rainbow. 
Page 433 
rainbow 
RPVT FA rnm^Sn RAPIDS PROM THE CENTRE OF THE CUR- 
&w L0 S? s o h f°?! e wT£ t 
was the first that initiated me into the 
fury of the rapids. I hurried down 
one summer morning, and as the sun 
was coming up over the far, flat reaches 
of the St. Mary’s River to the east, in 
a crimson, hot ball of fire, speaking 
vividly of the weltering day that was 
to come, and found the Indian waiting. 
The long, wide, old canoe that has born 
this intrepid wanderer of the roaring 
white water over many a foot of the 
place for year upon year, and season 
on season, was drawn up on the rocks 
at the center of the noisy neck of river. 
“You expect to really go out into 
that welter over there?” I wanted to 
know of the big fellow. 
“All over that, my friend,” he laugh¬ 
ingly and kindly informed me. 
Of all the guides I have followed in 
the North and other places I have never 
found one yet that gave more tiresome 
and consistent service than Jack Ca¬ 
dreau of the great Soo Rapids. He has 
grown up with these brawling whirl¬ 
pools, and the song of the wild waters 
aie as much a part of his every-day 
life as the clatter of the trolley to the 
city dweller or the lilting, fllutelike ca- 
caroling of the mocking birds to we of 
country lanes. He was brought first to the 
light of day in a hide lodge on the very 
banks of the rapids with the flashing 
Soo, perhaps 
his first recol¬ 
lection of the 
life he was to 
lead on its bois¬ 
terous bosom. 
Taking his 
place at the 
stern of the ca¬ 
noe he motioned 
me to my place 
in the after 
part. Then plac¬ 
ing fly rod, fly 
book and land¬ 
ing net in the 
canoe at my 
side he hunched 
his shoulders 
to the great 
canoe and 
shoved it off the 
rocks into the 
dimpling, golden 
and amber-lined 
pools of the shore. With 
a light bound he was in 
and at the bow with a 
long, heavy cedar pole, 
wedged close into the bow 
frame, he crouched and 
shot the vessel out into the 
first glassy raps of the 
place. I had a vague mo¬ 
ment’s impression of be¬ 
ing clutched in merciless 
phantom fingers, the senseless unim¬ 
portance of being born against an irre¬ 
sistible flow, and then the terrible creep 
of icy fear, closing on the heart. 
We were in the rapids of the Soo! 
I crouched, my rod forgotten, and 
looked ahead to the great shoulders of 
the Indian heaving with might and 
main against a terrific flood of 
smothering waters. The senselessness 
of the entire thing, the futile struggle 
of a mere man against this the gloi’y 
of the Rapids Gods, the scream of torn 
(Continued on page 4G3) 
