780 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
[Nov. 12, 1910. 
startled ears, and down with an uproar of yells 
and confusion Tom fell from his stand on the 
seat in the stern, his arms stretched straight out, 
rigid as iron bars with the sudden strain, but 
game as a pebble. He held the line, burning its 
way through his fingers as with mad haste we 
jumped to his aid. “Doc” and Joe got to him, 
but I fell, mixed up, in the oilskins, gear or 
other tackle, but I grabbed the rifle, and kick¬ 
ing myself free sprang to the rail. 
What a fight was on! At last the very hope 
and wish of all those days was really gratified, 
and the men, grim, with pale set faces and blaz¬ 
ing eyes braced back on that line to do or die. 
“Hold hard, boys! H-o-l-d him ha-rd ! 'Steady, 
Doc; ste-a-dy, for heaven’s sake! Give him no 
slack; hang to him.” In perfect unison those 
game men stood braced and solid, every muscle 
tense, swinging and lurching to the vast unseen 
power below that moved them, but gained not 
an inch. Slowly they drew the monster in until 
—it seemed an age to me—at last we saw the 
great shark’s outline, dimly swaying upward, a 
ghostly fearsome shape, SO' big and long and 
startling in its appearance of awful strength 
that involuntarily the rifle came to my shoulder 
and my nerves cried out aloud. Breaking through 
the swirl of foaming water the great dorsal fin 
and huge spotted back gleamed in the sun. An 
instant more and crash against the boat’s side 
struck the monstrous head, and its fang-like 
teeth snapped and ripped, and the awful jaws 
closed with sickening force. The sinewy arms 
held, and with horror, fear, glee, pluck and above 
all mad exultation on every grim face, I heard 
above the din, as in a dream, “Shoot, man!” 
The rifle in my shaking hands rang out. The 
waters churned with the last sweep of the power¬ 
ful tail, the great head went slowly down, and 
the body rolled easily on its side to rise and 
fall as gently as the velvet sea weed in the tide. 
All that savage, fearful strength was gone; that 
wild ferocity gone in an instant with the pres¬ 
sure of a finger. 
So calm and peaceful now that with wonder¬ 
ing eyes we stood breathless, watching, unable 
for the moment to realize that the fight was won. 
But in a flash the reaction came; the relief, to 
be able to sit down, to yell our loudest, and to 
hug each other and slap game old Tom on the 
back, and to shake hands with modest Joe and 
to hear his soft voice: 
“ ’Deed, I tole yo^ so. Des yere ole he deb- 
bils pizen savage; ’deed dey is.” 
It was joy enough for everyone. Who would 
not go fishing for such as he. 
Sail was hoisted and our prize towed proudly 
home to be hauled ashore and gloated over and 
wondered at and pictured to our hearts’ content, 
to show for years to come the victory we had 
won over the tiger of the seas. 
Joseph E. Jameson. 
The Anglers’ Casting Club of Chicago. 
Chicago. Ill., Nov. t. —Editor Forest and 
Stream: I sent you the general averages of 
scores made at our club contests during the sea¬ 
son of iqio and find I have made one error by 
crediting L. N. Place with only 98.02 instead of 
98.20, which is his correct score. Mr. Place is 
entitled to second place and J. T. Hartley drops 
to third place with his score of 98.07. 
E. M. Town, Sec’y. 
Week-End Rambles. 
III.—Her First Big Trout. 
The memory of the big trout you lost or the 
two or three the other fellow captured, under 
your very nose, and his flushed face and tri¬ 
umphant glance when he chanced to look in 
your direction during the struggle, will outlive 
the remembrances of a hundred successes. You 
may return home tired, hungry and elated with 
your trip in spite of an empty creel, fully re¬ 
solved to forget your misfortune; to literally 
bury it in work, which, for the time being has 
been robbed of its dread monotony by the clear, 
buoyant air of the trout stream, but sooner or 
later, when the brain begins to fag, recurring 
recollections of this big one or that fisher¬ 
man’s catch will kindle a mysterious, impelling 
fervency which in the end will move you to 
return to the haunts of the trout. 
That there were big trout in the upper 
reaches of the long northeast branch of the 
Susquehanna had been proven and an ever¬ 
present desire to do battle with one of the 
superb creatures prompted our return to that 
region. A week’s rain had changed the char¬ 
acter of the stream. The water was clear, but 
the prolonged downpour had swelled the creek 
from bank to bank, and increased the current 
far beyond its normal velocity. The sky was 
overcast and threatening, and taken altogether, 
conditions were exactly the opposite of the 
clear, bright day of our previous trip, which 
had held out so much* of promise yet proved so 
devoid of results. 
The Susquehanna valley was redolent with 
verdant freshness. The atmosphere was pure 
and wholesome, but throughout our walk I 
feared a sudden change that would react on the 
fishing, for I believe the trout are peculiarly 
susceptible to atmospherical conditions. 
In strict observance of the fly-caster’s golden 
rule—dark flies for light days and light flies 
for dark days—we commenced fishing with light 
flies. To my surprise trout rose at nearly every 
cast, especially for one of those gaudy, nameless 
freaks fishermen persist in buying without rea¬ 
son or justification, and which I had determined 
to experiment with. 
Sportsmen who have the welfare of fishing 
at heart should refrain from taking trout until 
they have attained a length of at least eight 
inches and have had a chance to spawn and de¬ 
velop their fighting ability. The little fellows 
were so persistent that we soon discarded light 
flies for the coachman and silvern-doctor, two 
of the best lures for all-around trout fishing, 
in the hope that they would prove less attrac¬ 
tive. Because we had used these flies on our 
previous unsuccessful trip. My Lady was some¬ 
what skeptical as to their merits, but she had 
yet to learn in the great school of practical ex¬ 
perience many minor things pertaining to trout 
fishing. Old Abe Ball once described trout to 
My Lady as “fish critters with cussed unsartin’ 
notions.” The truth of his homely statement was 
borne home shortly after we had changed our 
flies. Three or four hundred yards further down 
the stream My Lady cast into a broad deep 
pool gouged from the gravelly bank by spring 
freshets and the water swirled and boiled with 
the rudden rush of a big square-tail, who made 
no attempt to snatch the fly. Again and again 
she cast with'the utmost care, and each time 
he playfully vaulted over the flies. Finally My 
Lady marched indignantly away. 
The trout suddenly ceased to rise. Obviously 
there was no change in the atmosphere to re¬ 
flect on the sport, and I was at a loss to evolve 
a satisfactory explanation. For two hours I 
sought to solve the riddle and was on the point 
of suggesting that we push on to town for our 
pack and proceed to our former campsite, when 
a brighter ray of hope loomed up in the bushes 
ahead of us in the person of one of those in¬ 
corrigible village idlers that haunt the trout 
streams of a civilized country side. He was 
tall and lank. His bony hands bristled with 
coarse sandy hair and his huge feet were en¬ 
cased in shoes a tramp would have scorned. 
His small head, perched upon a spindle neck 
was innocent of hair except for a few scraggly, 
unkempt locks about his ears, while a wide 
mouth and a long thin nose, watery eyes and 
an old blue cotton umbrella fastened to his 
back further emphasized his striking physical 
features and gave him a startling, malicious ap¬ 
pearance. 
Intent upon his fishing, the idler scarcely 
noticed our approach until we were well upon 
him. 
“What luck?” I called. 
“Wal. I most alius gets a few when I come 
down hereabouts,” he drawled, staring at My 
Lady in open-eyed astonishment. The presence 
of a woman angler was so unusual that his 
customary sang-froid nearly deserted him, but 
under My Lady’s reassuring smile he quickly re¬ 
covered his composure, and bashfully tucking 
his battered hat beneath his arm, he bowed low 
in an old-fashioned curtsy, requesting that we 
inspect his catch, six brace of trout. He was 
using two silver doctors, weighted with split 
shot, and drawing them beneath the surface to 
give them the appearance of small minnows. 
Putting a good half mile between us, I put 
two silver-doctors on a nine-foot leader, and 
when we came in sight of the old mill, where 
My Lady had brought the big brown to the 
surface on our previous trip, I had taken a half- 
dozen fair trout. My Lady was not so suc¬ 
cessful, and she hurried to the old mill pool. 
She hooked him on the first cast, and he leaped 
twice in quick succession, then circling the 
pool, dashed for the outlet, and raced down 
over a long stretch of shallow rifts. By his 
agility he gained an advantage over My Lady 
and narrowed the question of his capture down 
to her ability to keep pace with him until he 
reached the deep pool below. 
Her predicament was a pretty one. The reel 
was paying out yard after yard of line. To 
scramble up the steep bank was an impossibil¬ 
ity. Her only clear course was to follow the 
creek bed. Hampered by wet skirts, she made 
her way down the center of the channel, slip¬ 
ping, stumbling, while she bent every energy to 
regain her line. Once she plunged waist-deep 
in a pot hole, but plowed through it without 
losing her balance. In the pool the fish halted 
and lay close to the bottom. A quick sharp 
lift and he took to circling, then he started up 
stream, and when My Lady gave him the butt, 
he leaped from the water and landed flopping 
on the gravelly bank at her feet. 
It was a pretty ending for a day’s sport, and 
as soon as My Lady had recovered from her 
