gray boulders and fled along on the 
tumbling wash, and just beyond a split 
rock in midstream I made the primal 
cast of the morning hour. No yellow 
leaf ever kissed the waters with lighter 
touch—the little miller fluttered down, 
struggled in a feeble manner, shot into 
the dead water beside the rock, and 
vanished. It was a cast in a hundred 
attempts, the most perfect in the day’s 
fishing. I felt a sharp tug, then the 
reel clicked, and it was but the matter 
of a moment to sink the hook home 
deep in a grisly jaw. Why write in 
glowing terms of the rushes to free the 
hook, the sulking, the fighting capacity 
of the mountain trout? I worked the 
fish to shore, full of fight and fire to 
the last, an eleven-inch brook trout 
whose spots were red as a love-apple’ 
and golden as the sun of noon-day. In 
the superior feelings of such a begin- 
ning, is it not strange the day sud- 
denly assumed a wonderful glow and 
the mountain world a place of rare 
delight? 
HE first fish called for a com- 
panionable pipe. Tobacco quelled 
the innate desire to try the place 
again. In a fisherman, curiosity is an 
eccentric thing. So I moved down the 
brook. These cold, tree-haunted, boul- 
der-strewn brooks are difficult to follow 
closely and studiously. Free and easy 
walking is out of time and mind—the 
mountain waters offer a way of con- 
tinual pleasure combined with the real- 
ity of hard work and rough going. 
Somehow or other, this sort of fishing 
appeals—one never knows just what 
lays behind an entanglement of pine 
and rock, brake and down-timber. 
Scenes wild with virgin loveliness sur- 
prise the sweating, midge - bothered 
angler, but compensation lies in the 
beauty of environment that defies even 
the lens and pencil. Only in memory 
can many scenes be carried to far 
cities and strange homes. 
Having had only a small amount of 
rain the previous weeks, it was sur- 
prising to find the brook as full of 
water as it was, and only one ac- 
quainted with it could have noticed 
this peculiarity. It was low, not low 
enough to drive the trout to the deep 
holes, but low enough to provide fairly 
good walking with many rocky jumps 
and a minimum of wading. Sand, 
pebbles, loose boulders, flat granite 
out-croppings—all in a confusion with 
a head of clear water caused the use 
of a long line. Down-stream fishing 
possessed one advantage—the way led 
campward. Under-sized trout worried 
the fly. At times striking the lure 
just as a ribbon of white water swung 
it away in a downward rush, the feel- 
ing on the line gave me the impression 
a larger fish meant business, and so I 
reeled in a gamey little fish just under 
legal limit. This became so monoton- 
ous it seemed a habit. A_ stealthy 
advance to some big-fish wafer revealed 
the pool to be alive with small trout. 
U NDERMINED by the water of 
some April freshet, a great hem- 
lock lay on the bank, its. moss-burdened 
and fungi-laden trunk resting in the 
brook and forcing the waters to swing 
one side. A pyramidal boulder, large 
as a log-cabin, forced the waters to 
one shore, and here they swirled and 
sung and roared at this bar to their 
journey. Standing on a smooth rock, 
with long line out and fly hidden in 
the flashing foam, I awaited results. 
An answer came instantly, so intense, 
so strong, I struck hurriedly and held 
my breath for fear I had acted too 
hastily. The line snapped like a whip 
as it shot out and grew taut, a strong 
pulling set the reel a-singing, and with 
more line out than I knew how to 
handle I stood on the slippery frontier 
of deep swift waters and tried to stem 
the rush of the fish. Between the cur- 
rent’s strength dragging at the line 
and the fish’s efforts to free the hook 
from its setting, I felt as though I 
were hooked to a Jake fish instead of a 
mountain trout. The only way to 
shore was-_back up-stream, while deep 
water prevented any attempt to stroll 
down to where the fish played havoc 
around hemlock snags and boulder, so 
there was nothing to do except to hold 
tight and capture slack line. With 
pressure being brought to bear, the 
trout became frantic and I secured 
somewhat of an advantage, so I began 
to reel against the strong current. 
Suddenly the fish broke water. In the 
gray light and shadows, the wet sides 
of the fish gleamed like jewels and its 
belly shone like new-fallen snow. Be- 
tween the tree and boulder vanished 
the fish, then out of the water again 
I saw a half-jump, a sign of tail, and 
the limp line floated away on a raft 
of foam bells. Cut on a sharp rock or 
a wood sliver, the line was severed 
neatly. The fish took my badly-used 
white miller as a memo of a trying 
experience. 
THE brook suddenly assumed a rai- 
ment of fancy and reality unknown 
but a few minutes before—the fact it 
was the haunt of the largest trout I 
ever saw in a mountain stream, and 
the realization I had hooked and lost 
this very fish. The excitement and 
adventure of failure was greater than 
the joys of possession. Few anglers 
prowled the stream and the fish was 
fairly safe for eventual efforts. 
For once in many failures, I stood 
in serious attitude and listened. Si- 
lence and shadows and the purling of 
waters—nothing more. No _ bluejay 
jeered at discomfiture, no red squirrel 
chattered at failure—alone I accepted 
defeat at the strategy of a good fish. 
And the silence was the more poignant 
on account of its sheer dominance. 
The words of a poet swept to mind: 
“the silence sank 
Like music on my heart.” 
Slow music, I thought, that had a 
funereal quality. Innate feelings 
wished to burst into a round of old- 
woods profanity, but as I clambered 
back over the rocks and slowly made 
progress through the thick under- 
growth they quieted down. The 
stream sang sweetly a muffled under- 
note, yet it seemed like soft laughter, 
the artless laughter of derision. 
F some elemental disturbance ever 
happened and the stream ran dry, 
the bed would resemble a stairway for 
gods and giants. It was a series of 
deep pools between shallow waters— 
a drop, a slide, another drop, another 
slide over the worn rocks, and then 
with soft thunder of waters into a 
greenish-hued pool. As I wormed and 
stepped toward one of these holes, I 
thought that here was the living ex- 
ample of many a picture entitled “In 
Anglers’ Dreams.” Somber spruce and 
friendly pine came to the water’s 
ebb and flow, and their low-hanging 
boughs, ofttimes sweeping in the cur- 
rent, gave a touch to the scene only 
seen in paintings. Bars of invasive 
sunlight filtered down, but a solemn 
grayness prevailed, the eternal gloom 
of the forest. Odd-shaped and bbpil- 
liantly - colored mushrooms clustered 
living trunk and dead stumps. Mosses 
and lichens added a primeval appear- 
ance. And the _ silence, the utter 
quietude unbroken by insect or bird, 
trembled only with the subdued roar 
of waters and the softer soughing of 
heavy boughs. 
In such a haven and refuge IT was 
tempted to pick a bed of ferns and let 
fishing go hang. And yet the day, 
the current hour of the morning, like 
the spirit of youth outward bound, 
touched every living thing, and I found 
it hard to give up when desire so 
dominated. So I continued in an at- 
tempt to make the creel heavier with 
a precious freight. 
To cast the fly amidst the laby- 
rinthine beauties of the mountain was 
sheer adventure. Drawn from pool 
to pool, shimmering riffles to shadowy 
wash, down in the cold waters and 
back amid the scented brake, half al- 
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