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Forest and Stream Letters 
Taking a Big Brown Trout on a 
2'%-Ounce Rod 
DEAR FoREST AND STREAM: 
By pounds, nine ounces; 25% inches 
long; 1334 inch girth. That was 
the verdict. My first big brown trout 
and killed with a 2% ounce rod, using 
a size 14 Wickham’s Fancy. Proud? 
Well I didn’t hide away from the glory 
that came with the killing. I have 
landed many large browns since, some 
under conditions far harder than those 
that attended this fight, but none of 
them ever thrilled me more than the 
tuss'e with this ravenous inhabitant 
of Pea Vine Creek. 
This brook is a sluggish, deep water 
stream running through a very marshy 
country, finally wending its placid way 
into the Oswegatchie River. The 
beavers have built a series of dams 
along the brook, the last one being 
about 200 feet from the mouth. This 
has flooded the marsh to such an ex- 
tent that one must do one’s angling 
from a canoe or raft. 
The Trout of the PeaVine are mostly 
“natives,” running around eight inches 
in length, wonderfully conditioned and 
marked with a wondrous lustre. Their 
flesh is as red as the reddest salmon 
and most delicate in flavor. It was 
the spot I liked best to use my fairy 
wand and when, as occasionally hap- 
pened, I hooked into a pound trout I 
had all the fun that an angler could 
wish for. 
On the momentous morning of my 
big brown, friend wife had expressed 
the desire for some of the small Pea- 
Vine trout for our lunch, so I started 
off bright and early to gratify her 
wishes (ordinarily a very easy task). 
However, something was wrong that 
morning. I could not get: a_ single 
rise. Carefully I fished every nook 
and corner of the brook, reaching the 
first beaver dam without putting a 
single trout in my creel. 
Nevertheless I was not discouraged. 
‘The pool on the other side of the dam 
was the best in the whole creek and 
had many a time saved me from the 
proverbial “fisherman’s luck.” But 
even this pool failed me, not a single 
rise did I get, although I tried every 
cast I knew and every fly in my book. 
After a time my casting became 
mechanical and I spent my time ob- 
serving the workings of a beaver some 
distance up stream from me. I be- 
came so interested in his task that I 
let my cast lay in the water where it 
had fallen. As the fly settled to bot- 
tom I felt a slight tug and mechanic- 
ally twisted my wrist. It felt like the 
hit of a small chub so I promptly for- 
got it. In fact I lay the rod down on 
the raft, letting the cast lay in the 
water and lit a cigarette. 
As I picked up the rod to resume 
my fishing I noticed the line moving 
through the water to the opposite shore 
from which I had made my cast. 
“Hmm,” I said aloud, “I must have 
hooked that little chub.” I drew in 
some of the slack but felt nothing. I 
retrieved some more, still without feel- 
ing a thing, as the fish had brought 
the line almost to the edge of the dam. 
I then started to take in the line 
swiftly as I did not want to get all 
tangled up in the sticks and brush of 
the beaver dam. As I brought the line 
taut I felt the mighty surge of a big 
fish. The waters opened and out came 
a monster trout, shaking his body sav- 
agely. 
For an instant my mind went blank, 
my brain seemed stupified. I had ex- 
pected a chub and had hooked a whale, 
or rather an alligator, for that is what 
the monstrous fish looked like when 
he made the leap. His ugly vicious 
mouth was wide open and there was 
a baleful stare in the set of his wicked 
eyes. 
However, I soon came back to earth, 
for things began to happen as the 
trout started in a rush upstream. At 
the rate he was travelling my line 
would have been stripped from my reel 
if I did not stop him. A distressing 
pang of anguish nearly overwhelmed 
me. Only yesterday I had lost at least 
twenty feet of my line when I had 
snagged it in the big river. I had 
only about fifty feet left. 
Visions of losing this prize trout ran 
riot in my brain as I desperately gave 
him the butt—the fairy rod fairly 
groaned from the cruel injustice of 
the enormous strain. Most heroically 
it stood the tremendous pull and turned 
the fish when two feet more would 
have spelled defeat for me. If that 
trout had known how near he had been 
to winning, nothing would have stopped 
him from running to victory. 
After that first sensational run he 
contented himself with making short 
dashes of twelve to twenty feet. Really, 
he acted stupid in the way he carried 
on the battle, for if he had simply run 
into the alders that grew in the brook 
at each side, I could never have stop- 
ped him and he could have freed him- 
self easily. 

Ray Bergman holding the king of Pea Vine Creek. 
