
A remarkable photo of a leaping trout, taken by the author. The fish is a brown, however, not a speckled 
The brook trout seldom breaks water when hooked. 
trout. 
finally to night-walkers and spinner, 
but to no avail. Not a single touch. 
I had in my book a small Devon Minnow 
finished with gold in such a way that 
it looked like a glorified Xmas tree 
ornament. More from a desire to ex- 
periment than anything else, I put the 
foolish thing on. To my very great 
surprise the first cast resulted in hook- 
ing and landing a two-pounder, the 
next a three-pounder. In the next hour 
I killed two more, both pound fish. At 
this point I should have re-tied the 
minnow on my leader, as it was on the 
point of breaking, but carelessly made 
another cast before doing so. Then 
came such a smash that nearly was the 
undoing of my two-ounce rod. I had 
connected with one of the biggest fish 
in Dog Pond. Too late I remembered 
the frayed leader and my heart sank, 
but I determined to make a desperate 
battle to save what I knew was the 
record trout of Dog Pond. 
T first the old veteran made a run 
straight ahead and the line simply 
screeched off the reel. Putting all the 
strain I dared on the light rod, I finally 
stopped him with very little spare line 
left on the reel. The way he traveled 
toward me then was a caution. It was 
impossible to strip or reel in line fast 
enough to catch up with him. Like a 
northern pike, he went under the raft 
at express train speed and then did 
something rather rare for a brookie. 
With a spectacular rush he leaped clear 
of the water. In a wild, abandoned, 
concentrated effort he made a lunge 
460 
while in the air, sending himself over 
backward. Just as he reached the apex 
of his magnificent effort, the minnow 
parted company with the leader and 
my record brook trout disappeared in 
a whirl of foam into the black depths, 
never to be seen again. Tragedy? 
Well, I just guess so. If only —oh, 
what’s the use! you know how it is, 
fellows! It’s always the big boys that 
get away, and it’s the logical thing 
that they should. The small fish have 
not the strength, the skill or the wit 
to escape, but the big fellow—vwell, 
that’s why he’s big. 
NOTHER day comes to mind, a 
bright sunshiny day with a brisk 
northwest wind ruffling the surface of 
the water into a sparkling dancing 
ripple. Azure skies, fleecy clouds, air 
like cold wine, and a warm sun. What 
more could one desire? Why, a goodly 
rise of trout, of course! 
The rise came, too, about ten o’clock. 
The surface of the pond became alive 
with hundreds of feeding trout. They 
seemed to be taking a tiny, apparently 
black fly. I put on a black gnat quill 
(dry) tied on a No. 18 hook, did my 
prettiest, but did not get a rise. I tried 
a tiny blue dun and then in rapid suc- 
cession a red quill, g. r. hares ear and 
ginger quill. These were all tied on 
a No. 18 hook and were masterpieces 
of the fly-tier’s art. Still not a rise. 
In desperation I resorted to my old 
Dog Pond dry fly cast, a No. 8 fan wing 
royal coachman as tail fly and a No. 8 
cahill quill ‘as dropper. Then came 
action. In one hour I had caught five 
trout, three on the royal and two on the 
cahill. This was pretty nearly a trout 
to every third cast, for they were so 
gamy that it took the good part of 
eight to ten minutes to kill a trout 
after hooking him. 
HE wine and the ozone in the 
air seemed to enter the spirit 
of the trout, and when one was hooked 
there was no cessation of spectacu- 
lar runs and dives and shakes until 
the fish suddenly gave up, absolutely 
broken - hearted. These five trout 
weighed eleven pounds and the last one 
caught went exactly three pounds. For 
a trout of his weight he put up a 
remarkably spectacular and thrilling 
fight. I hooked him at the end of a 
fifty-foot cast, just as the fly was 
alighting on the water. The instant 
I set the hook, he came straight at me 
with a vicious rush, his dorsal fin cut- 
ting the water like a racing-boat. I 
really thought that he was going to 
dash his head against the raft. How- 
ever, when within six inches of doing 
this, he turned like a flash, making a 
run some fifty or sixty feet directly 
towards where I knew from past ex- 
periences there were some_ sharp 
sunken rocks. If the trout ever 
reached this haven I knew it meant 
disaster to me. Desperately I gave 
him the “butt.” My light rod stood 
the strain, and what is more to the 
point, stopped his rush, although for 
a moment it was nip and tuck, with the 
trout splashing, squirming and milling 
