
458 

FOREST AND STREAM. 

[SEPT. 21, 1907. 


from oranges to apples; no mosquitoes or pests, 
a breeze that came up from the sea over seven- 
teen miles of trout pools and radiant flowers; 
in brief, Los Laurelles appealed to us, and some 
of us determined to live there always. Che mail 
came once in a while, though you could talk 
with the world over the telephone, but you 
never did, Your nearest neighbor was the jack- 
snipe and trout, just over the road down by ee 
creamery, as Los Laurelles was a real farm anc 
all that the tenderfoot’s fancy painted it. 
I fancy Los Laurelles is 200 or 300 leet above 
the sea, just enough to give the winding capri- 
cious little stream a voice which came on the 
winds through the pines, luring one to its pools, 
lure, and so having greeted H., 
ld hat and waders. 
big 
its alcoves of ver¢ 
the rancher, I slipped on an o 
Down into the bed of the stream, beneath | 
oaks and by cafions, then to the wash where 
is had left polished stones and 
glacial moraine. All the time 
.e Rio Carmelo was growing 
high freshets 1 
boulders a mimic 
the murmur of the 
louder, the high Santa Lucia range against 
which it coursed forming a sounding board; 
then a miniature forest, sycamores, new alders, 
vivid green cottonwoods, tall patches ot junctus 
or rush, in most places, cactus here and there 
through which the tall stems of broadicea forced 
- balancing the cluster lily with its 
lavender hues, and now and then the blue-eyed 
iris with the Spanish bayonet. There were black 
and white willows and over them black live oaks, 
sycamores with clustered mistletoe; while along 
the edges of the forest grew groves Ol rippling 
wild buckwheat and sorrel with patches of 
scarlet larkspur, butter cup and meadow rue. 
Louder came the rippling laughter of the 
waters, then, almost trapped in the maze of 
verdure, L threw myself bodily into the brush 
and literally fell out on the sands of the little 
river where the serra and his friends fished and 
found solace for all the senses and doubtless 
found “tongues in trees, books in the running 
brooks, sermons in stones, and good in every- 
their way, 
thing.” ; 
It was a fair little river at this point, widen- 
ing out to fifty or more feet, flowing smoothly 
over dark pebbles, with deep shadows 1n its 
upper reaches, then dashing out into the strong 
light with just the ripple one might have ex- 
pected, and there I waded in, crossed to the 
other side in the deep shadow of the Santa 
Lucia, stood for a moment in the cool purling 
waters and then slowly unreeled for the cast 
down stream. : ’ 
Forty feet dropped the alluring coachman in a 
little riffle where the waters boiled and bubbled 
around a submerged rock, and as the fly landed, 
out of the chaparral at my shoulder came the 
“ca-ca-kou ca-caa-kiou” of a plumed quail, start- 
ling in its intensity, and then a dazzling swirl, 
the whipping of the resilient split bamboo, and 
something was racing away across the pool, 
then up into the air, tossing vagrant sunbeams 
which seemed to change to silver, down, up 
again, and down stream with a rush, forcing me 
to give line as the rod bent frantically, _ 
Perhaps you have played a two-pound Carmel 
trout fresh from the sea, a hard fighter at its 
best, and know all about its devices, its re- 
sources and cunning. If so, there is little for 
me to say, but I fancy the solitudes of Carmel, 
as charming as they are, have as yet not lured 
many anglers. It is a joy to come, something 
in anticipation, and so I may linger on the battle 
of this fighter as he shot across the pool to ac- 
complish my undoing. I turned him gently 
after the second leap, and he came in on me 
like a big rainbow, came so fast that I could 
not take in the slack, then dashed down the 
stream, taking me along to save the line, and 
then with a wild leap into the air, tossed my fly 
at least ten feet upward; in fact, the bend of my 
supple rod brought it that distance over my 
head, leaving me stunned at the suddenness of 
the disaster. When the trout first leaped, I was 
convinced that he was a two-pounder, of rich 
color and due proportion, but as I now con- 
template the scene with retrospective indulg- 
ence I see that he must have been at least a five- 
pounder, a sort of Dios tutelar de rio; certainly 
there was no one to dispute it. 
T had been fishing with two flies, and at my 
next cast in the pool two trout rose; one snap- 
ping at the little coachman, the other at a 
March-brown. The big fellow missed—how 
often it is thus—but the other fell upon the 
March-brown, yet was so small that my rod 
literally carried him through the air behind me, 
and so I dropped him back, forgetting that this 
particular size of trout, at least at Los Laurelles, 
cooked in olive oil, rolled in the white of an egg, 
in powdered cream of crackers, is a viand fit 
for the gods, and that I had been asked to catch 
the supper in that particular size. 
Taking two or three trout at a time is pos- 
sible here, but this is merely an angling ex- 
travaganza, a triple duel, so I stripped off two 
of the flies and prepared for another six- 
pounder. The little reach where my game es- 
caped led through the brush where there was a 
pronounced riffle, the one I had heard perhaps, 
and here the stream dashed over small boulders 
and came down beneath the alders and willows 
with loud acclaim, the water foaming capri- 
ciously. I pushed through brush that met here 
and there, and came into a widening, spreading 
ripple, a long reach of splendid water crested 
with molten silver, with walls of emerald, 
against which the green slope of the mountain 
rose. Midway in this I cast, sending my dimin- 
utive coachman, an alluring thing for dark 
waters, thirty or forty feet up the ripple, drop- 
ping it just at the fall. 
What prearrangement of fate, what lucky star 
ordained it, I do not know, but the fly fell just 
where a trout was lying vigorously stemming the 
current, watching for this very thing that came 
promptly in time as pre-ordained perhaps a mil- 
lion years ago, and then a new sound joined the 
strange medly of kingfishers. plumed quail and 
meadow larks, the staccato of a little reel that 
buzzed its clicking notes on the perfumed air. 
took ten or twenty feet of line and fled up the 
leafy canon, and away into the crystal waters of 
the pool beyond, where I followed. Having 
room to spare, a veritable sea in this little river, 
I let him go, following slowly, and played him 
from the shallow reaches near shore; then in- 
sistent, he took me out in mid stream toward 
an old root, but this I gently foiled, and watched 
him leap and pirouette along the surface, nearly 
throwing me as I stepped upon a slippery moss- 
covered stone, and just then I heard a laugh, 
turned. and on the sands sat a boy with a long 
pole and a string of trout hung upon a willow 
whisp. 
“You bet you'r havin’ the time of your life, 
Mister. Wanter buy my trout?” he said. 
A moment before I would have taken affi- 
davit that I was alone, seventeen miles from a 
post office or telegraph station, alone in the 
heart of a little river shut in by almost impene- 
trable trees. One might think that here man 
would be safe from the temptations, allurements 
and follies of the world, yet in the very heart of 
this angling paradise, in the very temple of 
nature, this tempter appeared armed with the 
most infallible and seductive lure that ever laid 
an angler low. 
Shades of Junipero! there was ‘graft’ even in 
the shadow of San Carlos Borromeo. 
In ample time the trout came in. and being 
of goodly size, as became so sturdy a fish, I 
waded down shore to a certain willow tree where 
I had hung various trout, having forgotten my 
creel. They were gone. J ran over in my 
mind the possible enemies of game of this kind: 
*coons. otter, eagles, ravens, wood rats, and 
then my eye fell upon a certain Robinson Crusoe 
human footprint on the sands and saw it all. 
The boy had borrowed my trout to sell them to 
me. I had resisted the temptation. knowing 
that I had a good string. but I should have 
bought those trout. A friend of mine, a clergy- 
man, had once asked me to send him some sug- 
gestions for a “nature sermon.” So T found a 
comfortable place among the trees and jotted 
down the incident. which involves a great moral 
principle somewhere, exactly where he will 
doubtless be able to discover, and perhaps some 
angler will be there and derive solace and com- 
fort from it, but the moral of this specific inci- 
dent seems to me to be to buy trout on all oc- 
casions. 
At noon the breeze died down and the little 


river became a disk of steel in which the shadow 
of the mountains and the trees cast deep reflec- 
tions, but as the day wore on it came again, 
stronger than before, a full strong wind blow- 
ing from the sea, and before it I waded slowly 
down stream casting every few feet with long 
throws. covering the water in the shadow of 
the willows, and having rises and taking trout 
of the “broiling” variety in abundance. I fre- 
quently had strikes on the back cast, and turn- 
ing quickly, played the little game from that 
side, and as the shadows deepened, my luck grew 
apace, 
The Carmelo wound in and out, always chang- 
ing. Now there would be a long reach of rapid 
water, then it would widen out and seemingly 
disappear. I suddenly emerged from a narrow 
brush-choked channel and faced as fair a stretch 
of water as fly ever floated over. On one side 
the mountain rose perceptibly, covered with 
chaparal, wild lilac and manzanita with its 
round blue apple-shaped berries, and near the 
water in ashes of yellow limulus and just beyond 
a blazing red patch of wild honeysuckle down 
from which a big log came reaching in, where 
a moment before a jacksnipe stood. I waded 
carefully out of the deep shadows, and when I 
had room for the back cast and while a chatter- 
ing kingfisher did his best to warn the trout, I 
dropping my fly into a little pool. Ze-e-e went 
the reel on the instant, the little rod bending, 
the fish doing its best to force me out into the 
sunlight, taking line. dashing into the air, turn- | 
ing somersaults in its terror or amazement at | 
thts strange invisible thing that held it fast. | 
For a few moments I played it from the shadows 
where it tugged and matched its astonishing | 
strength against my light rod, then it came at 
me, turned quickly and shot away for some | 
distant pool like an arrow from a well bent bow, 
making the little reel hum and sing, actually | 
forcing me out upon the shingle as it made 
the turn, and then went down stream. | 
Then I checked it and saw it leap out into the 
sunlight where my friend the kingfisher made a 
half dive for it, forcing me to close in, the fish 
sulking, hammering on the line like a salmon, 
as becomes a fish. Again and again it took | 
feet and yards of the delicate line; in fact, it 
overmatched the tackle, as I had put on a deli- | 
cate single gut of the smallest approved size 
and a diminutive Kamloops hook, and had my- | 
self steeled for the inevitable, fully expecting 
to see the line come whizzing back; but it was 
the unexpected that happened. I held him by 
some special dispensation of good fortune, and 
slowly brought him to net, not a seven-pounder, 
the one that got away, but a good fish that 
would have tipped the scales at one and a half | 
pounds. This was luck and enough, so I 
stopped while the fish were biting, found a path 
up through the ranch by the stables which stood | 
against the Santa Lucia range with big live | 
oaks and green fields reaching away, handed the 
catch to the chef and told the story of the eight- 
pounder that got away to sympathetic listeners, 
and later came in to my full reward in broiled 
trout, Los Laurelles fashion. 
Then there were yarns and cigars and old fish 
stories in the evening in the ranch house and 
sleep in the San Lucia air that came sweeping | 
from the east where the Sierra Nevada lies, and 
when morning came, more trout, new pools, and 
vistas. 
Los Laurelles is by no means the head of the 
Rio Carmelo, which reaches the sea in the bay 
of that name near Del Monte and the old 
presidio of Monterey. You may wade on and 
on for miles up into the range with the scenery 
ever wilder, with new plants, greater steeps, 
but I found the lower reaches more to my fancy, 
and he would be hard to please who could find 
fault with this little river as we found it one 
April after a winter of heavy rains and before 
the limit man had wrecked the hopes of honest 
anglers. When the sun came over the San 
Lucia it caught me crossing a little potrero 
where black live oaks reached up to the moun- 
tains, and I plunged into the thicket of alder 
and willow further down where the river made 
a sharp, deep bend, and tall sycamores and laurels 
filled the intervening space, over which could be 
seen the distant ranges still wrapped in purple. 
































































