Fly Fishing in Wonderland Part 3

_A MORNING ON IRON CREEK_

[Ill.u.s.tration: _The Boy and the von Behr_]

WHEN the snows have disappeared from the valleys and lower hills, and the streams have fallen to the level of their banks and their waters have lost the brown stain filtered from decaying leaves, and have resumed the chatty, confidential tones of summer, then is the time to angle for the brown trout. If you would know the exact hour, listen for the brigadier bird as he sings morning and evening from a tall tree at the mouth of Iron Creek. When you hear his lonely wood-note, joint your rod and take the path through the lodge-pole pines that brings you to the creek about three hundred yards above its confluence with the river.

The lush gra.s.s of the meadow is ankle-deep with back water from the main stream, and Iron Creek and the Little Firehole lie level-lipped and currentless. As you look quietly on from the shade of a tree, the water breaks into circles in a dozen places, and just at the edge of a bank where the sod overhangs the stream there is a mighty splash which is repeated several times. Move softly, for the ground is spongy and vibrates under a heavy tread sufficiently to warn the fish for many yards, then the stream becomes suddenly silent and you will wait long for the trout to resume their feeding.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Rapids of the Gibbon River_]

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Along Iron Creek_]

Stealthily drop the fly just over the edge of the bank, as though some witless insect had lost his hold above and fallen!--Right Honorable Dean of the Guild, I read the other day an article in which you stated that the brown trout never leaps on a slack line. Surely you are right, and this is not a trout after all, but a flying fish, for he went down stream in three mighty and unexpected leaps that wrecked your theory and the top joint of the rod before the line could be retrieved. Then the fly comes limply home and nothing remains of the sproat hook but the shank.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Divinity and Infinity_]

These things happened to a friend in less time than is taken in the telling. When he had recovered from the shock he remarked, smilingly, "That wasn't half bad for a Dutchman, now, was it?" As he is a sensible fellow and has no "tendency toward effeminate attenuation" in tackle, he graciously accepted and used the proffered cast of Pitcher flies tied on number six O'Shaughnessy hooks.

Having ventured this much concerning what the writer considers _proper_ tackle, he would like to go further and record here his disapproval of the individual who turns up his nose at any rod of over five ounces in weight, and who tells you with an air from which you are expected to infer much, that fly fishing is really the only _honorable_ and _gentlemanly_ manner of taking trout. In the language of one who was a master of concise and forceful phrase, "This is one of the deplorable fishing affectations and pretences which the rank and file of the fraternity ought openly to expose and repudiate. Our irritation is greatly increased when we recall the fact that every one of these super-refined fly-casting dictators, when he fails to allure trout by his most scientific casts, will chase gra.s.shoppers to the point of profuse perspiration, and turn over logs and stones with feverish anxiety in quest of worms and grubs, if haply he can with these save himself from empty-handedness."[B] Fly fishing as a recreation justifies all good that has been written of it, but it is a tell-tale sport that infallibly informs your a.s.sociates what manner of being you are. It is self-purifying like the limpid mountain stream its followers love, and no wrong-minded individual nor set of individuals can ever pollute it.

It is too cosmopolitan a pleasure to belong to the exclusive, and too robust in sentiment to be confined to gossamer gut leaders and midge hooks.

Much, in fact everything, of your success in taking fish in Iron Creek depends on the time of your visit. For three hundred, thirty days of the year it is profitless water. Then come the days when the German trout begin their annual _auswanderung_. No one need be told that these trout do not live in this creek throughout the year. For trout are brook-wise or river-wise according as they have been reared, and the habits, att.i.tudes and behavior of the one are as different from the other as are those of the boys and girls reared in the country from the city-bred. If one of these river-bred fish breaks from the hook here he does not immediately bore up stream into deep water and disappear beneath a sheltering log, bank or submerged tree-top as one would having a claim on these waters, but heading down-stream, he stays not for brake and he stops not for stone till the river is reached. In his headlong haste to escape he reminds one of a country boy going for a doctor.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Virginia Cascade_]

It is one of the unexplained phenomena of trout life and habit, why these fish leap as they do here at this season, when hooked. In no other stream and at no other time have I known them to exhibit this quality.

It is one of those problems of trout activity for which apparently no reason can be given further than the one which is said to control the fair s.e.x;

"When she will she will, And you may depend on't; When she won't she won't, And that's an end on't."

[Ill.u.s.tration]

"I'm wrapped up in my plaid, and lyin' a' my length on a bit green platform, fit for the fairies' feet, wi' a craig hangin' ower me a thousand feet high, yet bright and balmy a' the way up wi' flowers and briars, and broom and birks, and mosses maist beautiful to behold wi' half shut e'e, and through aneath ane's arm guardin' the face frae the cloudless sunshine; and perhaps a bit bonny b.u.t.terfly is resting wi' faulded wings on a gowan, no a yard frae your cheek; and noo waukening out o' a simmer dream floats awa' in its wavering beauty, but, as if unwilling to leave its place of mid-day sleep, comin' back and back, and roun' and roun' on this side and that side, and ettlin in its capricious happiness to fasten again on some brighter floweret, till the same breath o' wund that lifts up your hair so refreshingly catches the airy voyager and wafts her away into some other nook of her ephemeral paradise."

CHRISTOPHER NORTH.

FOOTNOTE:

[Footnote B: Hon. Grover Cleveland in _The Sat.u.r.day Evening Post_.]

_AN AFTERNOON ON THE FIREHOLE_

[Ill.u.s.tration: _First View of the Firehole_]

THE Firehole is a companionable river. Notwithstanding its forbidding name, it is pre-eminently a stream for the angler, and always does its best to put him at his ease. Like some hospitable manorial lord, it comes straight down the highway for a league to greet the stranger and to offer him the freedom of its estate. Every fisherman who goes much alone along streams will unconsciously a.s.sociate certain human attributes with the qualities of the waters he fishes. It may be a quiet charm that lulls to rest, or a bold current that challenges his endurance and caution. Between these extremes there is all that infinite range of moods and fancies which find their counterpart in the emotions.

The Firehole possesses many of these qualities in a high degree. It can be broad, sunny and genial, or whisper with a scarcely audible lisp over languid, trailing beds of conferva; and anon, lead you with tumultuous voice between rocky walls where a misstep would be disastrous. The unfortunate person who travels in its company for the time required to make the tour of the Park and remains indifferent to all phases of its many-sidedness, should turn back. Nature will have no communion with him, nor will he gain her little secrets and confidences:

"They're just beyond the skyline, Howe'er so far you cruise."

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Cascades of the Madison_]

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Below the Cascades_]

During the restful period following the noon-hour, when there is a truce between fisherman and fish, we lie in the shadow of the pines and read "Our Lady's Tumbler," till, in the drowsy mind fancy plays an interlude with fact. The ripple of the distant stream becomes the patter of priestly feet down dim corridors, and the whisper of the pines the rustle of sacerdotal robes. Through half-shut lids we see the clouds drift across the slopes of a distant mountain, double as it were, cloud and snow bank vying with each other in whiteness.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Undine Falls_]

Neither the companionship of man nor that of a boisterous stream will accord with our present mood. So, with rod in hand, we ford the stream above the island and lie down amid the wild flowers in the shadow of the western hill. For wild flowers, like patriotism, seemingly reach their highest perfection amid conditions of soil and climate that are apparently most uncongenial. Here almost in reach of hand, are a variety and profusion of flowers rarely found in the most favored spots; columbines, gentians, forget-me-nots, asters and larkspurs, are all in bloom at the same moment, for the summer is short and nature has trained them to thrust forth their leaves beneath the very heel of winter and to bear bud, flower, and fruit within the compa.s.s of fifty days.

I strongly urge every tourist, angling or otherwise, to carry with him both a camera and a herbarium. With these he may preserve invaluable records of his outing; one to remind him of the lavish panorama of beauty of mountain, lake and waterfall; the other to hold within its leaves the delicately colored flowers that delight the senses. A great deal is said about the cheap tourist nowadays, with the emphasis so placed on the word "cheap" as to create a wrong impression. With the manner of your travel, whether in Pullman cars, Concord coaches, buck-board wagons, or on foot, this adjective has nothing to do. It does, however, describe pretty accurately a quality of mind too often found among visitors to such places--a mind that looks only to the present and pa.s.sing events, and that between intervals of geyser-chasing, is busied with inconsequential gabble, with no thought of selecting the abiding, permanent things as treasures for the storehouse of memory.

What fisherman is there who has not in his fly-book a dozen or more flies that are perennial reminders of great piscatorial events? And what angler is there who does not love to go over them at times, one by one, and recall the incidents surrounding the history of each?

We fondle the flies in our fancy, Selecting a cast that will kill, Then wait till a breeze from the canyon Has rimpled the water so still;-- Teal, and Fern, and Beaver, Coachman, and Caddis, and Herl,-- And dream that the king of the river Lies under the foam of that swirl.

There's a feather from far Tioga, And one from the Nepigon, And one from the upper Klamath That tell of battles won-- Palmer, and Hackle, and Alder, Claret, and Polka, and Brown,-- Each one a treasured memento Of days that have come and gone.

A joust of hardiest conflict With knight in times of eld Would bring a lesser pleasure Than each of these victories held.

Rapids, and foam, and smother, Lunge, and thrust, and leap,-- And to know that the barbed feather Is fastened sure and deep.

Abbey, and Chantry, and Quaker, Dorset and Canada, Premier, Hare's Ear, and Hawthorne, Brown Ant, and Yellow May, Jungle-c.o.c.k, Pheasant, and Triumph, Romeyn, and Montreal, Are names that will ever linger In the sunlight of Memory Hall.

The whole field of angling literature contains nothing more exquisite than the following description of the last days of Christopher North, as written by his daughter:

"It was an affecting sight to see him busy, nay, quite absorbed with the fishing tackle scattered about the bed, propped up with pillows--his n.o.ble head, yet glorious with its flowing locks, carefully combed by attentive hands, and falling on each side of his unfaded face. How neatly he picked out each elegantly dressed fly from its little bunch, drawing it out with trembling hand along the white coverlet, and then replacing it in his pocket-book, he would tell ever and anon of the streams he used to fish in of old."

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Picturesque Rocks in River_]

By four o'clock the stream is hidden from the sun and the shadow of the wooded summit at your back has crossed the roadway and is climbing the heights beyond. As if moved by some signal unheard by the listener, the trout begin to feed all along the surface of the water. Leap follows or accompanies leap as far as the eye can discern up stream, and down stream to where the water breaks to the downpull of the gorge below.

Select a clear s.p.a.ce for your back-cast, wait till a cloud obscures the sun. * * * * The trout took the fly from below and with a momentum that carried him full-length into the air. But there was no turning of the body in the arc that artists love to picture. He dropped straight down as he arose and the waters closed over him with a "plop" which you learn afterward is characteristic of the rise and strike of the German trout.

All this may not be observed at first, for if he is one of the big fellows, he will cut out some busy-work for you to prevent his going under the top of that submerged tree which you had not noticed before.

As it was, you brought him clear by a scant hand's breadth, only to have him dive for another similar one with greater energy.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "_That Delectable Island_"]

Well, it's the same old story over again, but one that never becomes altogether tedious to the angler. And the profitable part of this tale is that it may be re-enacted here on any summer afternoon.

Some day a canoe will float down the river and land on the gravelly beach at the upper end of that delectable island, just where the trees are mirrored in the water so picturesquely. Then a tent will be set up and two shall possess that island for a whole, happy week. If you are coming by that road then, give the "Hallo" of the fellow craft and you shall have a loaf and as many fish as you like, and be sent on your way as becomes a man and brother.

_TRAILS FROM YANCEY'S AND OTHER TRAILS_