The Vermont watchman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1883-1911, 1888-08-08

! luIllC HAS DdSStu dlOID lut SilOdlll lOl u
year and half. Has a fisherman got
him?" asks one; and such chuck
! ling and laughing comes from all sides
that one is quickly convinced that the
! fisherman is the least dangerous of the
four enemies of the trout.
The fact of the matter is that in the
! fall the old trou}s fancy lightly turns
| to thoughts of love and in this con-
nection | might as well say that of late
years he has been guilty Of bigamy.
Formerly, he would quietly leave the
eddy on late September day, and go
downstream to a shallow nook, where
lively spring made the sand boil up
in four or five pulfs at a time, where
the caddis-worms built their armor of
sticks and mica-scales and where the
alders, growing thickly, arched their
branches overhead and shaded the pool.
In this bower he found his lovely wife
patiently waiting for him, and although
he would pay her pretty close attention
for few days and pretend to be affec-
Tomato, he would soon wander about
and firt with the little-girl trout, who
went wild over his beauty, but who had
never seen the old villain at home in
his eddy.
Two or three years ago, however,
heavy ice-hoe, coming down in the
spring freshet, knocked a new hole in
the dam, and whenever the water is
high enough in early October, the trout
runs up through the hole, and goes to
see wife that he met under the lily
pads in still water in the pond. She is
larger even than he is, and lazier, and
not nearly so attractive as the down
stream wife. Her eggs, too, are dull
yellow, while the downstream wife's
are a bright straw-color, and why it is
that he enjoys the pond trout's COM
pany no one can tell but there's no ac-
counting for tastes.
The old trout is not very deeply af-
fected by love, and he is always
back at the boulder by the middle of
October.
/ wonder if the old trout remembers
my attempt at getting him out upon
the bank last June. Cautiously l had
crept to point where the bushes hid
me from sight, and slid the tip of the
slender split-bamboo rod through the
same opening through which the alder
pole had been poked so many times in
years gone by. With q slight cast, the
brown-hackle and coachman and Reub
Wood were tossed over the lair of the
trout, and drawn in eutcing zig-zags
between the foam flecks on the water.
1t was not the first time that artificial
flies had failed to tempt him, and when
the cast was changed to grizzly-king,
a silver-doctor, and stone-hv, he just
kept perfectly still, and let me go
through all the motions of fishing, as
though that were all had gone out for.
Under a fungus-covered log l found
handsome pink ange-worm, that did
its very best ON a bait-hook deep down
where the trout's nose ought to have
been, but there was no demonstration
tocrat of the eddy. Next l found in
the moss crimson newt that looked
delicious enough for anybody to bite,
and when the hook was carefully passed
through small fold of skin, so as not
to hurt much, he was tossed into the
pool. Around and around in little
circles the newt swan, and deeper and
deeper, until there was only faint red
wriggle to be seen way down by the
shelf of the rock Suddenly vigorous
tug whisked the tip of the rod under
water, the reel gave shout, and then
all was quiet again; but could feel the
old fellows teeth grating on the tense
line as he sullenly moved his head from
side to side. Every instant | expected
rush upstream, and tumbling
wrestle in the swift water above the
eddy, but still there was ominous quiet.
There | stood, all ready for action, the
tip of the rod curved over and almost
dipping into the water, the line drawn
as tightly as banjo-string and leading
straight down into the depths of the
, slow current. Gradually reeling in the
line, the trout came heavily to the sur
face, with all fins set and surging
steadily back and forth with short
strokes of his sturdy tail.
What could such tactics mean? Why
was he reserving his strength at mo-
: ment when, according to my notion,
, he ought to be tearing about in frantic
efforts to escape? The landing-net was
reached out toward him. 1t was al
: most under him when, with tremen-
y dous plunge, he threw shower of
, spray in my face, and the broken line
swishing through the air. snarled among
, the hemlock branches high up out OF
, reach.
, The hook has worked out of his
mouth by this time, and at this very
moment he lies at the edge of the boul-
8 der beneath the hemlock, waving his
> tail slowly to keep his position in the
uncertain current of the eddy. When
I the stream roars with autumn rains he
t will swing his tail to the rhythm of the
=. roar. When it thunders in the spring
q freshet he will churn the strong cur
b rent with defiant tail-strokes, and stay
@ by his boulder. When the summer
o stream is gentle he will wave his tai
; softly near the bottom-sands, and poist
5 by the shelf of gneiss; and as years g
on there will still be found together the
q hemlock, the boulder, the eddy and tn,
:. trout.-Robert T. Morris IN Forest anC
/, Stream.