Barbour County index. [volume] (Medicine Lodge, Kan.) 1880-current, 1891-06-24
suck WAS AGAINST HIM.
The Experiences of q Lonely Fisher1ns
On n TsuIf nav.

Friday was the luckless day Of my
own failure and broken heart, says
Andrew Lang in Good Words. The
water was still very heavy and turbid.
frantic wind was flashing the woods,
heaps of dead leaves 1oated down, and
several sheaves of corn Were drifted on
the current. The long boat pool at
Yair, however, Is sheltered by wooded
banks, and it was possible enough to
cast, in spite of the winds fury We
had driven from a place about five
miles distant, and we had not driven
three hundred yards before l remem-
bered that we had forgotten the land
ing net.
But as ! expected nothing, it did not
seem worth while to go back for this
indispensable implement. We reached
the waterside, and found that the trout
were feeding below the pendant
branches of the trees and in the quiet,
deep eddies of the long boat pool. One
cannot see rising trout without casting
over them IN preference to laboring
after salmon SO put up small rod and
diverted myself from the bank It was
to little purpose. Tweed trout are now
grown very shy and capricious; even a
dry fly failed to do any execution worth
mentioning. Conscience compelled me.
as ] had been sent out by kind hosts
to fish for salmon, net to neglect my
orders.
The armor-the ponderous gear of
the fisher-was pat on with the enor-
nous boots, and the gigantic rod was
equipped Then came the beginning of
sorrows. We had left the books of sal
mon flies comfortably reposing at home.
We had also forgotten the whisky flask.
Everything, in fact, except cigarettes,
had been left behind. Unlucl1ily, not
quite everything; l had trout fly
book, and therein lay just one large
salmon fly, not a Tweed fly, but a lure
that is used on the beautiful but hopeless
waters of the distant Ken, in Galloway.
1t had brown wings, dark body, and
piece of jungle-cock feather, and it was
fastened to sea-trout casting line.
Now, ii l had possessed no salmon flies
at all l must either have sent back for
some or gone on innocently dallying
with trout.
But this one wretched fly lured me to
my ruin. / saw that the casting line
| tried it; but, in the spirit Of Don
QuiXote with his helmet, I did not try
it hard. waded into the easiest look
ing part of the pool, just above q huge
tree that dropped its boughs to the
water, and began casting, merely from
a sense Of duty. | had not cast a dozen
times before there was a heavy, slow
plunge in the stream, ard a glimpse of
purple and azure.
Gle will not come again." l said.
when there was a long, heavy drag at
the line, followed by q shrieking of the
reel, as in William Blacks novels. But
he soon came back, while one took in
line, and discussed his probable size
with the trout-fsher opposite. His size,
indeedl Nobody knows what 1t was,
for when he had come up to the point
whence he had started he began a policy
of short tugs-not ''jiggering," as it IS
called, but plunging with all his weight
on the line. 1 had clean forgotten the
slimness of the tackle, and, as he was
clearly well hooked, held him perhaps
too hard Only a very raw beginner
likes to take hours over landing fish
Perhaps / held him too tight; at all
events, after famous plunge, back
came the line; the casting line had
snapped at the top link.
Presently l had another chance, but it
all ended just as disastrously. i had
borrowed an old fly from farmhouse
this time. There was slight pull, such
as a trout gives in midstream under
water. / raised the point and again
the reel sang aloud and gleefully as the
salmon rushed down the stream farther
and faster than the first 1t is a very
pleasant thing to hook salmon when
you are ali alone, as l was then-alone
with yourself and the Goddess of FISH
ing. The salmon, jpst like the other,
now came back, and instantly began
the old tactics of heavy plunging tugs.
But knew the gut was sound this time,
and as l fancied he had risen to the
sniggler l had no anxiety about the
tackle holding. One more plunge, and
back came the line as before. lie was
off. One could have sat down and
gnawed the reel. What had gone wrong?
Why, the brute had taken the old fly
and had snapped the loop that attaches
the ONT