The daily morning journal and courier., 1896-06-04
Fishing for the ouananiehe.

The earliest spring fishing for ouan- iche is to be had in Lake St. John. The railway ride of one hundred and ninety miles thither from the city of Quebec carries the tourist through one of the most fascinating regions of northern sport, and across the entire belt of the Laurentfan mountains, which thou sands of years before Noah's ark grounded upon the summit of Mount Ararat, or the fiat gone forth which first shed created light upon a world of cha os, lifted aloft their hoary heads, white with the snows of a thousand years. Most of the stoppages made along the greater part of this railway line are mainly for the accommodation of fish ermen belonging to the different clubs of sportsmen, whose club-houses are sometimes the railway stations, and the headquarters of private preserves, of two hundred to four hundred square miles each in extent. Ouananiche have been planted in some of these preserved waters, and brook trout abound every
 
 the monster fontinalis that inhabit the deep cold waters of the lakes and streams of the Triton, the Lake Ed ward, the Nomantum, the Metabet- chouan, and the Batiscan systems. Five and siX-pound specimens are not rare in either of these, and occasionally eight-pounders are taken. The bril- liancy of their coloring has drawn from Kit Clarke the declaration that God never made more beautiful object" An English magazine writer has said of the same fish, Never have we seen such gorgeous and brilliant coloring in any finny creature, except perhaps in some of the quaint tropical varieties from the Caribbean Sea, which are shown to the traveller by negro fisher men in Jamaica"
 In gameness this beautiful trout is excelled in it's Canadian home by the ouananiche alone. From its lair be- meath some lily-pad or under the shad- ow of an overhanging tree or rock, oft en within the margin of heavy rapids, where the floods clap their hands in frolicsome glee the leopard of the brook has had his attention directed by some peculiar motion of a somewhat remarkable fly at or near the surface of the water. At the moment the in- sect makes 8 dart, as if to escape alive from his observation and his reach, it is seized by him with a rush which in velocity excels the motion of the cast as it is about to be withdrawn from the water. If essential to success, this mad dash is not infrequently termina- ted by a leap into mid-air and on to the apparently vanishing hook. He is a valiant foe, a stand-up fighter, as 1t were, who takes no surface lure by stealth, not even from below. but filings himself boldly into the contest, general ly exposes himself to full view quite early in the fight, and never yields an inch of ground, or water, or line, until compelled by sheer exhaustion, nor is finally conquered until he has employed the thousand and one devices of his plucky persistence, bold, brave bat ting. and finny finesse. Even when apparently quite exhausted, and drawn unresistingly on his side upon the top of the water to the very margin of the anglers canoe, the sight of the land ing-net inspires him with new life, and he must needs be delft and experi- enced guide who is not often over-