The daily morning journal and courier. [volume] (New Haven, Conn.) 1894-1907, 1899-07-20

| lCi 49, Win olcOiISt NiIii
nows, with artificial frogs, with live
and lively red-sided minnows, with llVt
frogs, with the small green grasshopper'
which are plentiful in the glades II
June, with butterflies, with miller-mothS
and even with grubs and angleWorms
1t all came to the same thing in the
end. They would not rise. This. was
the more tantalizing because in walking
around the edges of the pools in the eve
ming the fish could be seen to make ar
occasional leap at the lowering insects
and as they rose clear of the water
their great size made their capture
| worth six months of any anglers life
Thomas did succeed In getting a half
gray doctor which he cast just where
a narrow band of sunlight fell on the
| pool but he failed to hook the fish and
manned unbroken save for the faint cir
Giles made by the casting of the flies. For
five afternoons he worked faithfully, ex-
afternoons he worked faithfully, ex-
hausting three books of flies in endeav-
ors to tempt the trout. He was casting
with delicacy. approaching his favorite
pool with wary footsteps, making abso-
lutely no Noise exercising the utmost
care that his shadow should not fall on
the water and in general carrying into
effect every maxim Of troutfshing
| dinned into him since a boy and estab-
| lished by every experience of his ma
! ture years.
| Not content with torturing himself by
thoughts of what he would do in GER
| tain contingencies, he made him a
Water-glass by fastening a round piece
of glass at the end of two feet of stove
pipe. tanning this into the water and
looking through it, he could see the
beautifully spotted giants swimming far
down, or loafing along the steep sides
of the pool in dozens. He tried more
than once to wake them up by letting
down a hook bated with a worm or min
now and dangling the bait against their
noses, but they either pushed it lazily
aside or flashed angrily twenty feet
away. whirled and lay still, gazing at
it. Finally returning to camp one
night, disheartened and weary of cudg-
cling his brain for some means of cap
turing the swimmers he had come to
regard as his personal enemies, his COM
panions, who had contented themselves
with trying for the smaller fry in the
shallow parts of the creek and had
caught many of them, treated him to
much chaff. One of them at last see
ing that he bore it without complaining
in jesting fashion advised him to try
the Taylor racket" of which he had
never heard and in which not one of
them took any faith. Having had it ex-
planned to him in detail, he prepared for
t11n t,ia1 AZ.
shortest, stiffest and heaviest rod in the
camp, greenheart tool, six and one
ounces. and designed for lake bass fish
ing He put 400 feet Of fffteen-ply silk
on a large automatic reel and took three
of his most washed-out and least at
tractive flies. One of them was a crazy
combination of bright colors which had
been worn out in whipping the water
without Turing anything, and the other
two were drab. Knowing, that if he
got a strike at all he would have fight
on his hands, he attached the blue and
red monstrosty by two leaders of dou-
BILE gut six feet long. Then he HE'D him
to huge pool mile above the camp,
which pool he had named Trouble
He had worked it hard for three after
ilpullS w lllltul II llSG. lpublt was
not an inch less than so feet deep in the
center and was possibly As yards across |
On its northern edge the creek poured
in silently and rushed violently out to
the south through an opening not more
than ten feet in width. It's edges We're
bare of bushes, and, though there were |
many large trees around it. they did not |
grow thickly enough to interfere with |
the casting. On its western edge, as |
Thomas had observed, eight feet under |
the surface a shelf of rock ran out for |
a yard or $50. He could not see under /
this shelf with his waterglass, but he |
thought that it might hide monster or
two, and he selected the smooth surface /
above it as his casting point in the Tay-
Tor experiment. This ledge was not
more than ten yards from the creeks
and there was always a slight
swirl above due to small eddy which
set along next to the bank. A leaf |
thrown into this eddy would float for an
hour before coming under the influence
Of the main sweep.
The sun was not more than an hour
rom its setting, and already the stiffness
Of dying day was settling in the woods
when he stood five yards back from the
POOLS edge and sent fifty feet of the
Inc flying through the air-Whiz! zip,
splash. The emitten water sprang up in
lrops, which battered back for yard
before being snatched from the pool,
Again it sailed out, and, the line and
eaders being wet, struck the surface
IF the water with a louder splash than
before. Again it was drawn back and
lgain the cast was made. Ten times
his was repeated, the fly landing each
ime just above the outer edge of the
hidden ledge Then, as it fell heavily
Town upon the eleventh cast there was
flash from the crystal-clear depths, a
lash as if lightning had sprung from
ONE murky cloud far down, and the
eel began its song of high endeavor.
Straight across the pool the lire
tretched, made a half circle to the left,
he automatic check taking up the
lack, and then dashed to the upper
pening and sped up the stream.
'homas had clamped down his thumb
lard on the whizzing cord and the stiff
Joint of the rod was bent nearly into a
but the great fish did not
eem to mind the strain. He tore up the
tream until $50 feet of line was out and
he man could see the bare metal gleam-
no under the 1pSSpninp coils If hecan