Pleasures of angling with rod and reel for trout and salmon by Dawson George 1813-1883

Author:Dawson, George, 1813-1883
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Trout fishing, Salmon fishing
Publisher: New York Sheldon & company, 1876
Published: 1876-03-25T05:00:00+00:00

ALMON fishing is confessedly the highest department in the school of angling. "With very rare exceptions, the tact and skill necessary for its successful practice is only acquired by long experience in the minor branches of the art, first, in early youth, with bait, for chub, perch and sunfish; next, in the transition state, with troll, for bass, pickerel and muscalonge; and lastly, when the mind takes in the exciting realities and poetic possibilities of the art, with fly, in streamlet, river and lake. It is not until after all is attained that is attainable in trout waters that salmon are sighed for, and only very few who thus sigh are ever able to have their longings gratified. But those whose experience has been limited to bait or troll seldom aspire to anything beyond the pleasant amusement

which these primitive modes of angling aflford them. Having never cast a fly they have no conception of the superiority of that mode of angling over all others, and so soon weary of a pastime which, from its sameness and t^-meness, fails to attract when something more than mere muscular exercise or physical excitement is required to hold its votaries. A gray-haired bait-fisher is very rare, while the passion for fly-casting, whether for trout or salmon, grows by what it feeds upon, and continues a source of the highest pleasure even after the grasshopper becomes a burden. But this is not strange; for there is as much diflEerence between these extremes of the art as there is between the harsh music of a hurdy-gurdy and the divine harmony of the violin.

There is, however, such a similarity between trout and salmon fishing that pleasure can be found in either by the expert in both. And as trout usually abound in salmon waters, they are often fished for as a rest from the heavy work involved in the capture of salmon.

Judge FuLLEBTON had been familiar with trout streams from his youth up. There are few brooks or rivers where trout " most do congregate," from Maine to New Brunswick, in which he has not " slain his thousands." I was not surprised, therefore, to find him very early hankering after a day's

hunt for trout. Nor was I any more surprised to find him returning to camp long before half the day was over, with thirty-five pounds of splendid fish, ranging from half a pound to three pounds in weight. Subsequently he met with even greater success — once taking forty-five pounds during a short afternoon. As an experiment, I myself caught sixteen large trout in thirty minutes, with an eight-ounce rod, without a landing net. It was unsportsmanlike sport. My only excuse was to see what could be done in these waters; and as the fish could all be put to good use, there was no waste and consequently no upbraidings of conscience.

The trout in the Cascapedia, and, indeed, in all these salmon rivers, are mostly sea trout, running up the rivers every season, like salmon, to spawn.

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