The Speckled Brook Trout

While on the way to looking up other things, I found a book published in 1902. It’s primarily about fishing for Brook Trout. I’ve been skimming it for anything that looks interesting and it winds up pretty much the whole book is interesting. Some things sounded vaguely familiar to what I’ve been saying for years. Funny how things don’t change and the reasons we do them don’t change much either. I bet I can find some passages in what I’ve written that are almost a match to what I’ve been reading in this book. Kind of creepy that way.

I think that’s why I’m an anomaly of sorts in the bass fishing world, which is dominant here in Illinois since we have no natural trout streams. Bob Long, Jr. tells me I’m a bass angler with a trout anglers sensibilities.

When I started writing things down years ago, I assumed bass anglers thought like me. There are some that do, but we’re a minority.

Numerous times I’ve considered sending in a short story to different magazines I like to read or entering writing contests in other magazines. I’m generally cut out of the equation immediately. Fly fishing topics only while pursuing trout on streams, with introspection and a conservation ethic thrown in to round out the story.

I fit the bill except for the fly and trout requirements.

I recently read that bass anglers are assumed to be in constant pursuit of hawgs, the latest fishing gimmick, cheap beer and women with large breasts.

I’ll admit to one of those, but the other assumptions immediately reject the small minority of bass anglers that like to think of themselves as a little more refined. The thinking man’s bass angler I guess. We all can’t live in a land of streams teeming with trout. We have no choice but to make do with what we’ve been given.

I love the way this book is written. It’s a collection of a few things by a few people, or as they say it “By Various Experts with Rod and Reel.” The phrasing of sentences has an elegance now lost. That’s neither good nor bad, just the way it is.

A couple of things I found while skimming:

Nothing can be more enjoyable than to wade a stream, to feel the rush of water about you, the constant excitement, the forgetting of all other affairs, the out-door life, the health and appetite, the meeting with other anglers and the telling over of the day’s sport. Here is a fascination that will last you all your life, and be a delight to you in extreme old age. Let me warn you, my reader, if you are not a lover of Nature and out-door life you are missing one of the greatest blessings this world affords.

Many say the same thing, including me, but not quite so well.

I remember writing about this once, I actually recall hearing almost voices.

Old anglers have ears trained to nicest sense of sound in the music of running water, and will know the physical conditions, even when unseen, which cause many of the notes of sound in a trout brook.

I recall the musical notes and the sound of breathing from the slight rise and fall of even a river as it flows. I distinctly recall mentioning this one day while far up Mill Creek. Kind of like this:

Unobstructed on inclines, rapidly flowing water in small volume has the inimitable purl, so exquisite that even in music the sweetest sounds are called liquid, like a tinkling rill.

This is a common problem that drives some that I know absolutely crazy.

The true angler sees much, but will realize that as compared with what is about him, he sees very little.

I remember recently mentioning getting the colors out of the gray of the shadows.

The stones and gravel of the banks catch green reflections from the boughs above. The bushes receive grays and yellows from the ground. Every hair-breadth of polished surface gives back a little bit of blue of the sky or gold of sun. This local color is again disguised and modified by the hue of the light, or quenched in the gray of the shadows.

Not sure if the following is a lament or is supposed to be hopeful.

The result is inevitable. With bowed and reverent head the angler hopes that when he has crossed the Delectable Mountains, and, one poor thread in the web of universal history, has waved back in his mute farewells to his favorite trout stream before he enters the Unknown and is swallowed by Oblivion, a merciful and loving Heaven may furnish to him the counterpart of this brook. Will he not find a heavenly stream on that Other Side? Will not its waters sing as with a new song, its forests whisper, its flowers enchant? Yes, for there stands the message of Holy Writ, the last words of John, Seer and Prophet — words of inspiration and promise: “And he showed me a pure river of water of life.

There was so much more. I hate reading on screen. I’ll have to print this out.

Just goes to show that nothing is really ever new. Just new for the time we’re in.