That Was A Day To Be Remembered, And It Had Only Begun When We
Drew Rein At A Tiny Farm-House On The Banks Of The Clackamas And
Sought Horse Feed And Lodging, Ere We Hastened To The River That
Broke Over A Weir Not A Quarter Of A Mile Away.
Imagine a stream
seventy yards broad divided by a pebbly island, running over
seductive "riffles" and swirling into deep, quiet pools, where
the good salmon goes to smoke his pipe after meals.
Get such a
stream amid fields of breast-high crops surrounded by hills of
pines, throw in where you please quiet water, long-fenced
meadows, and a hundred-foot bluff just to keep the scenery from
growing too monotonous, and you will get some faint notion of the
Clackamas. The weir had been erected to pen the Chenook salmon
from going further up-stream. We could see them, twenty or thirty
pounds, by the score in the deep pools, or flying madly against
the weir and foolishly skinning their noses. They were not our
prey, for they would not rise at a fly, and we knew it. All the
same, when one made his leap against the weir, and landed on the
foot-plank with a jar that shook the board I was standing on, I
would fain have claimed him for my own capture.
Portland had no rod. He held the gaff and the whiskey.
California sniffed up-stream and down-stream, across the racing
water, chose his ground, and let the gaudy fly drop in the tail
of a riffle.
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