Mr. Dide, His Vacation in Colorado. France Lewis B.
at which we taste our first trout of the season, we start on a six-mile ride over a splendid road to the lakes. Though we are fairly in the heart of the mountains the way may not be called mountainous; an exaggerated rolling prairie surrounded by magnificent peaks gives a better idea of the land. The air is fresh and cool, the sun is bright, with no sign of clouds save in the direction we are going. Reaching the mesa from the valley a storm seems to be gathering about the summits of the Twin Peaks and Mount Elbert. Climbing the last rising ground between our starting-point and destination, I find we are upon what I conceive to be a terminal moraine, or the remains of one, and can look down into the grand court where the Ice King, at some remote date, held high carnival; his throne, twenty or more miles away, guarded on either side by peaks over fourteen thousand feet in height; at my feet the ancient floor of his palace, covering an area of six thousand acres or more, no longer solid, but a pair of crystal lakes flashing under the bright rays of the morning sun. The July heat has not yet melted the white helmets on the sentinels' heads, and back of them the clouds I had seen but a little while before, fleecy and drifting in the azure, are gathering volume and blackness. Between them and me a gray mist, driving earthward in perpendicular sheets, tells of the rain coming down; the long lines brushed by the breath of the storm will wave to the right and left, and then drop again straight as a plummet, while the sun's rays here and there flash in the rainbow tints. The background of the sullen clouds begins to pale a little, then breaks, and a great mass of white and gray and rose-tinted vapor rolls majestically to the left, while the main storm, with its artillery in full play, follows south, down the range, and once more lets in the light upon the seat of ancient royalty.
We catch only a few scattering drops while we trot briskly around the south side of the lower lake to the rustic hotel. The landlord takes possession of my grip and I walk off alone to the stream that holds in bond the beautiful lakes; it is barely fifty feet wide by a hundred yards long.
I put my rod together with a coachman on the end of the leader. I had not taken time to soak anything and the kinks were not out, but nevertheless the fly had hardly touched the water before I hooked a ten-inch trout. He gave up readily and I lifted him out with an impression of a good time at hand. But a half-hour's work disclosed not another fin, and I concluded he was the last one there.
Wandering toward the shore of the Upper Lake, I overhauled a man with a cane pole and a bag. I gave him my trout by way of encouragement, as he said he was out of luck, and then I tried the head of the outlet without avail. The man said there were trout in the lakes, but the best way to catch them was to row about with half a dozen poles stuck out at different angles, and "hooks baited with grasshoppers and such-like." I sat on a rock and watched the tints of the Twin Peaks and Mount Elbert mirrored in the smooth water, and prayed for the destroyer, that if he had not already overtaken the pot-hunter, he would; and would burn, not drown him; toast him on a fork and turn him around and toast him some more; toast him slowly just in sight of the cool, clear waters he had helped to almost ruin. But the government promises to establish a hatchery here and to restock the waters. When that is accomplished what more attractive spot can be found in all these mountains for a summer sojourn for wife, babies and your precious self? It can be made a headquarters, if you wish, and thence you may make easy runs farther into the wilderness. With sweet air, pure water, grand scenery and trouting, what more can mortal ask when he is tired and the baby teething?
Though injured, the lakes are by no means depleted; the fishing is not quite so gratifying as it was twenty years ago, that is all. There are three different varieties of native trout here: the red or salmon-tinted, the lighter-colored variety, and a slender, active trout, different from the denizens of any other waters in the State except, perhaps, Trapper's Lake. The back is a pale green, just the color of the water in the lake, the lateral lines are fine and black, and the spots perfectly round and smaller than the finest shot; it is a graceful fish in its contour, running to three-quarters of a pound in weight, and possessed of excellent fighting qualities.
The State has made an attempt at improving the lakes, and I met the superintendent of the State hatchery here. He said I must go a-fishing. I asked him where, and he said on the lake, if I was not disposed to take a run of a couple of miles up to the falls, where the fishing was good. I told him what I had heard, that the trouting was nothing to boast of except as the market hunter potted his game. To this he replied that when I came to the lakes I must do as the lakers do. I told him I had not had an oar in my hands for a great many years and was in no humor to be drowned. But he promised to attend to the rowing while I fished. With this assurance and to oblige him I rigged up, under his directions, four pine poles, tied on the lines and fixed up a cast of a coachman for a stretcher and a brown hackle and a gray for droppers. I persuaded him to allow me to take my bamboo, and armed with the implements of torture and my rod, like Hyperion among Satyrs, we stepped into a skiff and started for the lower end of the lake. I stuck out those pine poles with their ten feet of line, two over the stern and one out each side, and sat on the butts. The flies trailed along on the water and I had room to ply the bamboo astern beyond the annoyances floating there. After fifteen minutes of this business, I asked the skipper if he did not think a fellow who called this trouting, ought to drown and go to – sheol. He laughed; I took to praying again and in my earnestness lost one of the poles. Shortly after I had a rise to the coachman on the bamboo and hooked a trout. Inside of two minutes I could not tell whether the fish was on the hook that struck him, or the other three lines, or whether I had four trout in tow. I found out very soon that there was one trout and four lines snarled. I pulled them all in, took off the trout, untangled the knots and stowed the poles. The man wanted to know whether I had become tired and I told him I had, whereat he proposed to tell everybody that I didn't know how to fish. I said he would oblige me by circulating the report, and that I was mortified only at having tried. With this I sent the coachman astern again and caught another trout; that was all; one trout to the mile. Then I prevailed on him to row me back to the landing at the hotel.
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