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The quiet little channels by which one could drop down behind the islands while the main stream made an impassable fall; the precise height of the water at which it was safe to run the Rapide Gervais; the point of rock on the brink of the Grande Chute where the canoe must whirl swiftly in to the shore if you did not wish to go over the cataract; the exact force of the tourniquet that sucked downward at one edge of the rapid, and of the bouillon that boiled upward at the other edge, as if the bottom of the river were heaving, and the narrow line of the FILET D'EAU along which the birch-bark might shoot in safety; the treachery of the smooth, oily curves where the brown water swept past the edge of the cliff, silent, gloomy, menacing; the hidden pathway through the foam where the canoe could run out securely and reach a favourite haunt of the ouananiche, the fish that loves the wildest water, all these secrets were known to Jean.
On the west fork and directly across from our camp was a rough rapid, and while supper was cooking I paddled over with Richards to try for fish. We made our casts, and I quickly landed a twenty-inch ouananiche and Richards hooked a big trout that, after much play, was brought ashore. It measured twenty-two and a half inches from tip to tip and eleven and a half inches around the shoulders.
I made a dash, caught it in my hands and triumphantly brought it ashore. It proved to be an ouananiche that measured twenty-seven and one-half inches in length by eleven and one-quarter inches in girth.
For example, we always looked for one at the lower corner of a big rock, very close to it, where he could poise himself easily on the edge of the strong downward stream. Another likely place was a straight run of water, swift, but not too swift, with a sunken stone in the middle. The ouananiche does not like crooked, twisting water.
The little rod, firmly gripped in my hand, bends into a bow of beauty, and a hundred feet behind us a splendid silver salmon leaps into the air. "What is it?" cries the Gypsy, "a fish?" It is a fish, indeed, a noble ouananiche, and well hooked.
After all, the glow of life comes from friction with its difficulties. If we cannot find them at home, we sally abroad and create them, just to warm up our mettle. The ouananiche in the island pool were superb, astonishing, incredible.
As Lancelot among the knights, so art thou among the fish, the plain-armoured hero, the sunburnt champion of all the water-folk. Every morning and evening, Greygown and I would go out for ouananiche, and sometimes we caught plenty and sometimes few, but we never came back without a good catch of happiness. There were certain places where the fish liked to stay.
At this season of the year, when summer is nearly ended, and every ouananiche in the Grande Decharge has tasted feathers and seen a hook, it is useless to attempt to delude them with the large gaudy flies which the fishing-tackle-maker recommends. There are only two successful methods of angling now.
Then I perverted myself to the new, radical theory which says that on a bright day you must use a light, gay fly, because it is more in harmony with the sky, and therefore less noticeable. Accordingly I put on a Professor and a Parmacheene Belle; but this combination of learning and beauty had no attraction for the ouananiche.
It was but a casual glance. It lasted only for an instant. But in that fortunate fragment of time I distinctly saw the broad tail of a big ouananiche rise and disappear in the swift water at the very head of the pool. Immediately the whole aspect of affairs was changed. Despondency vanished, and the river glittered with the beams of rising hope. Such is the absurd disposition of some anglers.
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