SEA TROUT OF FORTUNE"

At last after a sixty-mile journey and a good dinner my chum and I were ready to go fishing. Before us lay Bay Fortune, a land-locked sheet of water about a quarter of a mile wide, and extending five miles into the country with as many twists and turns as the Prince Edward Island Railway. The day was dull and calm, too calm for sport on such water. We caught a few but they were small.

In the evening we tried De Graw's Spring above Fortune Bridge. After fishing for a while I wandered up stream - or rather bay - and cast at a gap in the eel grass. Like a flash a big trout went up into the air. He missed the fly but got it a second afterwards and then - oh ye gods! The tip straightened out like a part of the line, the reel went click, click, as he made his first wild rush, and I felt in my wrist that tingle, a little of which-perhaps not more than three hours a year shows a fellow that life is really worth living, and gets him up for his work again. First I gained line then he did, but at last he tired, and I drew him on the sand. I had seen larger fish and caught larger, but most of them were fresh water and how can one compare those flabby things with the silvery sea-trout with firm red flesh and enough fight for any bull-dog.

Below Dingwell's mill at the head of the Bay the channel, almost empty when the tide is out, at the full overflows the adjacent hay-covered land to a depth of about a foot. Here on a little point my chum had the greatest run of luck I ever saw. One, two, and often three fish rose at every cast. To get a lively fellow on a string - we had forgotten the creels-without using a net and while standing almost up to the knees in hay and water, is by no means an easy task. However, if an occasional one did get away there were lots more where that came from. Getting excited he rushed those trout out of the water in a way that was marvellous to me who am of a somewhat cautious temperament.

Talking about rushing fish it can be done in various ways and in various degrees. On one occasion we were trying our luck near the bridge with a native fishing about fifty yards above us. Suddenly we heard a shout of "Look out? Can't you see where the thing's hauling me?" He was within five yards of us, coming like a locomotive with his rod held at right angles to himself, The poor "thing" hardly touched the water but trailed out behind like the tail of a kite. We had not the presence of mind to move, so the man turned inland, and the way the fish jumped over the stones was marvellous to see.

One afternoon about two o'clock I was lying on the wharf lazily casting into a ripple. It was fearfully hot and the sun was simply broiling me. I cannot say that I expected to catch anything, but, being there to fish, I was going to fish. Something rose at the fly but hardly broke the water so I did not pay much attention to it. However, at about the eighth rise I saw the trout and was wide awake like a shot. I hooked hint the next time and in fifteen minutes had him in my creel. He was the biggest of the trip. Now, this illustrates the great beauty of fishing-you never know what to expect. If each spring you 'were given a nice little list of your next summer's catch with weight, dates, etc., there would be no fun in it at all.

Another illustration of the same principle is a trip my chum and I took in the ''Gospel Ship,'' an almost unmanageable punt sometimes used to convey people to church. We anchored the said punt amidships so that she swung round and round and we fished the same water with identical flies. While he got thirteen trout of almost exactly the same size-as pretty a string as I ever saw - I did not get even a rise.

There is never a rose without a thorn and this outing although so pleasant has deprived me of another pleasure, not so great to be sure, but still considerable. I have lost my old satisfaction in mill-pond fising. I can still enjoy it after a fashion but it is not what it used to be. My great aim at present is to get up to Fortune about the middle of May during the first run of the fish when report sayeth that they will eat bare hooks.

by John F. Robertson Jr. - from The Prince Island Magazine - June 1900

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Souris Branch of the P.E.I. Wildlife Federation

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