rrounded
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. I was
getting my rod together, when I heard the joyous shriek of the reel and
the yells of California, and three feet of living silver leaped into the
air far across the water. The forces were engaged.

The salmon tore up-stream, the tense line cutting the water like a
tide-rip behind him, and the light bamboo bowed to breaking. What
happened thereafter I cannot tell. California swore and prayed, and
Portland shouted advice, and I did all three for what appeared to be
half a day, but was in reality a little over a quarter of an hour, and
sullenly our fish came home with spurts of temper, dashes head on and
sarabands in the air, but home to the bank came he, and the remorseless
reel gathered up the thread of his life inch by inch. We landed him in
a little bay, and the spring weight in his gorgeous gills checked at
eleven and one half pounds. Eleven and one half pounds of fighting
salmon! We danced a war-dance on the pebbles, and California caught me
round the waist in a hug that went near to breaking my ribs, while he
shouted:--"Partner! Partner! This is glory! Now you catch your fish!
Twenty-four years I've waited for this!"

I went into that icy-cold river and made my cast just above the weir,
and all but foul-hooked a blue-and-black water-snake with a coral mouth
who coiled herself on a stone and hissed male-dictions.

The next cast--ah, the pride of it, the regal splendor of it! the thrill
that ran down from finger-tip to toe! Then the water boiled. He broke
for the fly and got it. There remained enough sense in me to give him