Fish Story

In the Midwest and East, a few brash catfish, who didn't know any better, were about the only fish biting. May had been a month of rain, leaving trout streams high and coffee-colored. As the waters went down last week, the blood pressure of 15 million U.S. fishermen (20% above the prewar high) went up. It looked like a big year.

During the war, when fishermen were scarce, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service went on stocking lakes and streams with its usual 7,000,000,000 fish and fish eggs a year. State hatcheries fed them on horse meat and liver (rainbow trout got an extra pinch of paprika for coloring). After four years, a fine fish crop was ready & waiting. Only drawback: a shortage of fishing tackle.

Fishermen without tackle will be sorely tantalized by a new fishing book just out, Waters of the Golden Trout Country (Putnam, $3.50). Author Charles McDermand spends half his time selling fishing equipment for Sears, Roebuck (at $55 a week) and the other half testing his equipment himself. Each summer, as soon as the snow melts in the passes, he disappears into the lakes and streams thousands of feet above the sea in California's High Sierras. It is the domain of crimson-bellied Salmo roosevelti,* the rare golden trout.

McDermand makes it sound worth going after. He writes of lonely, bone-chilling nights, of the joys of casting, and of trout for breakfast. Up above California's timber line there is just enough brush to shade the water and yet not enough to tangle a backcast. Some of the rock-bound lakes have names like Evolution, some have no names, some have no fish. But mostly they are chockfull of golden trout dying of old age for lack of fishermen.

The goldens are nothing more than rainbows who get their Technicolor from isolation in volcanic streams which have a bottom of red granite. They thrive only at elevations above 10,000 feet. At one time, California exchanged fish with other states and golden trout were planted in Idaho and Wyoming; then California decided that the fish were too valuable to share.

At mirror-like Lake Virginia, Angler McDermand spotted a huge golden trout which seemed to be the only fish in the lake. He dropped a fly right before its nose; there was a streak of speed; McDermand's line broke, and the big one got away. He is anxious to try again, but willing to have competition. Directions: get there no earlier than August 1, when the snows melt, no later than mid-September, when winter closes in.

* Named for Theodore Roosevelt.

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