#the dreadnaught pool

“The little rod wore tenaciously on the rainbow, growing stronger, bending less, drawing easier. After what seemed an interminable period there in this foot-deep water, the battle ended abruptly with the bend off the rod drawing the fish head-on to the wet sand.

Certainly I had never seen anything so beautiful in color, so magnificent in contour. It was mother-of-pearl tinged with exquisite pink. The dots were scarcely discernible, and the fullness of swelling graceful curve seemed to outdo nature itself. How the small thoroughbred salmon-like head contrasted with the huge iron-jawed fierce-eyed head of the male I had caught first! It was strange to see the broader tail of the female, the thicker mass of muscled body, the larger fins. Nature had endowed this progenitor of the species, at least for the spawning season, with greater strength, speed, endurance, spirit and life.”

Zane Grey, from “The Dreadnaught Pool,” The Best of Zane Grey, Outdoorsman: Hunting and Fishing Tales, ed. George Reiger (Stackpole Books, 1992)