[smc]

Noel Bourasaw was the founder and editor of the http://www.skagitriverjournal.com/ a wonderful repository of Skagit Valley history. Noel was a wonderful person, with a joyful passion for the history of this valley. He died of cancer in October of 2015.

The Skagit River Journal is now under the care of the Skagit County Historical Society and Museum, in La Conner. I am so pleased to know that Noel's work will live on.

Anyway, here's a story on the Journal about fishing the Skagit around Hamilton in the 1890's, complete with hoodoo's and beef bait. Enjoy

http://www.stumpranchonline.com/skagitjournal/Upriver/Uto-Conc/Wilkeson04-IkeHumpies.html

 

[wadin' boot]

Great stuff. Would have loved to see these fellas in action. Sounds like a great late September day...Curious to hear Old Man Jim's version though.

Took me a while to figure this one out: "That night when our pipes were glowing after a rubber of whist "

 

[smc]

Great stuff. Would have loved to see these fellas in action. Sounds like a great late September day...Curious to hear Old Man Jim's version though.

Took me a while to figure this one out: "That night when our pipes were glowing after a rubber of whist "

Ha, me too. Apparently whist (a card game) replaced trump in popularity back in the day. Whist, the root of whistful, means "quiet, silent, attentive". Time for a resurgence I'd say.

 

[Golden Trout]

Very cool and enlightening as was the weather back then.

 

[wadin' boot]

Re pipes, probably my favorite chapter in all of literature... Chapter 30... "The Pipe" from the One True Bible of Leviathon Angling, Moby Dick:

When Stubb had departed, Ahab stood for a while leaning over the bulwarks; and then, as had been usual with him of late, calling a sailor of the watch, he sent him below for his ivory stool, and also his pipe. Lighting the pipe at the binnacle lamp and planting the stool on the weather side of the deck, he sat and smoked.

In old Norse times, the thrones of the sea-loving Danish kings were fabricated, saith tradition, of the tusks of the narwhale. How could one look at Ahab then, seated on that tripod of bones, without bethinking him of the royalty it symbolized? For a Khan of the plank, and a king of the sea and a great lord of Leviathans was Ahab.

Some moments passed, during which the thick vapor came from his mouth in quick and constant puffs, which blew back again into his face. "How now," he soliloquized at last, withdrawing the tube, "this smoking no longer soothes. Oh, my pipe! hard must it go with me if thy charm be gone! Here have I been unconsciously toiling, not pleasuring- aye, and ignorantly smoking to windward all the while; to windward, and with such nervous whiffs, as if, like the dying whale, my final jets were the strongest and fullest of trouble. What business have I with this pipe? This thing that is meant for sereneness, to send up mild white vapors among mild white hairs, not among torn iron-grey locks like mine. I'll smoke no more-"

He tossed the still lighted pipe into the sea. The fire hissed in the waves; the same instant the ship shot by the bubble the sinking pipe made. With slouched hat, Ahab lurchingly paced the planks.

 

[Batt B]

Great article and my favorite novel all in one thread.