Brook Trout Fishing : An Account of a Trip of the Oquossoc Angling Association To Northern Maine, In June, 1869. [Cover title: About Brook Trout].

New York: Perris & Brown, For the Publisher, R. G. Allerton, 1869. Hardcover. 12mo (7.5” x 4.75”) decorative gilt and blind-stamped on red cloth. [15], 59 pp., [8]. Armorial book-plates of one Robert Sedgwick and C. L. F. Robinson on front paste-down and front free endpaper. Small ticket reading “3300” affixed to upper left corner of front paste-down.

First edition. An important and very appealing account of a fishing excursion in the Rangeley Lakes region, blending both the serious and the comical. This copy includes the wonderful folding chromolithographic plate of a brook trout, which is often lacking; a delightful menu for a “Grand Trout Supper,” featuring two brook trout weighing a total of fifteen pounds; a table of the weights and numbers of fish caught, and so on. The author was one of the founders, in 1870, of the Oquossoc Angling Association, which was instrumental in getting the state legislature to pass fish & game laws. “Allerton tells about the unbelievable size of Maine fish taken by eight members of the Oquossoc Angling Association in June of that year (1869). Of the thirty brook trout taken, the largest weighed nine pounds, while the group weighed 181 3/4 pounds, averaging over six pounds each.”—Wetzel.

A scarce and essential American trout fishing book.

REFERENCES: Wetzel, Charles M. American Fishing Books (Stone Harbor, NJ: Meadow Run Press, 1950), p. 96; Thompson, Edward V. Important Maine Maps, Books, Prints and Ephemera (Orono, ME, 2003), #307.

CONDITION: Good, some discoloration and markings to covers, head of spine partly chipped, contents bright and clean, plate of brook trout very good, with just one small spot in margin.