270 Fish Stories 



sky and foliage reflected in the clear water, we passed the 

 entrance to a little bay that was so alluring that we turned 

 in and skirted the shore, passing a little cape where great 

 masses of a single-petaled, deep-pink wild rose grew fairly 

 in the water and sent their fragrance broadcast. Here I 

 had a strike and into the air went the bass, flinging my hook 

 ten feet along the waters. I glanced overboard thinking, 

 hoping, to see him, and just then the skiff passed over a 

 singular heap of stones, a miniature mountain, though pos- 

 sibly too artificial, too symmetrical. Bill stopped and held 

 the boat while I examined it; a heap of stones four feet 

 high, nearly all about the size of an English walnut, though 

 one I reached was larger and weighed several ounces. I first 

 imagined it the ash dump of some launch, but we had come 

 up a very devious and narrow channel, and no launches had 

 ever profaned this charming spot. 



As I stood up I perceived another mimic mountain not 

 fifty feet away, and as we hunted about I located four, or 

 five, and concluded that I had found the mountains of the 

 fishes. Bill said some kind of a '* critter " made them. An- 

 other guide later told me that he had seen black bass on 

 them; another was willing to make an affidavit that the 

 mountain, which was eight feet or so across the base, and 

 must have weighed a ton, was made by catfishes. In truth, 

 I could not find a guide who knew what the heaps were, 

 yet several said that the piles or miniature submarine moun- 

 tains, grew every summer, and when the river froze the 

 tops were frozen in, and when the breakup came in the 

 spring, the ice would carry off the top. 



The piles of stones were made by a species of chub, the 

 silver fall-fish, a fish which I had several times taken on a 

 fly when trolling, and which made a very clever fight ; but 

 the chub is not edible, at least to the average man. Its 

 mouth is on the under side, too suggestive of mud and 

 sharks as a regular diet, yet very conveniently placed for 

 building miniature mountains, and every stone was brought 



