MUSKELLUNGE AND ARTIFICIAL LURES 



volver, or even Teddy Roosevelt's "big stick," when the 

 fish lies exhausted alongside the boat. The relative 

 importance of the three landing tools is indicated by 

 their order. Personally, I always carry a .32 revolver 

 in my pike-kit, for a pellet of lead placed between the 

 evil eyes of a muskellunge has a very quieting effect. 

 After such treatment the gaf^g is easy, even un- 

 necessary. To prick a fish before he is thoroughly 

 exhausted, is to lose him nine times out of ten. Eschew 

 all patent automatic grab-' em-quick gaffs. Whatever 

 their value for other fish, for muskellunge they are 

 worse than useless. I lost my first record fish through 

 trying to grab him with one of those spring contriv- 

 ances. 



As the muskellunge is a solitude-loving fish, some- 

 what given to lording it over the smaller denizens of 

 the marshy, weedy marges of deep water, it behooves 

 the circumspect angler to court an intimate acquaint- 

 anceship with any given water before he seriously sets 

 to work with rod and reel. Granted that the first 

 cast of a salad tyro, made at random on a new water, 

 may result in a fish (we have all known of its happen- 

 ing), yet it proves nothing. Lightning may strike the 

 very tree beneath whose friendly branches we take 

 refuge from a sudden thundershower. Surely I need 

 not urge my readers to believe with me that there is 

 something more than luck and chance in successful 

 angling. The muskellunge is not a wide roamer so 

 long as he can find sufficient food to fill his capacious 

 maw. He has his lair and favorite hunting ground, as 

 much as any ravenous beast of the forest primeval. 

 The wise fisherman acquaints himself with first-hand 

 information. I actually think that an expert handler 



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