THE BOOK OF THE PIKE 



inshore preparatory to going into camp, I said to my 

 companion: "Now I am going to send this plug out 

 into the darkness once, just for luck." "Look out," 

 he rejoined, "or you will hook a log. There is one out 

 there; I saw it when first we made camp." But I cast 

 my surface lure and began slowly to reel. It was one 

 of those wise plugs that submerge when drawn through 

 the water. Instantly there came a shock, a sudden 

 stopping of all movement. "Hit your log, all right!" 

 I exclaimed. What my companion said I will not re- 

 peat, for he thought it was going to be up to him to 

 take the boat and go out and feel around in the dark- 

 ness for the hooked lure. Then the log came to sudden 

 life, and things were doing there on the shores of that 

 darksome lake. For twenty minutes I — we, for my 

 companion was an able second — played that fish and 

 landed him. At camp he weighed slightly over nine 

 pounds. While I was handling the rod, I would have 

 sworn to almost any weight above twenty pounds. 

 Had he escaped, what a marvelous story I would still 

 be telling of "the big one that got away!" Probably 

 by this time he would have weighed somewhere in the 

 neighborhood of forty pounds. 



Perhaps the reader noticed in one of the foregoing 

 paragraphs I was careful to emphasize the fact that 

 the early morning is the best time for casting artifi- 

 cial lures if fair weather. Now the emphasis is on the 

 word fair. In foul weather there is no necessity for 

 early rising. A windy day, whitecaps rolling, raveled 

 remnants of storm clouds scudding across the sky, 

 shutting out the sun — under such conditions, fish all 

 day long. Very good for trolling. In midsummer now 

 and then occurs a variety of day which well might be 



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