22 THE AMERICAN TROUT. 
other than sea trout, I have ever seen or before that 
heard of. In my opinion, they were lake tront, caught, 
perhaps, from a small pond, and bright colored. It was 
claimed they were taken with the fly, which lake tront 
will not ordinarily touch ; but, unfortunately, it w^as 
also said, that two weighing about five pounds each 
were caught and landed on one cast, and .that this was 
done twice. Now confidence in our neighbors' truth 
is the framework of society, but there is a limit to 
human credulity, and catching two five pound trout at 
one cast, is at the very verge of that limit* JSTo one, 
except by the most incredible good fortune, could kill 
two such fish on any ordinary fiy-tackle, with any ordi- 
nary fiy-rod. The hooks would almost certainly tear 
out, and no strain could possibly be kept on the lower 
fish, which, by slacking up his line and then darting 
away, would probably go free. But great luck alone 
could enable a person to land two such fish ; the lower 
one would never drov/n, being at j^erfect liberty — by the 
by, trout never die in the water, they always save 
enough life for one final rush — and when the upper fish 
was landed or gafi'ed, the lower would go off in a jiffy. 
When a person claims to do this twice in a day, he must 
be pronounced a lucky man indeed. 
We caught our big trout in the Marshpee, and we 
will tell you how we did it, though the words make us 
blush as we write them. We were young then, and it 
is to be hoped innocent ; and having gone to Sandwich, 
on Cape Cod, in search of untried fields, discovered a 
jolly, cor^DulcDt landlord, named Teasedale, who, with 
his friend, Johnny Trout, so named jocosely, were the 
