36 The American Angler 
having renewed his acquaintance with 
my seven-year old commissary stores, 
the following 
between them: 
‘How long you stay mit us on the 
river, Mr. G?” 
‘“‘T am going home in the morning, 
Uncle Billy,” 
‘‘Vell, now dot is too bad; Ivish you 
stay so longer as fifteen year; you come 
back mit us next year?” 
conversation took place 
‘¢No, your old river is so full of grass 
there is no longer any fishing in it, and 
I will go to some other stream next 
vedanta 
‘‘Vell, Tis sorry to hear you spoke 
those language. I tell you vot I do; 
I shoost take all tem grasses out mit 
dot river, you 
no more as schevi gallon ot dot good 
snops.”’ 
“Tt is a trade, Uncle Billy; but I am 
curious to know how you are going to 
doit 
‘Vell, 1-tells: you.» LE shoost make 
von pig hole in dot tam, so gross ’— 
and I shoost scharge 
making a circle with his arms large 
enough to embrace a flour barrel— 
‘“‘then: I shoost let all tem waters go 
out mit dot pig hole, and shoost so 
soon as tem grasses go dry, I shoost 
set fire mit the whole tam 
match.”’ 
I had but one fish take the minnow 
on the surface, and he struck the min- 
now three or four times before taking 
it, seeming to be more on the play 
than on the feed, or as one hand-line 
fisherman expressed it: ‘‘ Just like they 
do when on their spawning beds in the 
spring.” 
My catch foots up as_ follows: 
Twenty-eight fish of 1 tb. each; ten of 
iA. dbs PSiXteen OL 15s ipa ive NOL. x54 
ib;;. tour ‘of 2. Ibi; yive or 2%. ib; 
four of 2% tb.;. two of .23%% ib., and 
shooten 
one of 4% tb., all small-mouths, save 
perhaps a half dozen big-mouths among 
the smaller fish. The big fish were not 
there; or, if there, not on the feed. In 
the three weeks I was there, I know of 
but four fish being caught that weighed 
over four pounds each. 
The roots, sunken timbers, boulders 
and channels, which in former years 
gave the finest of sport, and from 
which one could safely wager he would 
work onto a fish of from three to five 
pounds the first or second cast, were 
faithfully and _ skillfully fished, time 
and again, and day after day, but with- 
out that responsives wish and strike 
that, likea flash, drives away all that 
tired feeling incident to hours of con- 
stant casting, and sends the hot blood 
rushing through the veins of the chilled 
and discouraged angler. A good fish 
seemed the child of accident, rather 
than of skillful and persistent casting. 
My 4% bb. fish was taken from an in- 
extricable network of roots projecting 
from the bank of an island, an ideal 
home for the king of that realm, not 
large in area, but a mountain in its in- 
tricacies and labyrinthian windings, a 
spot to make your hair stand on end 
and curdle your blood to even imagine 
you were hooked on to the occupant of 
the place. I had fished it so often this 
season, without the slightest reward for 
my trouble, until the day before, when 
I had a small strike, perchance from 
one of the sentinels guarding the gates 
to the palace, that I had lost all hope of 
finding the king at home, but on this 
particular day I was on my way up the 
river in quest of anything that might 
lend variety to the dull monotony, and 
infuse a little life into the worse than 
indifferent sport, when nearing the foot 
of this island a something reminded me 
that in getting bait out of the minnow | 
