262 MISCELLANEOUS. 



glorious sport on the morrow. We arrived at the village of 

 Cable, in Bayfield county, Wis., at eight o'clock. After 

 supper we gathered in the sitting-room of the hotel and were 

 entertained for an hour by "Doctor" Weir, one of the 

 bright lights of the town, with some interesting fish stories. 



He informed us that we were sure to have magnificent 

 sport. He said the Namecagon was literally full of trout, 

 and that many of them were of immense size. He said we 

 were not likely to catch one of less than half a pound weight 

 and that two and three pounders were common ; that several 

 parties had been out lately and each man had caught on an 

 average a hundred pounds of trout per day ; that if these 

 trout were too large, and if we preferred smaller ones, there 

 were plenty of small brooks in the vicinity, tributaries of the 

 river, where we could catch an average of three hundred per 

 day to the man that would only weigh from a quarter to 

 half a pound each. 



He said the lakes in the neighborhood were also alive 

 with fish of various kinds. That at Long lake, two miles 

 north, we would catch bass weighing from four to eight 

 pounds as a steady thing ; that a day's string would average 

 six pounds ; that we would catch pickerel weighing twenty to 

 thirty pounds each ; of course we would, for other people 

 were doing so every day. One of the boys ventured to 

 remark that he thought the Doctor was giving us taffy. But 

 the Doctor affirmed on his professional honor that every word 

 was true as gospel. 



" Why," said he, " we have eaten fresh fish here until we 

 are all tired of them ; occasionally one of the boarders con- 

 cludes that he would like a mess of fish. He goes out to the 

 lake, and in an hour returns with a coffee sack full of black 

 bass, but on his arrival finds that about fifteen or sixteen of 

 the other boarders have been out fishing just for fun and each 



