NORTHERN INLAND FISHES. 28/ 



" On one excursion, with a boy of fourteen to row for me, I had 

 the misfortune to run a very large mascalonge into shallow water 

 on a mud flat, and when my boat ran aground I expected to lose 

 him. But while I was desperately working my ingenuity to bag 

 him, the boy made for him by wading. He took the gaff and 

 succeeded in hooking the fish securely through the nose. And 

 then commenced the most amusing squabble between denizens of 

 land and water that I ever saw. Some of the time it was quite a 

 question which was game, boy or fish ; and had the pike run for 

 deep water he might have bagged the boy for his dinner. At 

 length, however, the struggle closed by the water becoming so 

 muddy as to suffocate the fish. Upon getting him into the boat, 

 I was not surprised at the fight he had made, for he measured 

 five feet and two inches in length, and weighed forty pounds. 



" It is not unusual for this monarch of the streams, when trying 

 to free himself from a hook, to leap ten or fifteen feet above the 

 water and shake his head like a mad bull. He always dies game. 

 To illustrate his courage, I may relate the fate of the only landing 

 net I ever undertook to use in capturing mascalonge. I was troll- 

 ing along a channel where the pike resorted to v/aylay the small 

 fry running back and forth between two parts of a small lake, a 

 trick which this fish understands as well as the panther lying in 

 wait along a path frequented by deer. At length I hooked <, i old 

 patriarch, and expected to show him the courtesy of my new net, 

 but he had no notion of passively surrendering. For nearly an 

 hour he tried every artifice known to his tribe, but finally became 

 exhausted, and I reeled him alongside while my man held the net. 

 But as he saw the fatal circle he sprang forward, caught the net- 

 ting in his powerful jaws, and began to jerk and shake his head in 

 such a fury that he instantly tore out his mouthful ; then he took 

 another hold and served it in the same way, until, in less time than 

 it takes to tell it, my beautiful landing net was a complete wreck. 

 In the meantime, however, I inserted my gaff in his jaw, and in a 

 moment his enraged majesty floundered in the boat. This was one 

 of the trophies of troUing, a most pleasant method of hunting the 

 mascalonge. The best trolling apparatus consists of three large 

 hooks, strung one above another about six inches apart on an ex- 

 ceedingly strong, wire-wound snell. Sixty to seventy-five feet of 



