580 AMERICAN ANGLER'S BOOK 



ashore on the sloping gravel, my lively little fellows, — eight 

 and nine inches — the very size for the pan ; but who wants tc 

 eat fried Trout after cooking them under the ashes or on a 

 forked stick? 



There are no good fish here ; the water is not much more 

 than knee-deep, and they have no harbor amongst those small 

 pebble-stones. I have thrown in a dozen little fellows within 

 the last ten minutes. I'll go to the tail of that strong rift 

 below the saw-mill. The last time I fished it was when that 

 lean hungry-looking Scotchman came over here from Jim 

 Henry's; he had been sneaking through the bushes and 

 poaching all the little brooks around, where the fish had run 

 up to spawn, with his confounded worm-bait. This stream 

 was low then and the fish shy ; I had approached the end of 

 the rift carefully and was trying to raise them at long cast in 

 the deep water, when he — without even saying "by your 

 leave" — waded in within a few yards of where they were 

 rising, and splashed his buck-shot sinker and wad of worms 

 right amongst them. I said nothing, and he did not appear to 

 think that interfering with my sport so rudely was any breach 

 of good manners, or of the rules of fair fishing. A Scotch- 

 man, to catch Trout with a worm! Poor fel low ! his piscatory 

 education must have been neglected, or he belonged to that 

 school who brag only on numbers. I know a party of that 

 sort who come up here every summer from Easton and 

 bring a sauer-hraut stanner to pack their Trout in, and salt 

 down all they take without eating one, until they get home 

 They catch all they can and keep all they catch, great and 

 small. Bah 1 a poor little salted Trout — it tastes more like a 

 piece of "yaller soap" than a fish. Such fishermen are but 

 one remove from the bark peelers I found snaring and netting 

 Trout in the still water below here, last August. I can just see 

 their shanty from here. " Instruments of cruelty are in thei r 



