Nepigon River Fishing 



has not bought faculty with his fittings. 

 The years lie behind him wasted for this 

 purpose, unless as a boy he paddled in the 

 burns of Agawam or Sullivan or Pike, 

 fleshing his maiden hook in finer prey than 

 dace or suckers, with his senses freshly 

 open to inflowing waves of touch from 

 sound and color and form. 



A sketch of such a personage is caught, 

 uncaricatured, from nature. His burly 

 body planted in a real chair, two guides 

 steer him down, then laboriously row him 

 up, to and fro, in the stiff current that 

 shoots through the long reach below Pine 

 Portage, abounding in fish. Either pudgy 

 hand thrusts out a short pole, loaded with 

 a great glittering spoon. Of the few de- 

 mented trout that strike, he clumsily hauls 

 in three or four, and over the lost ones dis- 

 charges a volley of abuse at the poor guides. 

 Of course he wonders how any one can 

 like fishing ; and of course, as his yacht 

 steams away to some lake town, of which 

 he is doubtless a harmless citizen of credit 

 and renown, he swears that never again 

 will he visit that Nepigon ; and all the 

 guides in chorus swear that never again, 

 with their aid or service, shall he. 



The presence of such pseudo-sportsmen 

 proves that access to these solitudes has 



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