594 Among the Thousand Islands. 



sued at night, not only because the water is usually more quiet 

 then than during the day-time, but also because the light of the 

 blazing pine chunks in the "jack" or open brazier fixed in the bow 

 of the skiff makes objects on the bottom more apparent by contrast 

 with the surrounding gloom. 



It is a picturesque sight to see the swarthy forms of the fisher- 

 men, lit up in the circumscribed circle of light, looking like phan- 

 toms or demons — the one in the bow bending eagerly forward, 

 holding the spear and watching the bottom keenly for his victim ; 

 the one in the stern silently paddling the boat across the motion- 

 less water, not a sound breaking the stillness of night but the 

 tremulous " Ho-o-o-o" of the screech-owl or the crackling of pine 

 chunks in the jack. Suddenly the figure in the prow poises himself 

 for a moment, drives his spear forward through the water with a 

 splash, then draws it back with the wriggling victim gleaming in the 

 blazing light of the pine. 



In June there is fly-fishing, and fine sport it is to cast a fly so 

 adroitly as to tempt a plump bass in the seclusion of his rocky retreat 

 beneath the overhanging birches along the bank, and fine sport to 

 land him, too ; for the bass, lusty and strong through good living and 

 pure water, will battle with the sportsman as vigorously as ever did 

 dappled trout, struck in the pools of Maine. 



Toward summer, the fish become more sluggish and refuse to 

 strike at a fly, and then "still fishing," with live minnows for bait, or 

 the less skillful sport of " trolling" take the place of fly-fishing. Of 

 trolling, little is to be said. The lines are merely trolled from the stern 

 of the boat ; and if the fish bites, unless it be an extraordinary large 

 one, nothing is required but to haul him in, hand over hand, and land 

 him finally, without any skillful handling, in the bottom of the boat. 



With still fishing, however, more skill is required. As a sport it 

 occupies the intermediate point between trolling and fly-fishing, and, 

 should very light rods be used, a great deal of sport may be obtained 

 in playing and landing the fish. Nearly all the boatmen, upon the 

 least encouragement, will recount stupendous stories of eighty-pound 

 muskallonge, forty-pound pickerel, or eight- pound bass. The largest 

 fish that I could find reliable record of as having been caught and 

 landed were a muskallonge fifty-one pounds, a pickerel twenty- 

 seven, and a black bass six and a quarter. 



