CHAPTER XXII. 

 CASTING THE MINNOW. 



THE capabilities of the minnow-casting rod are equal to 

 most of the possibilities of bait-fishing, as it has been my 

 good fortune to prove on many occasions. To the unversed 

 in the real art of angling it is simply wonderful to see what 

 an amount of strain the little rod will successfully endure, 

 and to witness the comparative ease with which exception- 

 ably large fish are killed by one who knows the latent virtues 

 of this little giant of a rod. 



Long ago, before every island boasted a summer cottage 

 and a steam-launch, and when the Black Bass, or raasca- 

 longe, were to be found in almost every rock-bound, lily- 

 fringed cove, the Thousand Islands of the St. Lawrence 

 possessed attractions for the lover of the beautiful and the 

 angler that is hard to realize at the present day. 



Such a time I remember well ; and one day of that hal- 

 cyon period is marked on the calendar of memory by a pure 

 white stone that sometimes, when the fit of retrospection is 

 on, shines out vividly in the " hollow down by the flare " in 

 the bright coal fire in the grate, or in the log fire in camp. 



It was below Grenadier Island, in the shallower portion 

 of the river, along the edges of the rushes, deer tongue and 

 water-lilies, that a dear friend (poor Dick ! he is dead now) 

 and I were casting the minnow for Black Bass. On that 

 lovelv July morning I killed, on an ash and lancewood, 



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