50 Union Bay 



ing. A worm's a worm and a hook's a hook but some fellows 

 can do ten times as well as others with the same outfit and 

 bait. Somebody else will have to explain why." 



He picked up a fish scaler of his own making, a ten-inch 

 strip of wood fashioned into a handle at one end, with three 

 beer bottle caps attached in the form of a small triangle at 

 the other. He scaled the fish rapidly, the rough edges of the 

 caps removing the scales with remarkable efficiency, the nails 

 holding the fish firmly in place. As soon as the fish was 

 smooth and the belly cut made, the nails were pulled and 

 another fastened. 



I remembered the ordeal of cleaning scaly fish when I was 

 a boy. They were slippery and we tried to hold them with 

 our hands and scale them with a kitchen knife, a job so un- 

 pleasant and difficult that only the prospect of the delicious 

 meal to come would keep us on the job. I thought, you can't 

 tell a real sportsman by just watching him handle a rod or 

 gun; there is a lot more to it than that. There is the way he 

 prepares his fish or game, handles his pack, fixes up his food 

 list, picks his camp site, and meets bad weather conditions. 

 Everything that I had seen this man do showed that he was 

 an expert in the field. 



A commotion in one of the boats made us look up. An old 

 fellow, comfortably leaning against a chair back bolted to 

 the seat, had just caught and netted a nice fish. 



"There's a fine one," my companion said. "That old boy 

 has them all beat. His fish will weigh a pound and a half. 

 Look at the other boats crowd over to where he is. They act 

 as if there is a well under his boat and all the fish in the lake 

 are in it. But I guess if business is good you can't keep out 

 competition." He finished scaling the last fish and rapidly 

 cleaned them. Then he got out a canoe for me. 



The sun was now high enough to warm things consider- 

 ably. A surface haze caused distortion which made the coots 

 and pied-billed grebes look as if they were swimming six or 



