TALES OF FISHES 



He writes me a satiric, doubting letter — then shuts 

 up his office and rushes for some river or lake. 

 Will Dilg, the famous fly-caster, upon receipt of my 

 communication, wrote me a nine-page prose-poem 

 epic about the only fish in the world — black-bass. 

 Professor Kellogg always falls ill and takes a vaca- 

 tion, during which he writes me that I have not 

 mental capacity to appreciate my luck. 



These fellows will illustrate how my friends re- 

 ceive angling news from me. I ought to have sense 

 enough to keep my stories for publication. I strong- 

 ly suspect that their strange reaction to my friendly 

 feeling is because I have caught more and larger 

 black -bass than they ever saw. Some day I 

 will go back to the swift streams and deep lakes, 

 where the bronze -backs live, and fish with my 

 friends, and then they will realize that I never 

 lie about the sport and beauty and wonder of the 

 great outdoors. 



Every season for the five years that I have been 

 visiting Avalon there has been a run of tuna. But 

 the average weight was from sixty to ninety-five 

 pounds. Until this season only a very few big tuna 

 had been taken. The prestige of the Tuna Club, 

 the bragging of the old members, the gossip of the 

 boatmen — all tend to make a fisherman feel small 

 until he has landed a big one. Come to think of 

 it, considering the years of the Tuna Club fame, not 

 so very many anglers have captured a blue-button 

 tuna. I vowed I did not care in particular about 

 it, but whenever we ran across a school of tuna I 

 acted like a boy. 



A good many tuna fell to my rod during these 



222 



