GROWING THE LARGE TROUT. 257 



Section VI. — Marketing the Large Trout. 



Marketing the trout is a simple process. You take 

 a pail, some small pieces of ice, a little food, and a 

 hard-wood stick about a foot long, or a piece of iron, 

 to kill the trout with, and go to the pond. Place a 

 large tub near where you are going to take out the 

 fish, fill it half full of water, throw a little food into the 

 pond, and, when the fish come for it, take out a netful, 

 and empty them into the tub. Sort out what fish you 

 want to kill, and throw back the rest, then, lifting the 

 fish up one by one with the left hand, strike a sharp 

 blow on the top of the skull with the instrument in the 

 right. This will kill them at once, which is an impor- 

 tant point gained. Put the dead ones immediately 

 with the ice in the pail, and take them to the scales to 

 weigh them. Having noted down their weight, pack 

 them in a box of pounded ice and sawdust, nail up 

 the box, label it, and send it to the express-office. In 

 filling a twenty-pound order, this can be done so 

 quickly that the trout can be on their way within half 

 an hour after you go to the ponds for them, and they 

 need not have been exposed to the air (without ice) 

 three minutes in all. Killed and packed in this way, 

 they will open twenty-four hours afterwards as fresh 

 and hard as when they were taken out of the ponds, 

 and will be a great deal harder than trout caught by 

 fishermen in the wild brooks the same morning. The 

 proprietor of the Parker House at Boston, to whom I 

 have furnished trout for several years, said that the 

 Cold Spring Trout, which were killed and packed in 



