HAVE YOU? 



CLEMENT VORE. 



To Eastern anglers who have never felt 

 the exhilaration that results from the hook- 

 ing of a wily muskalonge, I desire to tell 

 my story in a series of questions. If you 

 think you have such fishing in your lakes 

 and streams, come to Wisconsin, show your 

 ignorance and enjoy real sport. 



Have you worked all year steadily until 

 your nerve was gone and you spoke only 

 monosyllables to your wife? Have you 

 fondled your fishing tackle and looked re- 

 proachfully out on the snow through your 

 murky window panes? Have you felt a 

 longing for you know not what? Have you 

 watched the snow disappear and the grass 

 grow green and the policemen put on the 

 new, light uniforms that betoken spring? 



Have you made love anew to your wife 

 until she promised to let you fish for mus- 

 kies in June? Have you anticipated all 

 these things so long that every time you 

 passed beneath a stuffed musky hanging on 

 a wall you felt goose pimples coming out 

 on your flesh? 



Have you at last nestled down in a rail- 

 road coach and felt the rails bumping along 

 behind you? Have you gone into the woods 

 of Wisconsin where occasionally you saw 

 a vast stretch of stump land speaking of the 

 devastation of the axe? Have you seen the 

 spots of green on the hillside and the old 

 pines tinged with the yellow green of the 

 virgin needle ? Have your thoughts run 

 rampant until the milk of human kindness 

 made your whole soul glad? 



Have you met your guide and gone to his 

 house, made of logs and smeared with mud, 

 to meet his wife and children? 



Have you smelled the breath of pine and 

 listened to the choir of spring frogs singing 

 among the new rushes? 



Have, you shown your new tackle to your 

 guide and made his heart glad with a gift 

 along the same lines? 



Have you inspected the boat and tucked 

 away the genial bottle in the stern and set 

 the bow of the boat out to the bar? 



Have you felt the spoon twist as the line 

 ran out and you were at last trolling? Have 



you trolled for an hour and caught one 

 little pickerel, and, just begun to have all 

 the idealism vanish from your soul, when 

 you felt a vicious lunge on your line and 

 saw the look on your guide's face? 



Have you settled yourself just right and 

 begun to reel in? Have you fought 12 min- 

 utes, finally to see behind the boat, say 25 

 feet, the huge head of a musky bob ud, 

 while a glimmer came from your spoon? 



Have you seen the fish roll his eyes, lash 

 his body and spread his gills until he looked 

 like a bull dog? 



Have you felt the uncertainty of the 

 struggle as you got him close alongside and 

 felt the boat settle as the guide moved over 

 by your side to sink the gaff into the hidden 

 belly? 



Have you seen the awful contortions and 

 struggles as the musky writhed to free him- 

 self of the hook just before the gaff entered 

 him? 



Have you seen him pulled into the boat 

 and viewed him lash around until the hunt- 

 ing knife severed his vertebrae? 



Have you talked incessantly to your guide 

 for an hour after and forever after never 

 knew what vou or he said? 



Have you noticed how bright the day 

 then grew and how intensely beautiful was 

 the shore line? 



Have you rowed home almost too early 

 and dispatched the following wire to your 

 wife : 



"Have just landed 35-pound musky. Tell 

 Jones about it." 



Have you ever slept so well as that night ? 

 Have you returned to work thoroughly 

 rested after having spent 2 weeks in the 

 woods and caught 8 fish? 



Have you scorned the bass and looked 

 down on the pickerel and wall eyed pike? 



If you have done all this you have done 

 more than I. I am, body and soul, brain 

 and brawn, the lover of a good, old, wilv, 

 fighting bass; the best .fish that swims, 

 pound for pound. I never caught a musky 

 in my life. 



A camera fiend of Vincennes 

 Attempted to photo some hennes, 

 He was nearly distrait 

 When he looked at the plate — 

 He forgot to uncover the lennes. 



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