March, 1922 
We saw him lying under the lily-pads serenely sucking in the sweet, cool water 
so far. We put it on. We trolled and 
we cast, using every trick we knew, and 
those are not a few, but not the slightest 
notice did he take. So we crept to the 
rocks and tried casting over him. . . . 
Ah, a strike at last ! 
The water leaped to foam. Never 
have I seen so vicious a strike in all my 
fishing experience. With a yell I struck 
too, and the line came slack. Not even 
hooked. Then we saw the reason. A 
dore over a foot long hung in the wicked 
Hiaw of the Tiger, a golden dore, wig- 
gling, struggling frantically. The dore 
had risen to the copper spoon, and the 
Tiger had struck at the dore. 
We watched the tragedy silently — till 
the last inch of the fish had disappeared. 
Then we tried again. All day we tried, 
but never a rise. 
You see we had been out two weeks 
now. We had caught scores of fish,' seen 
many muskies caught and hooked and 
free but ne\'er yet one real lunge come 
to our gaff. We had this one right un- 
der our eyes and had tried every bait 
the orthodox swear by. We had seen 
the Tiger make his vicious charge right 
under our bait and take the fish that 
should have been ours, but as the light 
went out of the sky we crept weary and 
happy to our tent. Next day we would 
surely get him. 
That night as we lay cosily in our 
blankets, with the campfire aglow 
against the spired spruce and pine, we 
planned, and the result of our plan was 
this. The Tiger had refused every arti- 
ficial bait we had, spoon, plug, fly, 
twirler, minnow — all. But he had taken 
a dore. So dore we would give him on 
the morrow. 
AT daylight we crept down to a silent 
back-swdrl below the rapids and 
fished for dore. We did not want big 
ones, only those about a foot long. And 
dore came, lovely golden-bued fish that 
fascinated me. For this was the first 
time I had caught them in any numbers. 
The wall-eyed pike they call him on the 
Susquehanna ; the pike perch they call 
him in parts of New York state. Here 
the boys called him by the name of pick- 
erel. But that name means "little pike,” 
and dore is no pike at all. Wall-eye 
might fit him, though it is an unlovely 
name for a lovely thing. His eyes are 
like pearl moon-stones, big, lustrous, 
mysterious, and so set in bis sockets 
that when you open his mouth you can 
almost see the eye shining in the jaw 
cavity. Moon-eye or opal-eye he might 
well be called. But dore is the best fit- 
ting. For he is a lovely fish, light-fil- 
tered, gamy, and dipped in old gold. 
So in the backswirl we caught dore, 
two dozen of them, carefully and lov- 
ingly hooked and freed to the tank. 
Then back again we went after tbe 
Tiger. All that da}'' we fished with dore. 
We used them on a single hook, we 
trolled with them on a burr of hooks. 
We cast them shrewdly, and we trolled 
them silently from the canoe, but not a 
rise did we get from tbe Tiger. One 
cub we did hook, a twelve-pounder, 
which shot up in the air and shook the 
spray glittering from his jaw. Just a 
cub, and for fear tbe cub might alarm 
the Tiger wc let him get away ... at 
least Joe explained it so. My private 
belief is that the cub did his own "fade- 
away.” 
In a dreary rain storm we crept si- 
lently home at night, happy and weary 
but more determined than ever to get 
the Tiger. 
'T’ll tell you what,” said Joe, “we’ll 
try a small pike to-morrow.” And re- 
membering my past experiences. I 
thought it good medicine, so again dawn 
found us in a little bay after pike. 
We wanted baby pike, a foot loiig, not 
more, but by the irony of fate we caught 
only big ones. In fifteen catches we had 
not one under five pounds, and two of 
them scaled over ten. Then at last we 
got a baby of fifteen inches. Hooking 
him through his long jaw we dangled 
him overboard near the Tiger’s den. He 
did his part nohly. He swam in the clear 
water. He pulled, he dove and he lay 
there in alluring innocence — the gut 
leader lost in the green water . . . but 
no Tiger. We saw the swirl of his huge 
body : we traced the ripple where he 
struck and swam off with some treasure 
trove, but pike he would not have. 
So we cut up the big pike, a luscious 
pink-white steak from the belly, and with 
that wiggling temptingly we fished, but 
neither pike-steak nor live pike, nor pike 
in any other fashion appealed this day 
to the Tiger, and night found us with 
a canoe-load of fine fish which wc had 
caught for bait, but which the Tiger 
would not eat. So wc ate some our- 
selves. Chowder and filet, bubbling tbe 
one, and fragrant the other in egg and 
cracker crumhs. Then we lay hy the 
fire on a bed of soft wilderness-moss and 
planned again. 
"Try him on bass," grunted Joe. 
"Let’s catch 'some little, nine-inch bass 
and see if he’ll take them.” So again 
the rosy dawn found us after bass. .\nd 
this day wc had a real rise from the 
Tiger. 
VWHERE a little bay. lily-filled, lay 
” dreaming in the sun, wc fished for 
bass. Half a dozen fighting warriors we 
had, some of them the dusky, tawny 
barred ones. They were a little big for 
the Tiger bait, we thought, yet wc strung 
the likeliest one on the string that dan- 
gled over the end of the canoe while wc 
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