136 
FOREST AND STREAM 
Aug. 2, 1913. 
The Lay of the Wall-Eyed Pike 
E VERYBODY in the sporting magazine world 
has heard of Amos Burhans, the magazine 
writer, or they should if they have not. Bur¬ 
hans spends most of his time down at Water- 
ville, Minn., now and then taking a coast down 
the Mississippi River in a launch, accompanied 
by his good wife and his two children Thelma 
and Bobby, and I lost my heart the first time I 
saw them. Well, it happened this way: 
I once got a postal card from Burhans. It 
told me briefly that he was making his launch, 
the Wanderlust, in the shops over in St. Paul, 
and he wanted me to come over and meet him, 
even hinting that I might be one of a party to 
make up a trip down the river. This trip Bur¬ 
hans carried out, but I did not show up. Bur¬ 
hans went on that trip, as readers of this maga¬ 
zine know, having read the serial, telling the 
experiences met with. Some time after that, 
when Burhans had returned to Minnesota and 
Waterville, I got another postal telling me to 
come down to Waterville, the wall-eyed pike 
were biting fine, as were also the black bass. 
This made me sit up in my seat and take notice. 
I had on hand at the time another invitation 
from our own Rev. O. Warren Smith, of Durand, 
Wis., saying that his latch string was always out, 
and that I was welcome to try the trout fishing 
up there with him. Now, I conceived of a dandy 
notion. 1 would go down and fish with Bur¬ 
hans, come back, and then take the trip to Wis¬ 
consin. The latter project I did not carry out, 
for I was good and sick, and Burhans will vouch 
for me I am sure. He -still remembers the pre¬ 
scription he gave me, and which I got filled out 
in Minneapolis, but which happened to be the 
wrong medicine, and followed complications that 
have had their effect upon me to this day. I 
think it is now drawing up on the end of the 
first year. It was in July I went to Waterville. 
Howsomever, as the Western pioneer would 
say, I took care this time to answer his kindly 
and accommodating postal, saying that I would 
leave Saturday afternoon for his home town, 
a little village sleeping alongside of the M. and 
St. L. tracks, bounded by one marshal and two 
lakes, also the Cannon River—when it flows. 
The lakes are more or less connected by the 
river flowing through them. The name of the 
big lake is Tetonka. As I have said, I wrote 
the postal and promptly one Saturday I boarded 
the train, feeling like a Scotch highball, carry¬ 
ing about 900 specimens of artificial minnows 
in my tool chest, also a rod guaranteed to hold 
any specimen of fish life inhabiting Lake Te¬ 
tonka. 
In due time the brakeman came around and 
hollered, ‘ Waterville — Waterville, all off for 
Waterville and Amos Burhans.” I lurched erect, 
looked in my looking glass to see if my hair 
was properly on end, and after extracting my 
tool chest from among eight suitcases and a 
box of lead, I threw out my chest, took a long 
breath, and marched out. I was now to meet 
the one and illustrious Amos Burhans, who 
writes magazine stories under a nom de plume. 
If I mention his writer name, and if you read 
the magazines, you would recognize it right 
By ROBERT PAGE LINCOLN 
away. I had a notion that Amos Burhans was 
about sixty years old. You see there is where 
we are wrong. Yes, we are wrong every single 
time. I was looking around for a gray beard, 
when a young man approached and asked me 
whether I was Mr. Lincoln, drawing suspicion 
on the tool chest. I said I was and we shook 
hands. 
“I thought you was an old man,” I said in 
a puzzled manner to myself under my breath. 
Disgracefully I forgot my grammar. Burhans 
was surprised to find me nothing more or less 
than a boy. That is where I had it all over 
Burhans you see. At once we began to delve 
into fish and fishing, pike and bass and maga¬ 
zines. Have you sold anything there? How is 
that magazine, and how is this one? And finally 
we arrived at the home of Amos Burhans, and 
I met the Mrs. Burhans, and we sat down to 
talk about magazines again and magazines stories, 
and inside of five minutes we had covered the 
whole affair—every person in the literary world, 
how they write, when, where and to what effect. 
Especially did we dwell long and lovingly upon 
the prices paid by the Saturday Evening Post. 
Burhans told me that if he could only place a 
story there—that would be all he would ask. 
It was a very delightful evening, and then we 
went to bed. 
In the morning I was going to fight pike 
and bass. Mr. Burhans is a tall, wiry chap, 
vibrating with determination, keen, shrewd, cal¬ 
culating and utterly practical. His searching 
eyes have turned many a fish in its path. Dur¬ 
ing the summer months Burhans thinks fish al¬ 
most entirely; the lakes are full of them and 
he has fishing worthy of the name. There are 
almost as many bass in Lake Tetonka as there 
are in Lake Minnetonka. I have forgotten just 
how the population ranks among the finny 
brethren in Lake Tetonka, but even though Bur¬ 
hans does a great deal of fishing there, it is not 
wholly depleted in the fall as reports have it. 
Well, morning came. Morning and the ,pike. 
I could almost hear them splashing around me. 
Even now I was trolling dreamily over the 
water, half asleep and lost in my usual reverie. 
Breakfast over, we collected our fishing tools 
and started out, assured that we would this day 
make the record catch for the season. The pike 
in Lake Tetonka bear the classical appendage of 
wall-eye. There is no fish in the finny world 
that compares with the wall-eyed pike; even its 
brother, the sand pike, does not equal it. A 
clean, cold, hard-fleshed specimen, aggressive, 
fighting and nervy to the end. Bloodthirsty, 
pugnacious, eyes as hard and as chilly as jade, 
and when on the hook will fight like a soldier. 
Only the landing net will put the quietus on him; 
when in the boat you have to put the anchor on 
him to keep him still. The pike (Esox lucius) 
is a gamy critter; one of the gamiest I know 
of. Utter barbarian, he will eat his own chil¬ 
dren, gobble up the spawn he has himself im¬ 
pregnated, and will kill young fish of every 
variety that comes in his path. 
Pike fishing is resorted to by numbers of 
the Walton family yearly, and along the blessed 
Mississippi I have often taken them far up into 
November, even when the ice was on the lakes; 
so cold that the line has frozen into stiff coils. 
They will lie along the sand bars, and on moon¬ 
lit nights there is offered some of the best of 
fishing; they will bite up to midnight. If you 
want some good fishing for pike this summer 
and this fall, and you happen to be around the 
Mississippi, go up around St. Cloud, off the sand 
bars, and try your luck. I assure you of some¬ 
thing fine. Or go down to Waterville and visit 
Burhans. He will take you out and show you 
what fishing is. Pike will take many varieties 
of bait, but perhaps the very best is the live frog. 
Burhans had a contrivance he called a pace and 
hooks. I have lost the address of the maker, 
but I doubt whether they are on the market, 
for I tried later to hunt them up, but my quest 
was fruitless. I doubt also whether I could de¬ 
scribe the affair. At least, it is a hook to which 
is connected another hook by means of a chain, 
and over this lies a curved piece of steel. 
Trolled in the water, it proves too much for 
our dear old friend Esox. 
We put to sea with Burhans manning the 
oars. During the interval of three miles to the 
fishing grounds Burhans told me his life story, 
and also how he was going to try and place a 
story with Robert Davis, of Munsey’s Magazine. 
When we got to the fishing grounds we 
each and individually got out our rods, slipped 
out our silk lines, put on some frogs that little 
Bobby Burhans had got that morning, and we 
were ready for the pike. Seventy-five feet of 
line leaked out of the reels, and then were 
checked. While Burhans rowed and watched 
the lines over my shoulder, I nearly fell asleep. 
The day was nice and fine. Off ahead of me I 
could see the beautiful shore line of Lake Te¬ 
tonka, where it mellowed away into stray bits 
of woods and grain fields, gently being touched 
by the ripening influence of the mother sun from 
her height in the spotless heavens. It was in¬ 
deed a charmed territory. As I told Burhans 
I felt that I could write 200 sonnets and one 
epic in a little cottage I saw snuggled away 
among the oaks. We were not alone in our fish¬ 
ing operation, for many neighbors of Burhans 
mingled promiscuously with him in talk regard¬ 
ing fish and the fishing outlook. Now and then 
we saw a nice specimen hauled in, and this made 
us all the more alive to our duty. But though 
we worked back and forth, no strike did we get. 
We went in lee shore where we met with a true 
and tried veteran softly rowing along, line out 
on duty on his cane pole, but he reported no 
fish. We caught nothing and returned home 
fishless, but Burhans said that the following day 
would prove a red letter one in our existence. 
I took his word for it and earnestly prayed 
that such would be the case, and that night 
caught an Esox that for an Esox was about the 
largest ever separated from the waters of Lake 
Tetonka. Just as Burhans was beating it un¬ 
conscious with an oar and had partly succeeded 
in stamping out the last spark of life in that 
aggressive shape, I awoke. And I was sick. 
(Continued on page 156.) 
