July 22, 1911.] 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
131 
the deep hole with its old treetops where Ed 
Ellis and 1 (my old friend who passed to the 
beyond in California some years ago) late one 
evening struck the big school of bass, with our 
bait reduced to some ten and twelve-inch flathead 
yellow catfish, too large for the bass to swallow 
to the hook beneath the back fin of the catfish, 
and the many strikes we had and caught none 
until we put our hooks in at the root of the 
tail of the bait, and what a killing we then made. 
Next came the elm tree whose limb out over 
the water held the line on which Tom Baker 
caught the seventy-five-pound flathead catfish 
that I helped him land. 
So the reunion continued—every few rods of 
the banks had some large cottonwood or other 
tree, or old stump, or old snaggy trees in the 
river to call out of the past some incident and 
some old-time friend (now over the river) con¬ 
nected therewith, and time vanished, as memory 
brought back the scene connected with each 
familiar mark. 
I also noted the effect of the changes made 
in the game laws of the State by the last Legis¬ 
lature in the many fox squirrels running along 
the banks or jumping about in the branches of 
the trees paying no attention to my passage in 
the boat, and the one brood of young wood- 
ducks and two broods of blue-winged teal that 
could not have had an existence before the law 
w r as changed. 
There in a deep pool still sticks up that old 
snag where Prof. O’Brien thought I was so 
mean, and how I laughed as I lived the incident 
over again. The professor was at the head of 
the town schools, and often talked to me about 
taking him with me when I went down the river, 
which I did one Saturday morning. I told him 
of the rule I had made and enforced for three 
years, when I was alone to only keep twelve 
fish, and if one or more persons were with me, 
that the whole outfit could only take and carry 
away twenty fish as long as they were caught 
in my boat, and gave him his choice of catch¬ 
ing bass or crappie. Upon his saying he wanted 
to catch both kinds, I pulled the boat to that 
snag, tied fast to it, and the fishing began and 
the fun with it. He would not take my advice 
and raise the float on his line to fish deep, but 
fished about three feet down and caught oniv 
yearling or half-pound crappies, which I made 
him throw overboard to grow, while my hook, 
down twelve feet from the surface, was catch¬ 
ing the giant crappies of one and a half to two 
pounds in weight. 
When fifteen large crappies had been caught 
on my hook and put on the stringer, while all 
he had caught had been thrown back, how he 
did complain when I said it was time to go and 
get five bass or else get twenty crappies and 
quit, and he said: “You have had all the fun 
and I have only caught bait,’’ but when I said 
I would turn loose the fifteen caught and we 
would begin again if he would only drop his 
line down deep enough to reach the big crappies, 
he said he was fishing on a theory of his own 
and would not raise the float, and how he 
scolded when I rowed the boat to the foot of 
the big shoal, caught five bass, rolled up my line 
anad began rowing back to town, where I gave 
him the twenty fish, and he went up the street, 
telling those he met that I was the meanest man 
in town, for I caught all the big fish while he 
caught small ones and I made him throw his 
away and kept mine and would not let him 
work out his theories. Dear old professor, I 
wonder where he is now, and what new fishing 
theory he follows. 
Noticing the commotion on the surface in the 
middle of the stream I rowed the boat near the 
spot and let it move on to find a herd, school 
or flock of buffalo and carp swimming near the 
surface of the water with wide open mouths, 
taking in the “scum’’ upon the surface of the 
water and giving no attention to the boat. 
Dozens of them from modest three and four- 
pounders up to thirty to forty-pounders, to judge 
by their length, and thus I passed one school 
after another until I came to the rock riffles 
where the boat had to stop and I sat on the 
rowing seat smoking and filling the old brier 
time after time until 8:30, when I slowly pulled 
back the two and one-half miles, starting the 
wild ducks from under the banks, and the carp 
T HERE is absolutely no denying that an old- 
fashioned New England shore dinner is 
good. Bostonians say it is, so that settles 
the question for all time. With two cooks in 
our party and most of the ingredients for such 
a dinner right at hand in the sea we saw no 
reason why we could not have as successful a 
shore dinner as could be bought at Revere Beach, 
Coney Island or any other place between Albany 
and Montauk Point, so we set aside Friday as 
a day of festivity and feasting. All the com¬ 
ponent parts of a New England shore dinner 
except the clams were provided for by Dick and 
my wife on Thursday. These Doc volunteered 
to dig at low tide of the appointed day, if I 
would provide a few oysters, which he thought 
would prove a palatable delicacy even if they 
did not appear upon the menu of the orthodox 
shore dinner. Doc considered that he was get¬ 
ting the best end of the bargain, for even if it 
was an “R’’ month, there were no oysters to be 
had in the local market, and he figured that if 
I managed to secure oysters I would have to 
pry them off the breakwater with a cold chisel. 
However, I had no intention of wasting so much 
perfectly good muscular energy. I had a faint 
idea that they could be caught, and borrowing a 
stout burlap bag, I put sixty cents worth of 
bait in it, and during the forenoon when the 
sun was the hottest I rowed out on the bay to 
an oyster dredge with the bag open and the 
bait exposed. 
“Boat ahoy!’’ yelled a man at the rail as I 
approached. “What you got in that bag?” 
“That,” I replied, resting on my oars, “might 
to kiimmel, but it isn’t. It’s bait that I expect 
to catch a few fish with.” 
“Wouldn’t a nice mess of oysters taste a darn 
sight better?” asked he, getting interested. 
and buffalo off the shoals, plunging in droves 
like wild Texas steers, yet still holding my re¬ 
union with the many friends who in the' past 
had faced me from the stern seat of my boat 
as I rowed it up or down, and we fished this 
two and one-half mile stretch of the Cotton¬ 
wood River. Though some are in Canada, 
Florida, Texas, California, Washington and in 
the Spirit Land, yet how they came, one after 
the other and lived again with me in the glad 
days of the past. 
Reaching the boat landing at 10:30 p. m. the 
visions of the past fled away, but the memory 
of this trip will remain as a bright page on the 
tablet of time, and while I did not cast a line, 
yet I never enjoyed any other single trip down 
the river and back as I did that one that eve¬ 
ning when all the friends and fishing companions 
of twenty-three years came back, a smiling host, 
and made the trip with me. 
I hesitated a little and then passed up the bag. 
When it came over the side it took two stout 
men to lower my catch into the boat. Return¬ 
ing to shore I found Doc with his shoes off and 
his sleeves rolled up, digging clams. He had 
about 200 long black ones piled up on the bank 
and had worn his finger nails to the quick. 
I had my suspicions concerning the edible 
qualities of that particular species of clams, but 
inasmuch as on different occasions l had seen a 
score of people digging the same kind, I re¬ 
served my opinion and dug a few myself, so 
that if they did prove good we would be sure 
to have a plenty. 
Gathering a great pile of drift and riff-raff 
from the nearby woods we dug a trench and 
lined it with the biggest stones that we could 
find, and as soon as they were thoroughly hot, 
brushed out the coals, and dumping in the clams, 
covered them as quickly as we could with grass, 
leaves and wet seaweed. My wife and Dick had 
never experimented with fireless cookers and 
lumberjack bean holes or rolled out frying-pan 
bread with an empty bottle and baked it over 
the hot coals, so they were a trifle skeptical and 
at the last minute decided to cook the rest of 
our dinner over an open fire, so that we would 
be sure to have something to eat. The oysters 
they decided should be served on the half she'll 
and my wife produced a dish and a knife, giv¬ 
ing me my cue. 
A man once told me that a competent oyster 
opener would keep a shell in the air all the 
while until the job was done. I believed him. 
After I had opened a few I began to think he 
was prevaricating. When I had managed to pry 
sixty open, I was sure of it and the first dis¬ 
gruntled promptings of an insurrection were 
surging through me. Two dozen more and I 
Haphazard Adventures of Four 
Landlubbers 
By CARL S. SHAFER 
III.—The Shore Dinner 
