340 
FOREST AND STREAM 
[Feb. 27, 1909. 
The trout stationed himself out in the middle 
of the swift current, about fifty feet beyond 
Robert, and held his ground very stubbornly. 
I saw nothing to indicate that it was a particu¬ 
larly large fish, and Robert appeared to be of 
the same opinion. Time went on—perhaps half 
an hour—but there was no sign of the fish’s 
letting up. I became more interested, and leav¬ 
ing the bridge, worked my way out to where 
Robert was standing. He claimed that it was 
not a big fish, but that it was gritty. 
We sat on the boulder and visited for an¬ 
other half hour, beginning to discuss the cap¬ 
tive’s vitality interestedly. Occasionally the fish 
would shift his position, but he always kept a 
good distance away and in the swift water. 
Much of the time he was diagonally down 
stream from us, which gave him the current as 
an ally in the struggle. Finally he settled into 
a sort of pocket and began to bore. I volun¬ 
teered to assist to the extent of picking my way 
back to shore and bringing a handful of pebbles. 
These did not seem to have their accustomed 
persuasive powers. The fish dodged a little, but 
stayed in the pocket. 
I made another journey, but with only slightly 
better success. Then I made a trip and filled 
my pockets, but yet he held the fort. The siege 
was becoming interesting and the fourth time 
I came back loaded to. the extent of having my 
hat full. Some of them were stones larger than 
my fist, but for all that we spent another half 
hour before we had'the trout on the run. By 
this time Robert had revised his opinion and 
decided that it must be “quite a fair fish.” 
The noon whistle at the quarry blew and the 
workmen came over the bridge. Some of them 
stopped to watch and one came up to us. It 
was decided that Robert would need help to 
net the fish, and the man volunteered to go to 
the house and bring my wading boots. After 
his return I had just gotten into the boots when 
the fish began to show restless signs. He raced 
around considerably and I went down stream 
with the net. It was getting to be a very long 
time for a fish to last and the excitement grew 
rapidly. 
Robert had held the rod so long that his arm 
was tired, and the frequent hammering of the 
trout seemed heavy. Inch by inch the length 
grew in his imagination until it passed the 
twenty mark. Just then the sudden swing of 
the fish brought him near enough so that I had 
a momentary glimpse of him in the water. It 
showed me that he must be captured, else a very 
great falsehood was going down in history. 
After a little he took to threading around 
boulders and making a general mess of things. 
In one instance he got under a rock and I 
actually had to poke him out with a stick. 
All this time Robert stood on his boulder, 
fifty feet up stream, and steadily proclaimed the 
ever increasing length of the monster. At last, 
throwing aside all reserve, he declared that it 
must be more than two feet long. 
It did not seem to be a prudent time for me 
to talk, so I held my peace and watched for a 
chance to land his prize. At precisely i o’clock 
and seven minutes I emptied from the net a 
yellow-bellied brown trout a shade under fifteen 
inches in length and killed in its incipiency what 
must otherwise have been an awful fish story. 
There had happened to Robert what may 
easily happen to anyone; that is, he had hooked 
a rugged trout just at the juncture of the two 
jaws, and in such a manner that the free action 
of the mouth was not impeded. Under these 
circumstances the fish had lain during the first 
hour wedged against the current and resting 
upon the hook. While in this position he suf¬ 
fered almost no loss of strength, and so was 
able to keep up a fight which lasted more than 
two hours and a half. 
Winfield T. Sherwood. 
Recent Publications. 
The Marooner, by Charles Frederick Holder. 
Cloth, 305 pages, $1.50. New York, B. W. 
Dodge & Co. 
At first the reader of this remarkable novel 
is mystified over the rapidity with which the 
scene changes from the Canadian woods to the 
Great Bahama Banks and back again, but pres¬ 
ently the plot is understood and the tale pro¬ 
ceeds smoothly to its strange end. Wreckers 
of the banks, steamer captains, French Cana¬ 
dians and New Yorkers play their parts. Our 
readers will remember “The Lure of the 
Lorelei” which we published some months ago, 
and will recognize it in the book, of which it 
forms a part. A charming fishing yarn is found 
in the following extract from one of the chap¬ 
ters : 
“The next day Pierre’s horse gave out and 
Duryea told him to camp and come along when 
he could, while he hurried on. Walking, drag¬ 
ging his weary and reluctant horse, Duryea sud¬ 
denly heard a shout, and, stopping, ran to the 
willows that hid the stream, and looking through 
saw a large and plethoric priest, a Jesuit in his 
habit and large flat hat. with his long coat rolled 
up to expose a powerful pair of legs—legs, as 
some distinguished paleontologist has said, of 
those of the mastodon, better adapted for sup¬ 
port than for locomotion. The good father had 
hooked a large salmon in a beautiful pool, and 
the fish, making a splendid run, had doubtless 
stolen more line than was expected, and was 
taking the father into deep water. 
“‘Toussaint, Toussaint—run!’ he cried, and 
then slid from the rock up to his arm-pits, but 
he held his rod high in air, never losing sight 
of the fact that he had a fish, and desperately 
tried to lead it inshore. In the meantime Tous¬ 
saint—for it was he, the same old Toussaint— 
came around the bend, bearing a sack of fish 
and a long gaff, and on seeing the big round 
hat of the father on the water and nothing else 
in sight, broke into laughter. 
“‘Merci, your reverence, where are you?’ he 
shouted. 
“ ‘Under the hat, stupid!’ shrieked the father, 
chuckling with laughter at the figure he knew 
he cut, blowing water from his mouth like a 
millwheel, giving the fish the butt and puffing 
like a white whale. 
“‘Keep away from the pool!’ shouted Tous¬ 
saint. 
“‘But how?’ sputtered the angler; ‘he is tak¬ 
ing me down!’ 
“‘Hold him! Hold him till I come!’ shouted 
Toussaint, and dropping his bag he ran down 
the shore, crossing the stream in the shallows 
to a point opposite to where Duryea was stand¬ 
ing. 
“ ‘This way, reverence—this way.’ 
“ ‘But I cannot swim,’ said the father. 
“ ‘Back upstream to the shallows, your rever¬ 
ence.’ 
“ ‘But he won’t come—he sulks. Ah, Tous¬ 
saint, if I lose this fish! He is the largest sal¬ 
mon ever hooked. I feel it. If I lose him who 
would do the swearing?’ 
“‘I will,.your reverence,’ shouted Toussaint. 
‘It is always the biggest fish that goes off.’ 
“By a mighty effort the good father regained 
shallow water, started his fish and began to reel; 
then the salmon went up into the air, a gleam¬ 
ing mass of molten silver. 
“‘Did you see that, Toussaint?’ gasped the 
angler. ‘Ah-ah-look!’ and up into the air went 
the splendid fish, which went dashing, pirouet¬ 
ting across the pool on his tail, a dancing, whirl¬ 
ing, finned dervish of the sea. 
“The angler backed slowly in, his big broad- 
brimmed hat flapping; reeling well, holding the 
long rod up to give the proper bend, slacking, 
reeling, giving the butt, breathing hard, almost 
slipping down; now prancing into deep water, 
now backing out; once sitting down with an ele¬ 
phantine splash which sent ripples and tidal 
waves from shore to shore. The good father 
never lost his temper or his hold, but reeled on 
and on, to the exclamations of Toussaint, who 
had never seen so strange an angler, like some 
hugh hippopotamus, yet never a better one. 
“In due time the father reached the shallows 
and slowly reeled the big fish in. Toussaint 
reached out, and at exactly the proper moment, 
gaffed the salmon and held it up to the amazed 
eyes of the father; then he killed it humanely 
and laid it at his feet. 
“ ‘It’s a beauty! Did you ever see such a 
splendid fish, Toussaint?’ 
“‘I never did,’ Toussaint replied, crossing 
himself at the lie, ‘or one better played’ (an¬ 
other cross). 
“ ‘I’ll have to fast a week,’ said the angler. 
‘I had too much pleasure in that murderous act. 
It’s penance I’ll need.’ 
“‘You can take penance by not eating the fish, 
your reverence,’ said Toussaint, stooping down 
to hide his face. 
“Father Ignatius looked at him and laughed 
and weighed the salmon on his finger, guessing 
Yankee fashion at its weight, and said: ‘Tous¬ 
saint, the church lost a good father superior 
when you became a fisherman. I’ll take my 
penance, but after we eat that salmon.’ ” 
Books Received: “Jack Lorimer’s Holidays,” 
by Winn Standish; Boston, L. C. Page & Co. 
“The House in the Water,” by Charles G. D. 
Roberts; Boston, L. Cj Page & Co. “The House¬ 
boat Book,” by William F. Waugh; Chicago, the 
Clinic Publishing Company. “Camps and 
Cruises of an Ornithologist,” by Frank M. 
Chapman; New York, D. Appleton & Co. “With 
Rifle in Five Continents,” by Paul Niedeck; 
London, Rowland Ward & Co; New York, 
Charles Scribner’s Sons. “When the Wildwood 
Was in Flower,” by G. Smith Stanton; New 
York, the J. S. Ogilvie Publishing Company. 
“The Sloops of the Hudson,” by Verplanck 
Collyer; New York, G. P. Putnam’s Sons. 
“Stalks Abroad,” by Harold F. Wallace; New 
York and London, Longmans, Green & Co. 
All the fish laws of the United States and 
Canada, revised to date and now in force, are 
given in the Game Laws in Brief. See adv. 
