60 
Haig&Haig 
Old Wisdom. 
(Continued from page 9.) 
In the month of June he returned again from 
the other end of the lake to the tranquil hay 
where he had fallen foul of the artificial minnow. 
He was fanning along in the center of the bay 
when a sound above caught his attention. He 
did not flee but rested, waiting to see what it was. 
A shadow fell over the water, and passed. He 
knew it to be a boat, and shortly thereafter there 
came trailing along an apparition that fixed his 
eyes firm. It was a different appearing creature 
than the artificial minnow he had struck at; it 
was a spoonhook, and to it were fastened strips 
of red flannel. Wisdom watched it but made no 
move. Barely had the spoon whirled by when 
there loomed up behind it that gigantic shape he 
had once seen in that bay before. It was the 
giant muscallonge! 
This creature was inordinately attracted to the 
spoon; he followed it wonderingly at first, then 
suddenly gathered speed, and with wide-open 
jaws hit the lure. And the next moment he re¬ 
alized his dismal mistake, drew back, made a 
curving wide-sweep, and at the end of a taut line 
broke water returning to it with a floundering 
crash; there began a battle royal that sent the ter¬ 
rified Wisdom far away to his accusomed hiding 
places, close up on the shallows and the protect¬ 
ing dead-heads. Wisdom never again saw that 
shape loom up before him. He never again had 
fear of those grimly suggestive jaws and those 
singularly penetrating eyes. Somewhere far 
away in a city, in a certain aristocratic home, in 
a certain angler’s den, he hung upon a certain 
wall upon a certain panel, the final word in the 
art of taxidermy; and there were yet the flashing, 
cruel eyes, the wide-open jaws, and stretched 
from the corner of the mouth was a line, and at 
the line’s termination was a certain spoonhook 
with strips of flannel upon it! 
Much of a young fish’s life is spent in deliber¬ 
FOREST AND STREAM 
ation and conjecture. With laborious exactness 
each question is threshed out; days upon days, or 
weeks and months being allowed things to de¬ 
velop, for, lacking intelligence, the vital distin¬ 
guishing intelligence, only instinct, aided by ex¬ 
perience can be counted upon to decide the right 
or the wrong of a thing. Wisdom passed many 
seasons in that one lake and then one spring day, 
in the flush off young fish maturity came the de¬ 
sire to mate. It was an irresistible impulse that 
burned in his veins, and his now well propor¬ 
tioned, energetic body was carried with all the 
lordly grace and determination of anticipated 
parenthood. He was now mingling promiscu¬ 
ously with his kind. They were courting in the 
manner of fishes and pairing off with methodical, 
clocklike regularity. To the intense fascination 
of Wisdom he found himself in the presence of 
the fish damsel of his choice. It must have been 
love at first sight for both Wisdom and the lady 
found in themselves much to adore. Naturally 
they did no talking. Wisdom swam up and 
bowed—at least we so suspect, though how it was 
done is open to conjecture. At least they found 
themselves very much alike; their views upon 
life were practically the same; they ate the same 
variety of food, and knew the life of paution 
about equal; and they had one object in consid¬ 
eration that Mother Nature had firmly impressed 
upon them that they must fulfill. It was an ob¬ 
ject devoid of sickly sensational aspects; it was a 
purpose, honest, final, and deliberate. The world 
of bass must never be diminished—and the 
mycropterous salmoides population in Sand Lake 
had been depleted anyhow by the fishermen; ad¬ 
ditions were not to be scorned. 
The spawn eggs of Wisdom’s demure little 
wife were cast in a belly-brushed-out hollow in 
the sand, and the bottom was studded with 
pebbles brought in from a short ways off. When 
tne spawn was cast Wisdom mechanically fol¬ 
lowed close to her side and threw over the eggs 
the precious milt that was to bring animation to 
the eggs, creating in them—fishes. These eggs 
were mostly composed of an albuminous matter, 
a small portion of which contained what is 
known scientifically as the vitallus, which holds 
the life-energy, the basis of creation. A tiny, in¬ 
conspicuous opening near this vitallus might have 
been seen through a microscope, in the shell. 
When the eggs entered the water they at once 
began to expand and to absorb water, and as a 
natural sequence the milt that had been delivered 
upon them. This milt contained thousands up¬ 
on thousands of animated, wiggling creatures, 
the spermatazoa. In the absorbing process, 
through the mycropyle (the tiny opening in the 
egg shell) one of these thousands of mites would, 
or should, enter each egg. Directly it would 
be communicated to the vitallus—and the work 
of creation was begun. Wbeks upon weeks of 
forming would be the result. And in time, in 
each impregnated egg would be seen the outlines 
of a fish, the backbone, and still later, two singu¬ 
larly well-definfd black dots; these were the eyes. 
The greater portion of the egg would now be the 
yolk-sac, and from this yolk-sac the growing 
body must take its nourishment. At first "the 
head and the tail would be connected to it, but in 
the last stages of its development these would 
come away from the sac, and lastly the sac would 
be gathered, forward of the stomach, upon his 
breast. A tiny heart would then be seen pulsing, 
and minute blood veins might be seen from the 
body adhering to the yolk-sac. 
After the official spawning Wisdom instinctive¬ 
ly took possession of the spawn hole and virtu¬ 
ally mounted guard. Even as he had once been 
guarded by his parent, so now he guarded his 
own offspring; and even as his parent left him 
and his finny brothers and sisters, so now Wis¬ 
dom left his offspring. Wisdom and the mate 
of his choice were now more than ever mated. 
They swam together; hunted together; preyed 
upon minnows wth all the cunning craft of the 
preying kind. In the upper end of the lake, in a 
secluded bay there was a wilderness of lily-pads. 
Here Wisdom was wont to lay, lazily fanning, 
watching with careful eye the water surface 
above. Insects coming down were sucked into 
the mouth with practiced tact; and many a large 
butterfly, dizzily essaying a flight across the pads 
was caught even in the air by the watchful fish- 
On one of these days he was startled by hearing 
a noise some distance by. He had just a few 
moments before risen, and had sucked down an 
insect, when through the air there spun a creat¬ 
ure, all of white, with two red wings. Some¬ 
thing back in his inferior consciousness told him 
it was no insect; for he had never mouthed that 
kind. He felt an impulse to spring upward fo> 
it, but did not. The apparition fell to water, 
slid away from him, throwing two rolls of water 
up over the red wings; slid by and was gone. 
Wisdom did not strike; somehow faintly he un¬ 
derstood the fact that it was unreal. It was an¬ 
other enemy with hooks upon it. 
In the boat from whence had come the artifi¬ 
cial minnow, connected as it was to a soft-braid¬ 
ed silk line, a disgusted fisherman cast automati¬ 
cally, and finally sat down, wiping his brow. 
“No use, George,” he said, shifting to another 
minnow. “I have fished here for years but I can 
never remember of having the poor luck I have 
this year. The lakes are getting tame. Too 
many have penetrated into the north, and the fish 
are becoming wary; why hang it all they are 
becoming civilized.” 
“You are right there,” replied the other taking 
up the oars, to row over to another point. “But 
why, O why don’t you shift bait? Why don’t you 
use live frogs. You know that live bait wins 
where those dead things, all wooden and unreal 
at that, will not register a kill. Now suppose you 
had used a live, kicking, animated frog over 
there, in the weeds, upon a good weedless hook 
with a bronze spinner on it. I suppose you 
would not have gotten your bass?” 
“Well, no matter,” frowned George, drawing 
the line tight on the minnow. “I believe first, 
last and all of the time in humane methods. I 
know what you have said about frogs being cold¬ 
blooded—not having the nerve system and warm- 
blood, and feeling of the human—still it will be 
a long time before I stick a hook through a 
frog’s head, and cast him around, kicking and 
wiggling in agony. I have too much respect for 
that, thank you!” 
“Some day you will forget all that trash you 
have in that box and return to live bait as the 
one and only way of successfully getting them,” 
said the man at the oars, with a friendly laugh 
“There are big bass in this lake. People may 
have come in here, but these lakes are yet far 
from being civilization-ridden. Use live bait and 
they will come to you.” 
Wisdom did not see any more of the artificial 
