702 
FOREST AND STREAM 
[Oct. 31, 1908. 
Queer Happenings. 
Hendersonville, N. C., Oct. 19 .—Editor Forest 
and Stream: Theodore Gordon, in one of his 
recent letters, mentions a fish that was caught 
which had a hook well fastened in its mouth, 
showing that a hungry or angry fish will take 
a bait even after it has been struck and held with 
hook and line. 
I have known of two instances of a like char¬ 
acter and the witness to both is the clerk of the 
court of Transylvania county, this State, T. T. 
Loftis, of Brevard, the county seat. 
I was with my younger brother, stopping with 
T. T. Loftis, in a fishing trip for brook trout. 
I was at the house while Loftis and my brother 
went fishing. They used earth worms. After 
a while Loftis came in, saying that a trout had 
broken away from him, taking the only hook he 
had and asking me for one like it. He said 
my brother had also taken, he thought, the same 
trout and it had got away. In fact, they had 
hooked and lost it two or three times. While 
he was talking and getting his line ready to re¬ 
turn to the stream, my brother came in with 
the trout. One side of its mouth had been torn 
completely open and inside the tough part of 
its tongue was the hook, but recently broken 
from the line of Loftis. The trout was about 
twelve or thirteen inches long. 
In the other case I had gone with Loftis to 
fish for jack (pike) in French Broad River and 
was using a live minnow about six inches long. 
My rod was of drawn hickory and I had about 
twenty to twenty-five feet of line out and no 
reel. A float was used. I cast out into a circling 
pool so that the float was constantly on the move. 
It soon went far out of sight. I struck and hooked 
my jack and finally got him close to shore. A 
grape vine hung from a large tree and this 
vine broke the hold I had on the fish and it es¬ 
caped. I joined Loftis a short way down stream, 
caught another minnow and told Loftis I would 
try again for that jack. Not very long after 
I had cast into the pool, the fish struck again. 
This time, as the float went out of sight, 1 called 
to Loftis and got him to go down to the edge 
of the water and when I had the jack up to the 
vine to lift it over. 
The first time I had hooked the fish far up 
on one side of his mouth and it was completely 
ripped open; this time, however, he was hooked 
in the tough part of his mouth quite securely. 
The fish was a slim one, nearly three feet long, 
but weighing only about five or six pounds. 
Some things hard to believe, yet true, happen 
to anglers and also to men who shoot. Some 
years ago my brother returned from New York 
with a new repeating rifle and he was anxious 
to shoot something with it. Now I knew just 
where an old cock grouse drummed a mile and 
a half away and told him I could give him a 
shot at it if he cared to try it. This was just 
the thing, so we went. 
Passing through a field of fifteen or twenty 
acres, surrounded by woods, we came to a fence, 
when I told him to keep quiet a few minutes. 
The grouse drummed, so I directed him to give 
me ten minutes by his watch and then to cross 
the fence carefully and gave him minute direc¬ 
tions how to find an old rotten log about thirty 
or forty feet long on which he would find the 
grouse unless he scared it away. 
I then walked four hundred yards down the 
fence, then crossed over and got under the little 
rise of ground, and sitting with my back to him 
against a small oak tree, I waited. 
It seemed a long wait before I heard the sharp 
crack of the rifle and the pat, pat, pat of the 
ball till it fell out of the top of my little oak 
tree. I leaned over and picked it up, a bit of 
lead battered out of all shape. But had I not 
leaned down as I did for the bullet, I could 
have knocked the grouse down with my gun 
barrel. My brother had scored a clean miss. 
I brought the bit of lead home and told my 
wife of the strange incident, handing it to her. 
When my tale was told I asked her for it. 
“Oh!” was her reply, “I did not think you 
wanted it. I threw it in the fire; it was only 
a bit of lead!” Ernest L. Ewbank. 
Fishing on the Willamette. 
Milwaukee, Ore., Oct. 10. —Editor Forest and 
Stream: If I were an expert fisherman and 
preferred' to fish rather than eat, as does Dr. 
A. K. Fisher, who tried the Willamette a few 
days ago, I am afraid I would go hungry at 
MR. SPOONER AND HIS SALMON. 
times living right here on the banks of the 
river. However, the doctor is quite expert at 
both. 
From the standpoint of the fisherman we are 
advantageously situated here. On a tributary 
of the Columbia we are in the pathway of the 
schools of salmon that in spring seek the head¬ 
waters. In front of us the stream runs rapidly, 
* 
for the Clackamas, one of our finest mountain 
streams, enters just above. Two miles up are 
the falls at Oregon City, with the barrier of 
mills and dams. 
Some fine chinook salmon are being caught 
here daily, but the fall run is about past. The 
silversides will soon be coming, bright and gleam¬ 
ing from the ocean, and ready to take a spoon. 
The salmon that has made the Columbia famous 
is the chinook. It is richer than all others, yet 
now hardly a remnant exists of the schools of 
chinook that formerly ran the Columbia and its 
tributaries. When it first ascends the river, the 
chinook often takes a spoon, but not as readily 
as a silverside. After it is ready tP spawn it 
is useless for food. 
The best time to troll for chinooks and silver- 
sides is a typical fall morning when the fog 
hangs low over the river. With the exception 
of the rapids just below the falls, the most 
favorable spot is the whirl just this side of the 
mouth of the Clackamas. The salmon lie here. 
If you cannot get a strike anywhere else, try 
this place. When they are not rising here, you 
stand little chance. 
Yesterday morning a man caught two salmon 
going up the river and four fine ones at the 
whirl. Another landed a thirty-pound chinook 
and a twenty-pound silverside, one of the first 
of the season. It took over an hour to bring 
the chinook to gaff, for the hook had caught 
him just outside the lower jaw and the fought 
like a game cock. The best trolling will be a 
week or so later when the silversides are run¬ 
ning. The steelheads continue to run most of 
the winter after the silversides are gone. Then 
in the spring comes the finest run of all, the 
spring cffinooks. 
T. J. Spooner, who has lived on the Willa¬ 
mette for many years, gets as much or more en¬ 
joyment than any one I know, catching salmon, 
bass, shad, crappies and other fish that swim 
these waters. His largest salmon was a royal 
chinook that took the spoon just below the 
whirl. The fish weighed fifty-three pounds and 
was four feet eight inches in length. He says 
he never wants another like that, for it was two 
and a half hours before he could bring the fish 
to gaff. The fisherman was almost as exhausted 
as the fish. William L. Finley. 
Diver and Devilfish. 
Wrapped in the tentacles of a giant devilfish, 
Martin Lund, a diver employed by the Coast 
Wrecking Company, fought for his life in the 
hold of the wrecked steamer Pomona which lies 
in thirty feet of water in Fort Ross Cove off 
the Marin county coast, says a San Francisco 
correspondent of the Times. 
The devil fish had evidently entered the 
vessel’s hold during the night. Lund had been 
at work some time before he was attacked. A 
giant tentacle four inches in diameter first 
gripped one. leg. Before Lund realized what 
was happening another encircled his thigh. . 
The diver began to chop at the rubber-like 
bonds and at the same time gave the hoisting 
signal to the barge above. Two more tentacles 
squirmed out of the darkness and one twined 
about his neck. As the efforts of the men on 
the surface to comply with his signal threatened 
to pull his helmet off, Lund was forced to 
signal them to stop. 
With only his left arm free he hacked at the 
tentacles until they were partially crippled, but 
he was being drawn toward the fish when he 
saw the outline of the body. Plunging toward 
it he drove his knife with all his force into the 
head, repeating the blow until he had slashed 
it into sections. In its death throes the octo¬ 
pus tightened its tentacles until the diver was 
almost crushed in its embrace. 
Lund finally cut himself free and was brought 
to the surface fainting. 
