The Big Fellow. 
Could unagrarian city travelers, glancing 
clown from smoke and cinder-begrimed car 
windows upon the sleepy little village of Rich- 
mondville, nestling in a picturesque defile of 
rugged foot hills, have stepped into the Farmer 
House on a summer night they would have 
encountered a nondescript crowd of villagers 
enthroned in the comfortable chairs on the 
broad porch, or, perchance, should the air be 
tinted with the first chill of fall, clustered 
around a box-stove occupying the center of a 
low-ceiled room that commanded a view of the 
town’s business center. 
One Saturday night shortly after the close of 
the haying season, all the local fishermen, from 
Uncle Billy Johnson, the dean, to Bill Jones’ 
hired man, the newest convert, were present 
at Fat Art’s, excepting John Stanto‘11, the vil¬ 
lage oracle. The air was pungent with pipe 
smoke. An undercurrent of suppressed excite¬ 
ment permeated the room. The expression of 
the men’s faces told plainly that a heated argu¬ 
ment had been in progress over something of 
more than passing interest. 
Suddenly John Stanton strode into the room. 
His entrance was the signal for a confused 
scraping of chairs that was quickly smothered 
by vociferous greetings. 
“Yes, siree! I caught a whopper!” he ex¬ 
claimed. “Now, Bub,” he cautioned, laying a 
restraining hand on Uncle Billy’s shoulder be¬ 
fore that veteran could utter the question trem¬ 
bling on his lips, “just be patient a minit. 
Somebody pass me one of those sticks Art 
calls matches,” he commanded, deliberately 
pausing to fill his corncob. Striking the proffered 
match he lighted the pipe, and drawing a chair 
forward so as to conveniently elevate his feet 
to the stove top, launched into the narrative. 
“The morning after Hez Hogeboom swapped 
that ugly Holstein heifer he bought over to 
Ad. Lape’s auction along with a lot of dom- 
inick hens and missalany truck for Hile War¬ 
ner’s spotted kicking mule, I was going up the 
creek to do a little shingling I’d been promis¬ 
ing Vessy Thomas to ’tend to since early in 
the spring. It was nice and cool and I was 
stepping right along, figuring that Vessy would 
be some surprised to see me and hoping he 
would have the scaffold poles and shingles 
ready so I could get right to work, ’cause I 
wanted to get back and hoe my potatoes before 
dark. I’d been keeping an eye on the creek 
purty much all the way, but approaching Fel- 
ter’s Hole, I turned into the lot to avoid the 
bushes and hadn’t gone five rods before I heard 
something strike the water that sounded to me 
like a good-sized trout. ‘By gee,’ thinks I, 
‘maby there’s an old lunker hogging that hole, 
and that accounts for nothing but suckers being 
caught out of it for a long time back.’ I 
crawled close to the bluff’s edge and peered 
down. The water was as smooth as that stove 
top, and for half an hour I lay quiet, the mos¬ 
quitoes biting just often enough to keep me 
awake and itchin’, and not a ripple, not even 
a black whirligig darting around in the sun¬ 
light, disturbed its surface. After a while I 
snapped a couple of green bugs on to the water, 
hoping they would attract attention, and had 
the satisfaction of seeing them float peacefully 
down the stream. When a big flyin’ grasshop¬ 
per accidentally dropped into the water and 
kicked himself ashore without producing a rise 
I concluded that a prowling muskrat might 
have made the sound I heard, although signs of 
rat work were about as scarce as free lunch 
around Fat Art’s hotel.” 
“ ‘You’d come out in the spring as fat as a 
fall b’ar if I provided victuals as well as stove- 
wood and chairs,’ ” interrupted Fat Art. A 
roar of laughter greeted his quick retort, and 
Stant, grinning broadly, relighted his pipe and 
continued: 
“As I was on the point of leaving, the biggest 
trout I’d seen in a dog’s age leaped three feet 
in the air and struck the water with a thun¬ 
derin’ splash. From that minute I had only 
one ambition in life, and that was to hook the 
big fellow. By gee, he was the king of trout 
and I was so sure of ketchin’ him that very 
day that I would have cheerfully fished until 
sundown on crutches and with a bile in the 
palm of each hand at that. Hot-footing it 
home, I rushed into the house, got my tackle 
and returned to Felter’s Hole, circling up 
through Frayer’s woods and down over the 
Pierce farm so if any of the boys should chance 
to see me they would not be suspicious and 
keep an eye on my movements. As long as 
daylight lasted I whipped away, perfectly con¬ 
fident the next cast would bring a strike, but 
the last one proved exactly equal to the first, 
so far as results were concerned. 
“Twenty years of fishing has taught me the 
bigger the trout the more peculiar he is apt to 
be. Because a big trout refuses to take a yal- 
ler hackle on a lowery day hain’t no sign they 
are not on the rise or that a coachman wouldn’t 
fetch a strike. I have seen trout absolutely 
refuse to take flies of any description and jump 
two and three in a bunch at any old kind of a 
beetle, then in less than an hour refuse any¬ 
thing but fuzzy worms. I remember fishing 
with Fat Art over on Kenhugara Creek and 
never getting a strike for five whole days. We 
knew there was big ones in the stream near 
camp because we could hear them leap nights, 
but although we fished hard we didn’t seem to 
hit the right thing in bait, and when it come 
along Friday and we hadn’t a fin to show, we 
were purty blue. Then Art shot a rabbit and 
in the morning, when I was getting it ready for 
a quick meal, when we returned to camp he 
baited a chunk of the raw meat on to a hook 
and cast into the creek. In a minute less than 
a jeffy he had a pounder hooked and landed 
and I was carving off a hind leg for bait. It 
seemed that raw rabbit was something they had 
been hankering for quite a spell, and we took 
fifty that averaged a pound apiece before we 
left for home. 
“That little experience taught me a lesson, 
and right up to haying time I kept after this 
one more or less steady. Many a morning 
when I should have been in bed I sneaked over 
to Felter’s Hole and fished. As soon as the 
last whisp of my hay was in the barn I started 
right over again, offering him the same old 
feathered contraptions, and it wasn’t more than 
a couple of weeks before I had tried purty 
much the whole bait category, fake and natural, 
and was at the end of my rope for something 
new and attractive. 
“Last Sunday morning I rolled out of bed 
with that darned trout uppermost in my mind, 
as usual, and as soon as I could swaller break¬ 
fast, went out to the barn and set down on a 
bushel measure and began to whittle, because 
I had to do something to keep from going fish¬ 
ing. If I’d dropped my knife into my pocket 
all bets would have been off, Sunday or no 
Sunday. I’d spoiled a splendid piece of six- 
foot pine which Hanner had been treasuring 
for a shelf in the summer kitchen when she 
come out and see what I had done. 
“ ‘John Stanton,’ says she, putting her arms 
akimbo and giving me one of them scornful 
looks, ‘I wish to goodness you would cunger 
up some contrivance to ketch that trout and 
get him eat, ’cause you hain’t had the sense of 
a ham string for two hull months,’ and gather¬ 
ing up her skirts, she flounced into the house 
in a way that made me feel like a small hair in 
the butter. 
“By gum! she give me an idea, and acting on 
it I set right to work constructing a couple of 
flies. If any of you fellers think it’s easy to 
take a wad of horse hair, a bunch of duck featlu 
ers and a couple of hooks and carpenter some¬ 
thing that looks natural enough to be deceiv¬ 
ing, try it. When I completed two I took them 
in and showed them to Hanner as a sort of a 
peace offering, and she said they looked to her 
a good deal like a Gila monster she had been 
reading about in a newspaper. After I had 
give them a coat of bacon grease they reminded 
me so much of them lean razor backs that’s 
alius hanging around the lilac bushes in Jim 
Davis’ front yard that I concluded to call them 
spotted hogs. 
“Well, before sunup the next morning I was 
over to Felter’s Hole ready to put my spotted 
hogs to the test. I crawled into the bushes 
near the upper end of the pool, and making a 
difficult cast, dropped one of the things into 
the water near the outlet. The instant it struck 
the big fellow seized it. Up and down the pool 
he plunged, darting from side to side and leap¬ 
ing high into the air. For a time he fought 
hard and then plunged down stream. When 
I gave him the butt he soared through the air 
and landed on the brink of the outlet in shal¬ 
low water. I slid neck deep into the pool and 
worked my way along the bank, reeling in line, 
and succeeded in getting my fingers in his gills 
before he could flop back into deep water. Then 
I made tracks for home.” 
Carl Schurz Shafer. 
