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My Friend the Pickerel. 
The pickerel is a pariah among fishes; a 
ggart and a coward. Nature has provided 
1 with an enormous mouth and filled it with 
I rp teeth, making him look a fighter. Solitary 
his habits, with no care for his race, or pride 
his posterity, unloved and unlovable, he is 
ides a quitter. Lying in still waters and hid • 
from his enemies in the weeds he is ready 
jump on a weaker brother. His only emo- 
ins are fear and rapacity. On the table he 
(embles the excelsior in packing; his flesh has 
taste nor flavor and is useful only to fill an 
pty space. He is the shredded wheat biscuit 
fishdom, nourishing, but inferior to salt pork 
.1 potatoes. My alligator-jawed friend has 
■n an object of concern to me during my 
Jy hours for a long time, and I propose to 
,e an account of our relations, hoping to re- 
! e memories in the oldsters and to aid the 
ingsters to bring home more and larger fish, 
dy first introduction occurred when I was 
<e years of age. My father had taken me to 
I old homestead, in Hillsboro county, New 
mpshire, intending to leave me with my 
vndmother and uncle for the summer, and as 
was proposed that we have some fish to eat, 
;her cut a pole about eighteen feet long, put 
a fish line five feet long and attached a wire 
1 j noose and started for the brook. This brook 
is about ioo yards from the house and in times 
high water ran the sawmill on the farm, 
ere was a small pond just above the mill and 
rood sized brook fed it, being wide and deep 
lough the meadow and making another small 
id at the end of the meadow. It was half a 
i;e long and the shores of the upper half 
ire covered with an impassable alder thicket, 
vas excited and asked questions enough to 
i a book, but was advised to talk less and 
itch and I would find out all about it. 
talking cautiously along the bank father 
mid locate a prospective victim near the sur- 
e, head up stream, and the noose would be 
tj/ered four or five feet above it and brought 
mg as though drifting with the current until 
(encircled the fish, when a lusty yank would 
> given to the pole and the victim would gen- 
' fly go through the air at a great rate and 
id on the bank with a whack, to be strung on 
(forked stick. I thought it great fun; I had 
n introduced and had received my first 
>i.on. 
I here was a bound boy on the farm named 
lardo and we soon became great chums. He 
»s twelve years old, three years my senior, 
tried to snare them, but had better success 
letting a cluster of three hooks drift under 
; ir jaws and then yanking upon the pole. We 
: dd not get the snare around them delicately 
(uvh; the pole was too heavy. Orlando said 
knew a better way and went about it by kill- 
a frog, then skinning the hind legs. If a 
;ge one, he used one or two legs only, but 
days skinned them. He skittered with these 
1 had better luck. My education was progress¬ 
ing. I had learned how to skitter and that a 
pickerel prefers a white lure. 
When I became older I found great delight in any 
sport that would get me away from the city 
and bring me in closer communion with mother 
nature, and while I had preferences for other 
kinds of fishing, I was always glad to go after 
pickerel if nothing better offered. I used to 
CASTING FLOAT AND RIG. A WEEDLESS HOOK. 
visit my cousin, Fred Peabody, whenever I had 
an opportunity. He lived at Sharon, Conn., and 
we would go to one of the ponds, which are 
numerous in his vicinity, and troll for pickerel 
with a spoon. Fred said trolling for pickerel 
was almost a waste of time after the month of 
June, and we would get some good brook min¬ 
nows and still-fish with them in the latter 
months, generally with fair success. We would 
anchor the boat just on the outside edge of the 
weeds and put on a float, a small sinker and 
wait for a bite. We used fly-rods and could 
never make it work to suit us, because if we 
put the float up far enough to let the bait go 
as deep as we thought it ought to go, we could 
not reel the fish in, as the float would hit the 
tip with ten feet or more of the line below the 
tip, and after a few minutes’ fishing the float 
would be nestling against the sides of the boat. 
One day I was talking about it with my old 
friend, Mr. Desendorf, and he told me of a 
float that some angler, whom he knew, was 
using at Asbury Park. He said: “You pull 
the stick out of your float and get the stem out 
of a corncob pipe and put that in in place of 
the stick. Now get a glass bead and stick that 
in the top of the stem with cement. When you 
go fishing run the line through the stem and 
tie it to a sinker. Then wind a piece of button¬ 
hole twist around the line above the float and 
sinker as far above the bait as you wish the 
bait to float beneath the surface. Hitch your 
hook or leader and hook to the sinker and put 
on your bait and cast out as far as you wish, 
and when the float and sinker, which will go 
together, strike the water, the sinker will pull 
the line through the float until the buttonhole 
twist strikes the bead when it will jam and hold 
it there. The knot of buttonhole twist will go 
through your guides all right if your rod is 
a decent one fit for a fisherman. If it will not, 
why throw it away and get one that will.” 
It looked good to me and I got busy. I 
spoiled three floats trying to get the sticks out. 
They were cemented in and would not come 
out. Then I took the top end of a broken sec¬ 
ond joint of a steel rod and removed the wind¬ 
ing and spoiled a good saw file, filing teeth in 
the end of the joint. I stuck this in a lathe and 
ran the stick into it and started it going, and it 
cut its way to the center. Then I reversed the 
float and I had a good clean hole through it. I 
hunted for a bead, but gave it up and made 
one of brass. That is the slickest thing in floats 
that ever happened. All my friends who saw it 
in use wanted it. I afterward bought a piece of 
hard rubber rod one-quarter of an inch in diam¬ 
eter, with a one-thirty-second inch hole through 
it and used that instead of the pipe stem and 
bead. In using a leader with this float the ang¬ 
ler will find that a leader of twelve inches is 
as long as should be used. Suppose he wishes 
to fish eighteen inches above the bottom and 
uses a three-foot leader. Now it is characteris¬ 
tic for a wounded fish to go to the surface for 
air, and after the angler has adjusted it for a 
three-foot leader, the sinker will be a little over 
five feet above the bottom and the minnow will 
have enough length of leader and snell to get 
almost nine feet above the bottom, and he will 
do it and wind the leader around the line and 
make a mess of it instead of attending to his 
duty. A twelve-inch leader is ample. Two of 
us would anchor a boat and use three rods 
apiece and cast forty or fifty feet in as many 
directions and wait awhile and then draw one 
in about six feet, watch it a minute and then 
go to the next one and repeat the operation. 
One can fish twenty or thirty or sixty feet deep 
with a six-foot rod and absolutely no bother. 
Many a good bass and pickerel has found its 
way into our boat by its use. These floats are 
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