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Fishing was Good. 
“Hello, John! I have just discovered the 
finest place for catching sea trout that you ever 
heard of. Can you not take a day off and go 
down vvith me? Yes, they are biting fine. I 
saw one man catch twenty-five pounds of them 
in about an hour yesterday, and it sure was 
good sport. Come, say you will go. We can 
take the sleeper this afternoon, be there for sup¬ 
per, make an early start in the morning and be 
back to-morrow night.” 
Fred’s enthusiasm was contagious. Then, too, 
the spring weather had been working in my 
bones and I had been “a-honeing,” as the darkeys 
say, for a good day with the rod and reel, so I 
did not need much urging. 
The train hurried us through a new section 
to me, mostly pasture land where the long 
horned marsh cattle (Brahmas as they are 
locally known) still roamed in comparative free¬ 
dom, though here and there the wire fences and 
plow-scarred earth showed the advent of the 
rice farmer—his levees and ditches gleaming 
raw in the verdure of marsh and upland, while 
his grain fields blended their yellow greens with 
the darker shades of pasture lands very prettily. 
To my surprise the bus deposited us on the 
“gallerie” of as pretty a colonial inn as I had 
ever seen, and the old colonel’s hearty welcome 
of “God bless my soul! I am glad to meet you. 
Here, Sullivan, fix Mr. LaPrelle and his friend 
with the best that the house affords and be 
sure to telephone the pier keeper to have plenty 
of bait on hand in the morning, for they are 
after trout. Supper is waiting, gentlemen, as 
soon as you remove the dust of travel. You 
Joe (to a grinning darkey, whose white tie and 
shirt front was the only relief in a study of 
charcoal) see that Mr. LaPrelle has a good 
supper or you’ll heah fum me.” 
My mouth waters yet when I remember that 
supper, though I have eaten many there since, 
but their excellence diminished when the old 
colonel, with his bald head, rubicund counte¬ 
nance and flowing white whiskers was cajoled 
by another outfit to move on to a larger and 
more pretentious hostelry in another district. 
“The gumbo fille, the crisp brown sea trout, 
the poulette la Creole and cafe noir” had an 
aroma only imparted by the hand of an artist, 
a cuisine such as we used to find on “the old 
Cajun farms,” but now rarely. 
The gray dawn was just glimmering in the 
eastern sky and the waning light of a moon 
(finishing its last quarter) was casting an un¬ 
real and mystical halo over familiar objects as 
we wended our way along the pier out over the 
lake. Early though we were, others were out, 
too. The hollow reverberations of footsteps on 
the planking before and behind us were dis¬ 
tinctly audible. Now and then voices sounded 
and as we approached the pier head pavilion, an 
excited “Cajun” voice could be clearly heard. 
“Non, non, messieurs, ze bait I haf not— 
vere hard, difficile eet ees to get dem; ze mul¬ 
lets, ah ouie zose I haf, but ze swimps non.” 
Emerging from the shadow of the pavilion 
we could see the speaker among a group of 
fishermen, to whom he was doling out the bait 
from a fish box secured beneath the flooring. 
“Bon jour, Ozenime, here we are for a try 
at the trout,” was Fred’s greeting. 
“Bien merci, Monsieur LaPrelle, een one 
leetle minoote I will you attend, s’il vous plait— 
dese messieurs are about finished. 
“Zis way, ah; tres bien, I haf ze bait as Le 
Colonel ordered; say nothing to dose udders, 
s’il vous plait,” and from beneath a locker he 
brought out a small tin bucket. “Ze swimps, 
wiz zem you catch de feesh. Eh, bien, you taik 
dis boat; ’bout feefty yards off de pier you 
make to anchor; de tide he will be flooding in 
’bout fifteen minoote. Den dey bite de best. 
Zat ees eet; bon bon, messieurs, vite, vite, allez.” 
They certainly did. Already the fringe of 
fishers, that decorated the pier’s head were 
swinging the speckled beauties from their native 
brine, so we hastened to paddle to the indicated 
spot. Just as the sun flashed his first golden 
pencilings across the smooth surface of the pass 
Fred cast skillfully from the stern and I from 
the bow. We did not have to wait; our bait 
was greedily snatched; at least, mine was as 
soon as it touched the water, and my reel sang 
as the rod bowed in a way to gladden an angler’s 
heart. A sturdy gamy fight it was, and when 
ten minutes later my prize, safely enmeshed in 
the landing net, was lifted over the side, I had 
time to glance Fred’s way. His reel was sing¬ 
ing merrily as he recovered slack or gave line 
to the mad circling and rushes of a stalwart 
fish that tested his rod to its utmost. A fine 
three-pounder he was when I lifted him in the 
landing net a little later. Hardly was my cast 
made again ere another fight was on, fast and 
furious. For .a glorious hour and a half we 
were busy, and then suddenly the fun ended. 
Not another bite could we get, cdax ever so 
zealously. We had a goodly string of the 
speckled beauties. Our catch totaled thirty 
pounds. They were mostly two-pounders, fat 
and sturdy. Ozenime told us they had been bit¬ 
ing for several weeks just as voraciously, al¬ 
ways in the vicinity of the pier; a hundred yards 
further out or above only a stray bite reward¬ 
ing the angler, while about the pier every line 
was busy. Many individual catches equaled ours 
at the pier that morning, but few used the reel 
or played their fish. They were mostly out for 
meat, not sport. Many of our strikes broke 
away while playing them through the hooks 
tearing out, but we were satisfied. We had the 
sport and our creels were ample for our use. 
They are the squeteague of Northern waters. 
P. C. Tucker. 
A Boy’s Opinion. 
Writing of trout fishing on the Hemm in the 
Fishing Gazette, Charles A. Peyton says of a 
minor mishap: 
A trout here and there made single and lan¬ 
guid rises suggestive of repletion, three or four 
came with apparently closed mouth at both 
witch and May fly; about noon, trying to grab 
my landing net, which had slipped in while 1 
was in complicated difficulties with an overhang¬ 
ing willow branch, the hollow bank gave way 
and I soused sideways into four feet of water, 
emerging with feelings of disgusted humiliation, 
reminding me of the first words on a similar 
occasion of my son, then aged ten, when I had 
hauled him out of a hole in the Liane, into 
which he had slipped while in quest of elusive 
minnows with my landing net: “What beastly 
stuff w-ater is!” 
Sharks Mutilate Tuna. 
Avalon, Cal., Oct. 5 .— Editor Forest and 
Stream: Murphy came near adding more ang¬ 
ling honors to an already long list, when he 
brought in the remains of a monster tuna, which 
weighed 163 pounds after a shark had regaled 
himself greedily upon it. Although the piece 
remaining was ten pounds bigger than the 
whole fish which gave Phil. O’Mara the sea¬ 
son’s record, the rules of the Tuna Club dis¬ 
qualify shark-bitten fish on the ground that the 
injury might have been instrumental in aiding 
the angler to kill his fish. This is contrary to 
the practice of the Aransas Pass Tarpon Club, 
but this organization awards trophies on length, 
and as sharks generally bite a piece out of the 
belly of the fish, it is easy to measure it, where¬ 
as weight would be a matter of conjecture. In 
the present instance the weight of Murphy’s 
tuna can only be guessed at, but it is generally 
conceded that at least forty pounds of weight 
was gone, which would make it a 200-pound 
fish, the third largest ever taken, perhaps the 
second, if it had weighed over 216 pounds. 
Murphy fought hard over two hours, which 
proves the fish was no unworthy foe, as the 
veteran angler is the hardest of workers, and 
crowds a fish every instant. Sharks have been 
bad lately. Quite a number of tuna have been 
bitten. Mrs. Phil. O’Mara got a good one a 
few nights ago, but a shark amputated the 
lower blade of its propeller, and the club had 
to say nay, as the injury, though inflicted at a 
time when the lady had won her fight, never¬ 
theless cast doubt on the performance, and the 
rule could not be waived. 
A. W. Hooper has gone to Tarpon, Tex., to 
try the tarpon. Mr. Hooper did good work on 
the tuna while here, and is second to Conn in 
number taken, tying on blue tuna with Murphy, 
I believe, counting the last fish. Hooper caught 
one yellow-fin tuna of 68 pounds, also the only 
one that came in. 
It may be well, for the benefit of Atlantic 
and other tuna anglers, to give a description of 
C. G. Conn’s methods, which have proved so 
successful in taking tuna in short time. Mr. 
Conn plays the game with every advantage 
brains and money backing will give him. His 
favorite equipment consists of a hickory rod, 1 
of large caliber, and capable of bending into a 
perfect arch if need be, without breaking; in 
fact, it is virtually unbreakable by any strain 
an angler could fairly bring to bear upon it, 
and has all the tough resiliency characteristic 
of the wood. It lacks the steely snap of the 
split-bamboo or the unerring recovery of the 
greenheart, but is safer than either, so can be 
worked harder. He uses a 6/0 reel fitted with 
double tension and friction drags, as well as 
the leather drag playing on the drum on the 
rear side, and a friction clutch device which 
can be set at any required tension, and en¬ 
gages with a beveled dog which permits for¬ 
ward motion of the handle to recover line, but 
engages at a half revolution to bring the fric¬ 
tion clutch into operation as line pays out. 
These devices render the reel largely inde¬ 
pendent of the hand, permitting both hands to 
be used on the rod above the r?el in pumping, 
the right dropping down quickly to recover the 
line gained, which the handle drag retains. 
Mr. Conn takes George Farnsworth into the 
