140 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
[Jan. 28, 1911- 
through for good and filled the Young Angler s 
whole world with glory. 
At his favorite pool below the bridge he found 
a small boy from the village fishing from the flat 
rock for chubs. Fishing the lower part of the 
pool, the Young Angler hooked and landed four 
trout, each weighing more than a pound. In the 
lower end of the pool where the water was 
deeper he hooked a very heavy fish which he 
played with much care until he saw a big fin 
appear on the surface and knew he had a tre¬ 
mendous chub. This was hauled out without 
ceremony and presented to the small boy, who 
started home on a run. A fish or two was 
picked up in the pools below, and then the Young 
Angler went back to the bridge to wait for 
Uncle Jim and Jake. They had well filled bas¬ 
kets, but the Young Angler had this day beaten 
both for size. Jake swore by a round oath that 
he had hooked something in a deep pool on 
Bird’s Creek that was either a root that swung 
back and forth in the current or the biggest 
trout he had ever hooked. One minute he 
thought it was a root and the next minute he 
concluded that it was a trout, and he argued 
himself into a very uncomfortable frame of mind 
over it. 
That evening Uncle Jim stirred Jake up again 
by telling him of the largest trout that had ever 
been seen in that section. He and some friends 
had been fishing the same water that the present 
party were fishing, but in harvest time. Below 
a small dam across the Little Sock, from among 
tfie roots of a big butternut tree that leaned 
over the water, there poured a large stream of 
cold water, and into this water the trout crowded 
when the weather grew warm. Late in the morn¬ 
ing Uncle Jim had gone up to this place and 
saw among the other trout one that he always 
declared was twenty-eight inches long and would 
weigh seven pounds. T.he first time he pulled 
his minnow through the water below the dam 
the big trout grabbed it, and he succeeded in 
pulling it up on to the sheeting of the dam 
where he held it until its flopping broke his line. 
Bill Wood, said Uncle Jim, had been cleaning 
his trout under a bridge, and as Bill cleaned a 
trout and laid it behind him, a mink slipped out 
from among the stones of the abutment and 
carried it off. When Bill was through, the only 
trout he had was the last one he had cleaned. 
John Green, fishing late in the evening under 
the covered bridge at the head of the dam, had 
two bats take his flies at the same time while 
the flies were behind him in the air. Still Jake 
declared that if it were a root it acted very much 
like a fish, and if it were a fish it must be the 
one that escaped from Uncle Jim under the dam 
and had grown to the size of a shark. 
At dawn the party were on their way home 
with the large basket packed with nearly 200 
trout in ice and sawdust. At the great splash 
dam, with its wolf trap gates that backed up 
two miles of water, the men were just turning 
on the flood that would lift the logs lying on 
shallow bars of the creek more than twenty 
miles below. At the mouth of Salt Run, after 
luncheon, the remaining minnows were divided. 
The stream that was so swollen and' wild on the 
first day, and that had scared away all other 
anglers, had fallen and was nearly clear. Not 
a trout had been taken from it during the week. 
The Young Angler fished deliberately. From a 
small pool he led in prompt succession four trout 
averaging nearly a foot in length, and from each 
of the deep pools in the woods he got one and 
sometimes two good fish and at 4 0 dock he 
and Jake reached the wagon with a fine catch. 
Wallis Run was Uncle Jim’s favorite stamping 
ground, and when the wagon came round the 
turn, the occupants saw that Uncle Jim was 
landing a trout that he handled with the care 
he usually gave to a big one. When he saw 
them he waved his hat. He had only a half 
dozen trout, but each one was a beauty and 
would have made any day’s trout fishing worth 
remembering. 
Two miles below the mouth of the run the 
party came in sight of the log drive. The flood 
let loose so many hours before was just pass¬ 
ing and the creek presented a sight of wonder¬ 
ful activity. The great ark in which half a 
hundred men ate and slept, with its smoking 
stove pipe projecting from the roof, was float¬ 
ing slowly down in mid stream. On the shal¬ 
lows a dozen teams and forty men were haul¬ 
ing and rolling logs into the channel, and the big 
Kennebecker, loaded with logmen and poled by 
a brawny woodsman, was crossing from one 
side of the creek to the other. It was the last 
big drive on Middle Creek. 
When the fish were divided, the Young Ang¬ 
ler as usual was made to take the lion’s share 
of the big trout, but when they were exhibited 
in the window of a sportsmen’s goods store that 
evening in his home city, his pride received a 
fall when he heard an old angler in the crowd 
around the window say to one who had been 
told that they belonged to the Young Angler, 
“Oh, I guess all the big ones was ketched by 
Uncle Jim.” Charles Lose. 
“Well, Sir! Once—.” 
IV. 
“Well, sir, once I saw a man defeated in a 
bout with a fish, and all because he would not 
listen to advice,” said a narrator. “Crowd- of 
us were fishing on the east coast, near an inlet, 
and whenever we wanted to have a little excite¬ 
ment, would go after shark. When the tide was 
running in the big ones would follow the fish 
and we would tie a line to a stake, carry the 
bait out into deep water in a boat, drop it and 
go back to the beach to wait for a strike. The 
shark generally hooked itself, and after it was 
nearly tired out, we would man the rope and 
haul it out on the beach. A nice young Eng¬ 
lishman was at the hotel, and we soon included 
him in one of our shark-fishing parties. He was 
traveling around seeing the country, and as it 
was his first visit, everyone had been having 
fun with him. He had started in by believing 
all that was told him, and had about gotten to 
the stage of believing nothing. He was an ar¬ 
rant and confirmed skeptic. He was enthusiastic 
and took great interest in the setting out of the 
shark line, but did not approve of its being left 
without an attendant. 
‘“Who is to mind the line?’ he inquired, as 
we all started back up to a bit of shelter we had 
rigged. 
“ ‘Mind itself,” said one of the boys. ‘It’s 
self-acting.’ 
“ ‘Fawncy,’ replied the Englishman, with a 
smile. ‘But I say, who is to mind the line and 
hook the fish if we get a strike?’ 
“We explained that sharks were savage biters, 
generally hooking themselves, and that when they 
ran out the line until the slack was gone, the 
stake would snub and set the hook deep and 
fast. I think this looked almost reasonable 
enough for him to accept, but we made the mis¬ 
take of adding that it was unsafe for a man to 
be on the line when a shark struck, as they 
were so heavy and strong that a man could not 
handle one at all. He looked us all over, and 
apparently our very seriousness made him think 
it was another game put up on him. ‘I think I’ll 
mind the line,’ said he, turning and walking back. 
‘You see, I am very anxious to get a good view 
of one of those fish.’ 
“Going to the stake, he picked up the first 
coil of slack, and taking a turn with it about 
his wrist, settled his feet firmly in the sand. 
“ ‘Now, what do you think of that?’ said one 
of the fellows. 
“ ‘Think he has got to come off that job blamed 
quick,’ was the reply. ‘He will get his neck 
broken if he don’t.’ 
“For the next ten minutes we took turns try¬ 
ing to persuade him to leave the line, but all in 
vain. He seemed convinced that we were try¬ 
ing to josh him, and wanted us to fully realize 
that he was on. He had learned our ways at 
last. After exhausting our powers of persuasion 
we concluded that all we could do was to sit 
tight and hope for the best, in the shape of a 
small fish for the first. By suggesting the wis¬ 
dom of having free line to allow the fish to 
take the bait without feeling the hook, I had 
persuaded him to remove the turn from around 
his wrist, for which I was truly thankful, for 
with the line free I did not fear anything more 
serious than burned hands. We had not waited 
long, when the strike came. We saw the line 
straighten out slowly, and just as we sprang up 
the fisherman gave it a vicious tug. He was a 
husky chap, and must have set the hook good 
and firm. There was a pause, and the man 
braced himself and tightened his grip on the 
line. Then there was a snap, the spray flew 
from the vibrating line, and the man shot with 
a beautifully flat trajectory straight for the 
water. It was twenty-five feet from where he 
stood, and he touched the sand only once, cut¬ 
ting a deep groove with his face before going in. 
“We rushed in and pulled him out. He was 
unconscious; his eyes, nose and mouth full of 
sand, and he was full of salt water before we 
got him out, so we were at a loss what to treat 
him for. We worked on the sand first, and 
while we were at it, he revived. Getting rid of 
a quantity of water and more sand, he weakly 
inquired what had happened. When we told him 
and showed the shark line snapped off within a 
foot of the stake, it never having checked the 
brute, he seemed dazed. ‘And I was the bonnie 
laddie, that was going to catch the little fish for 
you gentlemen. Fawncy; I humbly beg your 
pardon for being such an ass. I thought you 
were pifflin me.’ ” Lewis Hopkins. 
A Cannie Scottie. 
A small Scotch boy was playing on the sands 
at the seaside with some small crabs. One of 
the crabs came sidling toward the boy’s bare 
toes, and he retreated. As it approached, his 
big brother, who was watching, said: “You’re 
feart, Robert.” Upon which Robert replied: 
“I’m no feart. I’m learnin’ it to follow me.”— 
Baby’s World. 
