i«95-3
Throwing away my minnow, I put on a fresh one, the largest
in the pail and savagely cast the hook again over the rail.
Still no bite. I was getting discouraged, but as I slowly and
disconsolately began to pull out the hook again I felt an electric
shock from the deep. By the way my line started up the lake I
thought a three hundred pound turtle or a shark had made con
nections with my pole.
Springing to my feet, I closed with a vice-like grip on my bam
boo, and, although my name isn’t Sandow, I easily raised my
catch into the air—a bass of uncertain size, but extremely lively,
I let him dangle in the air a moment. How pretty he looked,
dripping and sparkling in the sun as he fought for liberty. Then
I dropped him into the bottom of the boat. But no sooner had
he touched than he bounded almost over the rail. I jumped to
catch him, and things began to get exciting, Brown was on his
feet, too, and our little boat was getting unsteady. The bass
seemed somehow to slip out of my hands before I got hold of
him, and his contortion dance bade fair to restore him to his
native element, when Brown relieved the dilemma by shouting:
“Get onto him with your feet! Get onto him with your feet!”
Pinioned in this manner the bass subsided for a moment, and I
proceeded to take possession by grabbing him in my hands, when
lo! You know the rest. I received an electric shock of an en
tirely different nature from the first. His back felt like a buzz
saw, the sharp spines pricking my hand in a dozen places. With
out thinking I jerked back, and precipitated the final catastrophe.
Brown and I were both standing, and my quick movement
gave the boat a lurch. Brown threw up his hands, made a hnr
ried but forceful ejaculation, and then, with all the grace of a
Pennsylvanian bull frog, plunged backwards into the tranquil
Kewaugausaga, head first, the water closing over his feet with a
resonant chug. At the same time my end of the boat simply
shot from under me like a fat man’s foot on a banana peel and I
splashed into the water in the most uninteresting, unromantic
manner possible, while the bass started for the upper end of the
lake with the bamboo pole in tow, for my hook was still lodged
in his stomach.
By the time we had collected our tempers, our boat pail, our
hats, and the rest of the floating paraphernalia and had bailed
out the boat my fish pole was several rods distant. But I pulled
viciously until we overtook the cause of our disaster, and soon
A Fish Story.