Tag: Fishing Page 1 of 3

By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by James Frise, July 7, 1945.

“How’s about a little side bet?” inquired Jimmie Frise.

“On?” I inquired.

“Who gets the first muskie,” said Jim. “After all, this is an auspicious occasion. It’s the first time we’ve been muskie fishing for five years. For you and me, it is the fifth freedom.”

“Then,” I submitted, “it is too sacred an occasion for betting. This fishing trip ought to be, actually, a sort of religious rite.”

“Aw,” scoffed Jimmie, as we shoved off from the summer hotel wharf and started paddling, “you always mix up your sport and your politics. Or your philosophy. Let’s just go fishing.”

“Okay,” I said, scanning the reedy shores eagerly. “But I don’t want to do any betting on who gets the first muskie. I just want to soak in this feeling of being fishing again in my native lakes. I could be dead five years, killed by a bomb on the road to Dunkirk, instead of sitting here in this canoe looking for good spot to cast. I could have been blown to bits by shells in Italy, by machine-guns in Normandy; I could have been torpedoed 50 times at sea, or crashed into the Atlantic or the Mediterranean in thousands of miles of flying…”

“And I,” cut in Jimmie, “could have died of pneumonia in the raw winter of ’41 or got an infected toe during the hot spell we had here in 1942….”

“Jim!” I said indignantly.

“But it’s true,” assured Jim, from the stern of the canoe. “We waste too much time thinking about life instead of in living. Every man can have his choice. He can either do what he likes or what somebody else likes. He can live the way he wants to live or the way his wife and family want him to live. He can do with these few hours, days, weeks, months and years that are allotted to him what he wants to do, or he can be bullied, wheedled, coerced, chivvied and jockeyed by society around him into wasting it all.”

“Wasting?” I snorted.

“Look,” said Jim. “The general impression is that society is organized by the majority of mankind for the general benefit of mankind. If that were so, why are so many people poor and distressed and harassed? If that were so, why are so many people living silly lives, like squirrels in a revolving cage, spending their one, only and very brief life doing what somebody else wants them to do, instead of doing what they themselves would like to do?”

“Life,” I explained, “is a co-operative enterprise. The perfect society would have all mankind living for all the rest of mankind.”

“Poppycock!” cried Jim, swinging the paddle. “That is the sort of bunk the smart rulers and owners of the world have been pushing, through schools and teachers and preachers, for hundreds of years. A few thousand years ago, when the big boys discovered that all the little people, if ganged up, could destroy them, they founded schools and colleges and churches and institutions for a stable society and began controlling the little people of the world not with clubs and swords but with ideas and ideals. You can bludgeon a million people far more easily with an idea than with a club.”

“Jim,” I expostulated. “This is treason. This is worse than communism.”

“Sure,” agreed Jim. “It is the next thing after communism. Communism is old stuff. It is just the latest scheme to keep the masses of the people happy and under control of the big fellows.”

“Who,” I demanded indignantly, “are the big fellows?”

“Whoever,” explained Jim, “wants to run the rest of us for their profit or amusement.”

“Amusement?” I protested.

Plan For the World

“Certainly,” said Jimmie, “When it becomes dangerous to try to run the mass of us for profit, the ambitious guys among us abandon that motive and adopt instead the motive of their own amusement. It’s the sense of their power they wish to enjoy. The old-fashioned and easy way of feeling power was by means of money. But the masses have got ugly. It is no longer safe, it isn’t even possible to convert your sense of power into money. The masses have got it all taxed and super-taxed. So, the ambitious guys among us adopt ideas and ideals instead of money. So long as they can be boss, so long as they can enjoy the sensation of their power, they are happy.”

“You make it look very horrible,” I muttered.

“It is horrible,” agreed Jim.

“Okay, then,” I countered hotly, “what does your new, super-communism suggest we do?”

“Kill off anybody who exhibits the symptoms of having the feeling for power,” said Jim. “Don’t just imprison them. Don’t just make laws to try to circumvent them. Kill them. The way you would kill rattlesnakes, tigers or malignant germs that might threaten the life and well-being of mankind as a whole. Destroy all the would-be leaders. Wipe out the people with initiative, ambition, and greed. It is all the same thing.”

“Why, Jim, you would bring the whole world to a standstill!” I cried.

“No,” corrected Jim. “Nothing mankind can do can bring the world to a standstill. That is the one little thing we have always overlooked. We have produced an endless and bloody series of Caesars, emperors, kings, protectors, dictators. Each has tried to impose his idea of the perfect life on the world with sword and fire. Each has gone down to dust and even his marble statues are mere disfigured remnants in museums. Museums in some land other than his own, as a rule. But the world goes round and round. Every day, the sun comes up the same as it did for Augustus Caesar or Hitler or for you and me this morning.”

“Yet each of these great and ambitious men,” I pointed out, “for all the blood and ruin of his passing, pushed the world ahead another step in its slow advance from barbarism.”

“You mean?” inquired Jim, steering for the shore, where a very inviting bed of rushes extended out by a rocky point – an ideal spot for a feeding muskie.

“These ambitious men, these Caesars, kings, protectors,” I offered, “each do something to forward their own selfish ends. They organize their own people. They develop science. They build roads, improve agriculture, build factories. They first exert their sense of power to improve their own nation in order to be strong enough to impose their power on surrounding nations. Thus science and industry are advanced.”

“At what a price!” exclaimed Jim.

“Then, to beat them, to destroy, them,” I pursued, “all the surrounding nations, and eventually the whole world, has to come abreast of the conqueror’s nation.”

“Then you approve,” demanded Jimmie, “of conquerors and of war?”

“I approve,” I said cautiously, “of that instinct in human nature which causes most men to compete with one another and which naturally brings forth a few men, as the result of the competition, who are extra-competitive, who are over-ambitious, who get out of control and sometimes, in their avid sense of power, bring trouble and often ruin on their fellow men.”

“You approve of them?” cried Jim.

“I said I approve of the instinct,” I corrected hastily.

“It’s the same thing,” said Jim.

“No. I think we can some day master the instinct of competition,” I submitted, “without destroying it, just the way we mastered the horse without destroying it. Back in the dawn of time, when men found that they had to kill and destroy most other animals, either to eat them or else to protect themselves, they found the horse. It was not particularly good to eat. It was not particularly dangerous, as were tigers or wolves. So they tamed the horse. I think we can tame the competitive. instinct in mankind. Some want to leave it wild, like a tiger, preying on us all. Some want to destroy it, like a tiger. I prefer to think of it as a wild horse, which we can tame and breed for our very great help and use.”

“You’ll never tame it,” said Jim. “It is the basic wild instinct of human nature.”

“We’ve nearly got it tamed now,” I declared.

“And you can say that,” protested Jim, “at this moment of the world’s history when the bloodiest war of all time is barely over!”

“With Europe a mass of ashes, ruin and nameless graves,” I proposed. “I think some profound ideas are bound to emerge. It was out of ruin and agony in the past that all our greatest ideas emerged.”

“Behead everybody,” cried Jim, “who shows the symptoms of ambition!”

“Behead us, then,” I triumphed, “for being so ambitious as to try to catch a muskie!”

“That’s different,” said Jim. “That’s just having fun.”

“Not for a muskie, it isn’t!” I pointed out, laying down my paddle and picking up my bait casting rod.

“How do we know a muskie doesn’t enjoy fighting us on the end of a line?” countered Jimmie, slowing the canoe and setting it sideways on, for me to cast towards the inviting rocks and weeds.

A Feeling of Power

“We’re here, Jim, right in this canoe, in this spot,” I reminded him, “because of that initiative deep in human natures, because of the competitive spirit in human nature. You and I are really here because we wish to compete with one another. We are here because we are tired of the dull routine, of our everyday lives. We want a little excitement. We want to exert our little sense of power, such as it is. I have power over this rod, this reel, this line. I have power to cast this lure. I have power and cunning to know just where to cast it, in the best hope of getting the biggest reward. I wish to exercise that power. I wish to feel that power. Baffled and beaten by my normal life, frustrated by editors, haunted by creditors, my life under control of hundreds of people around me over whom I have no power whatever, I come fishing here in order to exhibit what power I have.”

“Cast right in past that boulder there,” suggested Jimmie.

“Listen,” I said. “Leave this to me. This is my power I want to feel. You wait till your turn, and then feel your own power.”

“Okay, it’s exactly five minutes to ten,” said Jim. “I paddle you until five minutes to eleven. Then turn about, hour for hour. Let her go.”

I cast.

Those of you who don’t know the delights of a bait casting rod will have difficulty following me here. There is no sport like the bait casting rod. Unlike golf, in which you hit a ball and have to walk after it, with a bait casting rod you cast a lure and then reel it back to you. Like golf, bait casting is an exercise of skill in both distance and accuracy. You like to be able to cast the lure a long distance, when necessary, as in golf you like to make a good long drive. And as in golf, you like to make your approach shots and putts with skill and precision. More than three-quarters of golf is approach and field shots. More than four- fifths of bait casting is the making of accuracy casts at a certain rock, a certain log, a certain open space among the lily pads or rushes.

And you don’t have to walk after them.

You reel them slowly, enticingly back. Aw, bait casting has it all over any other sport you can think of. To be a practical bait caster is to experience that sense of power to its full. And you don’t have to hand in a score card, either. And you don’t even have to have somebody with you, some partner. You can get in your own boat and cast in solitary joy. If you catch fish, it is luck. The fish happened to be where you knew they should be. If you don’t catch fish, it isn’t your fault. The fish simply weren’t where they should have been. Your sense of power, of self-respect, is not damaged as it is in golf by a bad score.

“Take off that spoon,” said Jim, in the stern, “and put on a yellow and white plug.”

“Mind your own business,” I said, feeling my first cast slowly and letting the little spinner sink. My lure was a small brass and nickel spoon, on a seven-inch piano wire shank, with a weight of lead moulded right on to the piano wire to make it weighty enough to cast smoothly. Behind the spinner was a bucktail colored streamer concealing the good big bass hook. A hook that would hold the biggest muskie in the lake.

“On a day like this,” said Jim, “the muskies won’t be very active. They won’t be roaming around looking for food. They’ll be snoozing down amid the weeds, in the shadow of lily pads. You want a good bright, lively plug that will create a commotion and stir up the sense of power of the muskie. Irritate him. Challenge him. Employ your sense of power to awaken the sense of power of the muskie.”

“Now you are beginning to understand nature,” I applauded.

“Me, I’m going to use that jointed flap-doodle-bug, plug,” said Jim, “the red and yellow one with the silver spangle paint on it. I’m going to startle the muskie into feeling his authority is being flouted. A muskie rules, his bay or section of shore the way a dictator rules his nation. With endless vigilance, with tireless alertness. Let him see some creature ignoring his majesty, and the muskie takes a bang at it whether he is hungry or not.”

“I wish you understood human nature,” I said, “as well as you do muskie nature.”

“Take off that sissy little spinner,” said Jim.

“Mind your own business,” I replied.

“Hey, cast over past that little spur of rock sticking out,” hissed Jim. “There’s a deep shadow behind it. I bet it’s a pool 10 feet deep. The perfect spot for a royal snooze.”

“Look, Jim, you just paddle, see,” I said. “I do the casting. I do the picking of the spots. Your turn is next.”

However, I cast past the little spur of rock. It was, an ideal hole for a muskie. Behind the spur, the rock dropped sheer into a dark shadowy pool sheltered from the sun by rock and tree and the bush beyond. All around, for hundreds of yards, were stretches of lily pad bed, rushes and rocks where the dictator of these parts could find plenty of minnows, frogs, crawfish and the dainties of a muskie’s voracious appetite.

My lure sped in a smooth arc through the air. The little spinner spat lightly into the water a foot beyond the point of the rock spur. I commenced to reel almost at the instant the lure touched the water. As if it were some little frightened creature that had inadvertently fallen off the rock, I reeled it excitedly past the tip of rock and, stopping the reel for an instant, I let the lure pause and stagger on the very edge of the deep pool. A frightened, excited, bewildered little lure…

Action Stations

With a surge that washed waves three feet up the spur of rock, an enormous muskie rolled up out of the depth. His back, seeming a foot broad, arched out of the water, his back fin curved like a stallion’s neck. His vast reddish gleaming tail lifted and smote the water with a slap like a paddle. He dived. I struck.

With a sharp, slick snap-back of the rod tip, I set the hook in the muskie’s jaw.

“Glory!” roared Jim, starting to back the canoe away from shore.

We were about 30 feet out.

“Back, back!” I yelled.

When my hook jagged home in the huge fish’s jaw, he seemed to pause and hang suspended in the water the fraction of an instant. He shook his head. I was holding a tight line.

Realization dawned on that muskie in a lightning flash. He knew he was hooked.

“Baaa…” I screamed.

Through the water, straight for the canoe, came a great surging wave. I reeled madly. Jim backed madly.

But straight under the canoe raced the big fish, barely missing the bottom. We could feel the hump of his passage under us.

I had reeled. Not quite as fast as he had swum.

I felt the line tighten.

The muskie, feeling the sudden tension, rose for the surface and leaped.

My line was so short, his leap brought him round in an enormous, muscular curve of gnashing jaws, thrashing tail, every ounce of his many pounds of green and bronze energy flailing for its life.

Up and round he came.

Smack into the canoe, exactly between Jim and me.

His first gigantic convulsion threw my tackle box overboard. His second savage thrust pitched the lunch basket four feet in the air and overboard.

“Hey… hoy… who.. !” roared Jimmie.

“Ho, hi, wha…!” I joined.

But the thing was fated. The muskie lifted three feet in the air, and landed at my heels. He lifted four feet in the air and landed crossways within six inches of Jim’s knees.

His next crocodilian spasm upset the canoe.

Canoes always upset as if they had been built to upset. Smooth, slow, perfect.

I was still hanging on to my rod as we clung to the canoe and pushed it ashore. But when I reeled up, the muskie was gone.

We had lost our lunch, both tackle boxes, our clothes. Jim’s rod had stuck under the thwarts.

As we sat on the rock, looking at the soggy canoe and the quiet water glimmering in summer beauty before us, Jimmie raised his wrist watch. Shook it. Listened to it.

“Hmmm,” he said, “now we won’t know when my turn starts.”

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Editor’s Note: Back when Jimmie was drawing for the newspaper, original art was not considered valuable. He would create these illustrations for the weekly series, or his Birdseye Center comic, and after the printers were done with them, it would be returned to him. More than likely, his early work (1910s-early 1930s) would just be thrown out after use. Later in his career, when the art was returned to him, he would often give away these originals to people who visited him at his office. A reader has sent me a picture of the original artwork for this story, where you can see the vivid colours.

By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by Jim Frise, May 3, 1947.

“What’s all this?” demanded Jimmie Frise indignantly.

“My fishing tackle,” I informed him.

“For Pete’s sake!” cried Jim. “Two packsacks, three haversacks¹, a valise and what’s this?”

“That’s my rod case,” I said wearily, “and well you know it. You’ve seen it every year! Jim, do we have to go through this every opening day?”

“Look at my tackle,” said Jim proudly. “All in that one small haversack. Everything.”

“Skip it,” I assured him, as we loaded my gear into the car. “Some men are proud of how much tackle they’ve got. And some are proud of how little tackle they’ve got. So let’s skip it.”

“Holy smoke,” gasped Jim, trying various ways of getting my rod case into the car. “How many rods are you bringing in this case.”

“Four,” I informed him coolly. “I’ve brought my heavy Thomas rod in case it’s windy. I’ve brought that little three-and-a-half ouncer, in case we get calm weather and small trout. And then a couple of spare rods, just in case of breakage or anything.”

“Mm, mm, mm!” remarked Jim. “Four rods. And all I own is one that I’ve had for 10 years.”

“It’s quite all right with me,” I said loftily. “If a guy wants to spoil his own sport. If a guy wants to fish for little trout with a great big pole heavy enough for salmon…”

“My rod,” advised Jim, “is under five ounces and is delicate enough to handle the smallest trout it is legal to keep.”

“Fine,” I agreed, “if a guy wants to limit his sport to little tiddlers. But suppose we get strong winds or run into a flock of two-pound trout – a fine time you’ll have trying to drive a line into the wind with that stick of spaghetti…”

“With that rod,” snorted Jim, getting a little hot, “I can cast into a wind as slick as you can.”

“Ah,” I submitted, as we climbed into the car, “you’ve got an all-purpose rod, eh? Well, I never saw one. I like to have a set of rods intended for the various conditions we have to meet.”

“You go at fishing,” said Jim bitterly, “the way a mechanic goes to a job, with a whole litter of tools. You go at trout fishing the way a dentist goes at a patient, with trays loaded with all kinds of drills and picks, and pliers and toad stabbers…”

“Would you play golf,” I cut in, “with one club? Say, a number three iron? Jim, I’m tired of this holier-than-thou attitude of you guys who have a minimum of fishing tackle. Half the fun in any sport is the gear. Guns, golf, fishing – they’re all the same. The gear, the tackle, is half the fun. If fishing consisted of nothing more than catching a bagful of fish, then why are you a fly fisherman? Why didn’t you stick to a gob of worms on a two-for-a-cent hook, with a nail for a sinker?”

“People,” explained Jimmie, “are nuts.”

“Just because they buy fishing tackle?” I protested.

“Look,” set forth Jim. “I am told that the fishing tackle industry alone in Canada and the United States is capitalized at 300 million dollars.”

“It couldn’t be,” I declared. “Maybe you mean the sporting goods business – guns, baseball, golf, tennis.

“No, sir,” interrupted Jimmie. “Just the fishing tackle. Maybe my figures are wrong. I’m not too good at remembering figures and telephone numbers and that sort of thing. But you look at all the factories, the warehouses, the wholesalers, the retailers – it wouldn’t take long, when you consider all the cities and towns of North America, to run the capitalization of an industry into three hundred millions.”

“It seems an awful lot to me,” I muttered, thinking of my own collection a little guiltily.

“How many fishing tackle stores are there in North America,” pursued Jim, “from Boston to San Francisco; from Vancouver to Miami? How much is invested in the property itself, the store and the fixtures? How many thousand dollars worth of stock does each tackle store carry? You see? It soon mounts up.”

“Well, if that’s silly,” I countered, “how about the jewellery business? How many billions is the jewellery business capitalized at, counting the factories, the importing houses, the wholesalers and retailers? All of them full of diamonds and gold? Man, if you’re going to try to prove people are nuts, just start thinking about the billions that are invested in gewgawa².”

“But fishing tackle perishes,” pointed out Jim. “I know people who spend $75 for a fly rod, $40 for reel, $12 for a LINE. The rod soon wears out. The reel gets bust. The line goes tacky in two seasons.”

“That’s true of everything we buy,” I protested.

“Not diamonds, not gold,” triumphed Jim. “If you spend money on diamonds and jewels, you can get it back any time. It’s a real investment.”

“Now, that,” I scoffed, “is one of the things I’d really like to debunk. It’s a pretty theory. But how does it work out? A man spends, in his life time, say, $2,000 on diamonds and jewellery for his wife. Rings, brooch pins, watches. He dies. Then she dies, an old lady. When they sell all the old-fashioned junk her loving husband lavished on her, would they get $2,000 for it? No, sir. The diamonds are cut in an outmoded fashion. The jewellery is out of date, but not out of date enough to be an antique. I bet they wouldn’t get $300 for it. Anyways they never do sell it. They divide the junk up among the children and grand-children, and it’s stuck in a drawer and scattered and forgotten. Over the years, it just dwindles and perishes away, all that $2,000 worth of diamonds and jewellery. Just dwindles and perishes away like everything else men waste their money on.”

“I suppose,” mused Jimmie, as he steered onto the open highway and hurrah for the opening trout season. “I suppose that’s true. Everything a man buys dwindles and perishes. He builds a great house, and day by day and year by year, it depreciates and diminishes in value until, in time, it’s just so much junk, to be torn down to make way for a factory or a block of flats.”

“All money is wasted,” I remarked, “if you look at it philosophically. The only thing money can buy is for USE of something. Therefore, as regards fishing tackle, all I say is – get plenty of it.”

“And use it,” added Jim.

“Exactly,” I said.

“Well, then,” chuckled Jimmie, “how many trout flies do you own?”

“Well… uh…” I explained.

“You’ve got,” accused Jim, “hundreds of trout flies. Maybe thousands. You’ve got aluminum cases full of them all in neat rows clipped inside. You’ve got plastic boxes filled with them loose. You’ve got tiny little size 18 flies that are no bigger than a grain of rice, with a hook so small you can hardly see it. And great big flies the size of a mouse. Now, my friend, how are you going to USE all those trout flies?”

“Jim, you know as well as I do,” I protested, “that different weather conditions, different qualities of sunlight and shadow, different seasons, different types of water, whether small brook or big river…”

“Stuff and nonsense,” laughed Jimmie. “You know that the very best fly fishermen use only four or five patterns of trout fly, regardless of season, weather, and kind of water.”

“Aw, I admit,” I admitted, “that an expert fly fisherman restricted to half a dozen patterns of fly, can catch more fish than a dub fisherman with a hundred different patterns of fly…”

“Are you a dub³?” inquired Jim.

“No,” I asserted.

“Then,” crowed Jim, “what are you doing with all those bags full of trout flies back there? How many flies have you brought with you today, now? Be honest.”

“A few boxes,” I said.

“Five boxes?”

“About.”

“Ten boxes?”

“Possibly,” I muttered.

I LOVE trout flies. I have collected them for 30 years the way a stamp collector collects stamps. Or a butterfly collector collects insects. It’s a hobby. And a beautiful one. Nothing can be more artistic and delightful to the eye than fly boxes filled with row upon row of delicate, tastefully arranged trout flies of all sizes. In fact, I HATE to use them. I carry one old battered fly box with about five patterns of cheap commercial flies – Montreal, Par Belle, Grizzly King, Silver Doctor and brown hackle⁴ – and these I have used for years and years. But I wouldn’t DREAM of going fly fishing without almost my entire collection of beautiful, precious trout flies. They are for looking at. They are for show. They add a spiritual quality to fishing. They dignify it. Dignify an otherwise absurd pastime.

“Jim,” I said, “the day will come when you will be very glad of my trout flies. One day, we will be stumped. We’ll find the trout won’t rise to a single pattern we are accustomed to use.”

“Then I’ll go for a chub tail,” assured Jim, “or a worm.”

“No,” I smiled, “we’ll find what they WILL rise to among my beautiful collection.”

And that day came a lot sooner than I expected. It was, in fact, the minute we arrived at Duck Chutes. We drove off the highway, and the 12 miles into the village, and a mile down the bush road to Duck Chutes and were happy to find nobody ahead of us at this beautiful stretch of big, rapid water.

Jim got in first and cast with a McGinty squirrel tail, that is, a black and yellow-bodied fly with a wing of fur off a squirrel’s tail.

“WOW!” he bellowed above the roar of the rapids, and I stumbled down the bank.

“A two pounder,” he yelled excitedly. “And I missed him!”

He cast again. I watched intently. Among the rolling rapids, I detected that bulge of a big, shining body as it reached at Jim’s fly. Jim struck. The fly came through the air. No fish.

I waded a few yards down stream and began casting with two flies on my leader – a good-sized Zulu on the end and a claret hackle for a dropper. The team of flies hadn’t swung two yards down the rapids before I, too, saw the steely shape of a big trout arch and flick spray with its tail. I struck. The flies came flying back. No fish. But I too yelled WOW.

Jim shifted a few paces upstream. And I, a few down. About every second cast, we had the rise of a big, lithe trout. But not one of them connected.

So we waded ashore and changed flies. I changed to something lighter-colored and smaller – a Par Belle at the end and a Grizzly King for a dropper. Jim changed to larger and darker – a big streamer with a badger hackle and a crimson body,

Immediately we had results. Up slashed the big trout of Duck Chutes, arched and rolled at our flies, flicked spray with their tails. But did not connect.

“Okay,” I said to myself, wading ashore, “there is only the one answer. A polar bear streamer.”

This is a big fly, with glossy white polar bear hair for a wing, and a body of vari-colored wool.

I used it alone. I cast it across and let it swing down, tugging my rod tip lightly.

A trout struck it with that curious elastic thud with which a tennis ball strikes the racket.

I struck. The fly came loose. My line wobbled feebly back through the air, minus the fly.

I staggered ashore and sat down abjectly on a rock. Jimmie had seen the strike and hurried down to me.

“What did he take?” he shouted excitedly.

“A polar bear streamer,” I announced, already fumbling with trembling fingers through my fly box dedicated to streamers. There were only two polar bears left!

“Ah,” said Jim, bending.

So I gave him one and I tied on the other.

I waded out and cast. Before the fly had drifted one yard, the same huge pluck of the curving trout, the same inexorable drag of a heavy fish, the strike of my rod, and the same awful sensation of the leader parting and the line coming ragged and flyless through the air.

I went ashore and watched Jim.

Jim struck. His rod arched. He staggered backward towards shore. The line parted. The rod straightened. And there was Jimmie fallen limp and heart-broken on the boulders, moaning.

I went and stood over him.

“It was a three-pounder,” he hissed.

“So was mine,” I agreed.

“Any more polar bears?” he asked, looking up at me haggardly.

“Not one,” I muttered.

“Anything else like it?” he begged. “Among all those hundreds and hundreds of flies?”

“Nothing,” I said. “We could look through them. But…”

And then I saw Jim’s head shining at me, silvery, gleaming, glittering…

Well, gentlemen, it wasn’t a matter of minutes before we both had a new fly, the nearest thing to a polar bear you ever saw. We christened it, rather artistically, I thought, the Cheveux de Frise. With my fly-tying wallet, we did up a couple of flies with wisps of Jim’s hair.

They were sensations. The first trout, logically enough, fell to Jim, a two pounder. Mine was a three- pounder. Then Jim got a three-pounder and I lost my fly in a bigger one still. Naturally, Jim had to come ashore while I trimmed him for a new one.

Well, between catching trout and wading ashore to provide either Jim or me with a new fly, a very happy two hours of Duck Chutes fishing was enjoyed until we reached our legal poundage of fish and Jimmie looked like a leper.

But it just shows you, you can’t have enough fishing tackle.

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Editor’s Notes:

1. The deference between packsacks and haversacks are usually just the amount they hold. ↩︎
2. Also “gewgaws”, known as worthless trinkets. ↩︎
3. In this case, “dub” means “a fool or incompetent person”. The same as a “duffer” in golf. ↩︎
4. All different kinds of flies. Greg was so into flies and fly fishing, that he even has a fly that he developed named after him, Clark’s Deer Hair Nymph. ↩︎

By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by James Frise, July 25, 1936.

“To tell the truth,” said Jimmie Frise, “I’m getting a little tired of this week-end business.”

“My dear boy,” I said, “on a day like this?”

“On any kind of a day,” stated Jim. “We work like maniacs all week. Why? To get away over the week-end. Then we drive like maniacs for two hundred miles. Why? To reach some distant point, where we work like maniacs again to enjoy ourselves a few hours Saturday evening and part of Sunday up until about three p.m. Then like maniacs we drive home again, two hundred miles. Why? To be on time to start work again like maniacs for the next week.”

“It does sound funny,” I confessed.

“It is funny,” said Jim, not laughing.

“But isn’t this swell?” I asked, looking around at the ripe fields wheeling past the car windows, the bright summer sky, the sense of being alive that filled the whole earth. “Suppose we didn’t work like maniacs, but only took life lazily all week and then took the week-ends lazily, sleeping all Sunday, would that be any better?”

“How,” said Jim, “about working like maniacs all week, week-ends and all? How about working like maniacs straight ahead for ten years? In ten years you and I could make enough jack to retire for life.”

“And die,” I suggested, “of over-exertion the year after we quit?”

“Nonsense,” scoffed Jim, who was driving; “that’s one of those notions set at large by the big shots to keep a lot of us from trying to be big shots, too. Look around you. Look at the people that are having the good time. Everyone of them are birds who had enough sense when they were young to realize that the only way to really enjoy life was to work like fury and gather in the dough. And then they could coast.”

“It’s the old problem,” I sighed. “To enjoy life as you go along or to toil in the vineyard and store up treasures in heaven. Or your fifties.”

“My fifties,” said Jim, “are creeping pretty nigh.”

“You’ll still be fond of fishing.” I assured him.

“And Russian pool,” sneered Jim, “and horse races and sailing and rabbit shooting and duck shooting and poker and…”

“I don’t know anybody,” I laughed, “who has as much fun as you.”

“It’s just frittering,” declared Jim heatedly. “Frittering, that’s all it is. I play pool in a pool room. I go to the races and stand in the jam. I have an outboard motor. I go down around Lindsay to shoot a few rabbits. I go and sit in a frozen bog in at lake where the ducks have been shot off forty years ago by the millionaires who used to own it. Do you know what I could have, if I worked and saved my dough?”

“Stomach trouble,” I said. “A sour puss. A mean disposition.”

“I could play pool,” said Jim, “in a swell club, with a marker in a white coat standing by to hold my cigar butt for me. I could sit in the members’ enclosure at the races on an ornamental bench, with nobody standing in front of me. I could own a yacht, a sailing yacht, and go on cruises down the St. Lawrence.”

The Whole Secret

“Would you invite me?” I asked.

“Instead of frittering a Saturday,” said Jim, with an expression so hard that I knew my old friend, if he ever changed, would invite a far better class of people than I on his yacht, “instead of dashing down to a swamp near Lindsay to shoot maybe one rabbit, I could go to the Rockies on a six-weeks’ hunt for grizzles and mountain sheep and moose. Or maybe on safari to Africa after big, dangerous game.”

“Look at Hemingway,” I said. “Hemingway used to just be a plain newspaperman like us, working on The Star Weekly, and he started to work and wrote novels, and now look at him. Shooting elephants.”

“Lions,” said Jim. “And for duck shooting I could take a month in December and go down to the Gulf of Mexico to an exclusive club and shoot a thousand mallards.”

“By the time you had made enough money to do all this,” I explained, “you would be changed. You wouldn’t want to do anything so silly as shoot and fish and go to races. You would only want to do something sensible, like building a bank or buying a mine or a railroad.”

“You can’t take out of a man,” said Jim, “the things the Lord put into him first.”

“That’s the whole secret,” I agreed. “And the Lord put little pleasant things in us, like wanting to be happy and fish and go motoring in the country like this. Or shoot rabbits. If the Lord had put into us the desire to shoot lions or sail yachts He would have fitted us up with the steam for making big money.”

“Right there,” said Jim sharply, “I disagree. It is all a case of taking the easiest course. You and I could make money as easy as any broker or shirt maker. But we would have to work. We’d have to give up all these silly week-ends. We’d have to sell our rods and guns and stuff. We’d have to buckle down.”

“With a goal in view,” I agreed, “I could work as hard as any man.”

“All my life,” said Jim, “I have smiled at these big shots who work like fools, scorning the little amusements of life. But now I am beginning to think the smile has been on me. How many fish have we got this year for all the trips we’ve taken?”

“It’s been an off year,” I admitted.

“It’s been an average year,” stated Jim. “I bet we haven’t got forty trout apiece, and so far about fifteen bass apiece.”

“I nearly got a muskie week before last,” I reminded him. “Remember the fellow who got that twelve-pounder just ahead of me? If he hadn’t been there I’d have got that muskie.”

“We fished trout every week-end in May and June and bass and muskies ever since,” said Jim. “Do you realize that if we had the spondoolicks we could go to places where we, could catch forty trout in an evening and fifteen bass in one hour?”

“It would be illegal,” I pointed out.

To Be Big Shots

“What would we care, if we were big shots? No, sir. Down where we can get on our frittering little trips everything we want has been gone years ago. But out in the distant places, far beyond the reach of anybody but the rich, there is everything we want. Grizzlies in Alaska. Lions in Africa. All the wide sea to sail in. Lovely, strange countries we will never see. Secret, lovely places like Greenland; and we feel excited going to Muskoka in January. Places that make you cry just to look at them, like Rome. And we get a big kick out of Niagara Falls.”

“I guess the ones born in Rome don’t cry,” I supposed, “and when they get a picture postcard of Niagara Falls they put it up on the wall and keep it for thirty years.”

“You have been filled,” declared Jimmie, “with the bunk that is taught by the big shots for the purpose of keeping you happy and out of the running. Suppose we all tried to get rich? How would the big shots like that? So they teach us to sing ‘There Is No Place Like Home.’ And they go to Africa.”

“Jim,” I accused, “you’re a Communist.”

“I am only sore,” said Jim, stamping on the gas and shooting the car recklessly past a string of slow-goers, “at all this piddling around and never getting anywhere. I’m sick and tired of it. I feel as if I never wanted to go on another week-end. I feel like cutting out all this trifling and getting down to work. I’d like to have about two hundred thousand dollars.”

“How could you make that,” I inquired, “in ten years?”

“By working,” said Jim. “And saving. And putting every cent away except what I really need to live on. Capital is the secret. Capital begets capital. Money works. The more I saved the smarter I would get at making it. The more money I had the more I would mix with men who make money and they would inspire fresh ideas in me. I could think up marvellous advertising art. I could presently found a company for producing advertising art of a new and sensational kind. The money I make I would invest in other companies that I would know, from my wealthy friends, were money makers. We’re saps.”

“I could write novels,” I submitted, “and movie scenarios. I’ve heard of men making a hundred thousand dollars out of a movie scenario. Two of those and I’d have two hundred thousand. And in less than ten years.”

Jim drove in silence, with a fierce expression on his face. I sat thinking of writing two movie scenarios.

“All right,” said Jim suddenly. “I’m set. I tell you, this is the last trip. If it weren’t for you I’d turn right around now and go back home and head straight for the office.”

“Don’t mind me,” I assured him. “If you really are convinced, Jim. I would be only too glad to join you. These great resolutions come like this. It’s a sort of spiritual thing. You suddenly see things clear and plain. Turn at the next corner.”

“Are you with me?” asked Jim, his face strained with the depth of his feeling. “Do you feel as I feel? Are we fools? Shouldn’t we cut out all this frittering and get down to work? Shouldn’t we make hay while the sun shines and be free men, in a few years, to go where we like, to the ends of the earth, to where there is fun and beauty and life?”

“Turn at the next cross-roads, Jim,” I said breathlessly.

Seeing a Great Light

“What a sap I have been,” groaned Jim, shifting restlessly and gripping the steering wheel with excitement. “Don’t ever speak to me of week-ends again,” he cried. “Don’t ever try to show me a snapshot of a fish.”

“I’m changing, too,” I reminded him. “Not more snapshots.”

We came to a cross-roads. Just a country concession road. Jim put out his arm to warn the long parade of week-end traffic. He swung the car into the little dirt road. “Take your time,” I warned. “No gap in traffic in sight yet.”

“Here’s a car coming out,” said Jim. And he drove his car a few rolls farther down the dirt road to let pass a gaudy-looking green car that was coming out to the highway.

But the outcoming car halted and a man stepped out of it.

“Are you going in to Camp Cumfy Duck?” asked this gentleman, who was sunburned and jolly looking and wore a linen cap.

“No, sir, we’re not,” said Jim politely, but in the manner of a man who knows his own mind.

“Sorry,” said the linen-capped gent, eyeing our fishing tackle and gear. “Going fishing?”

“No, sir, we’re not,” said Jim, in the same presidential manner.

“I’ve come away,” explained the tanned gentleman, “with the favorite lure of the head guide at Camp Cumfy Duck, and I was hoping you were headed in there to save us a nine-mile drive back. Ever been to Camp Cumfy Duck?”

“Never,” said Jim, as if the interview were now ended.

“Greatest muskie water in Canada,” said the genial fellow, heartily. “You look like a couple of sports, or I wouldn’t mention it. Wait a second.”

He skipped around the back of the car and lifted the lid of a rough box leaking ice water.

He hauled forth a, muskie of at least twenty pounds. It was jade green. It was barred with deep shadows of darker jade. It was square-built and powerful. Its immense jaws were fanged with pearly white scimitars. Its baleful eye was proud and fierce, even in death.

Jim got out one side of the car and I the other.

“How much?” asked Jim.

“Twenty-one pounds,” said the sportsman, and his partner, a lean man, got out and joined us at the back of the car.

Out of the ice packing our new friend drew forth five more muskies, eight- pounders, ten-pounders, twelve-pounders.

“All taken,” he stated proudly, “on the Tipsy Giggler. A very sporting bait. Single hook.”

“Very,” Jim and I both agreed, hefting the fish. “Very,”

We laid them out on the grass by the roadside. We admired them and measured them. We lifted them up and laid them down.

“Camp Cumfy Duck?” said Jim. “I never even heard of it.”

“You never hear of the good places,” said our friend. “The only places you ever hear of are the ones that have to be heard of or else nobody would go, since the fish are all gone.”

“That’s true,” said Jim, as if seeing a great light. “By jove, that’s a fact. You said it.”

“As a matter of fact,” I said, “we were looking for some likely spot to spend the week-end. I wonder would there be room at Camp Cumfy Duck for us?”

“My dear sir,” said the new found friend, “I’ll give you a note to the proprietor!”

So while Jim and I lifted the fish reverently back into the ice box the man in the linen cap wrote a note on a scrap of paper.

And down the side road we drove, eight bumpy, swampy miles, to a pleasant old summer hotel on a quiet reedy lake where islands and patches of rushes showed where the muskies rolled and fed of an evening.

We had a quick supper. We shoved off in a skiff. We coasted past the first patch of reeds. I in the stern, Jim in the bow, casting. With Tipsy Gigglers.

“There was really no use turning back,” said Jim, “not when there were muskies so handy. But this is good-by.”

Jim sped his lure like a bullet deep into a pocket among the rushes. I cast mine high and true across the far end of the reed patch. We started to draw the lures home. A sound like a calf falling in the water attracted my attention to Jim’s lure, where an enormous boil in the water indicated trouble.

“Sock him!” I shouted. Jim socked. A huge crocodilian form of jade green leaped tumultuously out of the reedy water.

“Jim,” I roared, “It’s the fish of your life.”

I felt a violent jag at my rod. I looked. Another vast boil in the water appeared just about where my lure would be. I struck.

Out, waggling heavily from side to side, came another monstrous muskie, his jaws agape, to flounder with my Tipsy Giggler dangling from his lip.

“Farewell,” roared Jimmie. “Hello!”

And of the perils we met and mastered, the dreadful rushes of those simultaneous fish, their dives into the reeds, their leaps high into the air on the end of our fragile lines, the times they went under the boat, the times they sulked and the times they raced, I will not detail; because matters of this kind are of interest only to those who wield the dainty four ounce casting rod in the face of the tiger of all fishes.

But we got them. We got them. Jim gaffing mine, holding his doggo meantime then I gaffed his. And we shook hands a score of times and shouted and sang, and rowed back to Camp Cumfy Duck, vowing never would we leave it for any lesser kingdom of the blessed.

And when, long after gutting and icing our great fish, we retired to bed hoping for tomorrow, I said to Jimmie:

“Look here: how about this frittering business? This conversion? Going after big money?”

“Fate,” said Jim, sleepily, “must have overheard us.”

---

Editor’s Notes: As has been established elsewhere, Jimmie likes playing pool, specifically Russian Pool.

“Spondoolicks” is slang for money.

$200,000 in 1936 would be $4,280,000 in 2023.

Gaffing in fishing is a secure with a hook. “Doggo” at the time meant “keeping quiet, in hiding”, but it does not seem to fit how Greg is using it.

This story was reprinted in Greg Clark & Jimmie Frise Outdoors (1979).

By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by James Frise, May 3, 1941.

“Do you suppose,” inquired Jimmie Frise, “there is anybody fishing in Germany?”

“If there is not,” I replied, “I bet there are plenty who wish they were.”

“Maybe so,” said Jimmie, “but for every man that isn’t fishing in Germany, there ought to be a man not fishing amongst us. Sooner or later, we are going to have to get it through our cheerful skulls that war is a game like any other game, and you have to have the same number of players on our team, as well trained as the other team and equipped with as serviceable equipment, if we expect to win.”

“I’ve seen rough country teams… ” I began.

“The greatest heroes in the world,” interrupted Jimmie, “can be beaten by the biggest cowards on earth, if the cowards have Tommy guns and the heroes have baseball bats.”

“The justice of our cause…” I started.

“Justice is a funny thing,” cut in Jim. “High as my opinion of our system of justice in this country may be, I still wouldn’t like to be a poor man, with the most just cause on earth, up against a billion-dollar corporation. Two poor men can get justice between them. Two billion-dollar corporations can get justice between them. But so long as justice costs money, those with money are going to be able to carry on from court to court and leave the poor man behind. What were you saying about the justice of our cause?”

“I forget,” I admitted. “It was something about the war.”

“Ah, yes,” said Jim. “Now let’s suppose this war is a hockey championship. Whichever team wins each member of the team is going to get a million dollars, plus ten thousand for each goal scored.”

“That’s a game I’d like to watch,” I exclaimed.

“You are watching it,” said Jim. “Now suppose our opponents are the Chicago Black Hawks and they have been in training all winter. They have been playing games right along. Winning them all. And we know our game against them is due on a certain date.”

“Where’s our team?” I inquired.

“We haven’t got one,” explained Jim. “We don’t believe in hockey that much. So we plan, the night of the game, to pick a team from the audience.”

“Don’t be silly.” I scoffed. “With $1,000,000 to each player?”

“Oh, we’ve got plenty of courage,” said Jim. “We feel hockey is a Canadian game. Everybody just naturally plays hockey in Canada, whereas the Chicago Black Hawks are foreigners. Besides, they’re professionals. We’ll pick a team from the audience, and by sheer sportsmanship and by sheer natural merit we’ll win…”

“That’s an absurd analogy to the war, Jim,” I protested.

“Okay,” said Jim, “you give me an analogy. To what extent is the average Canadian household in this war? The average Canadian man, woman and child thinks the war is a radio program.”

“Jim,” I said, scandalized.

War-Conscience

“Well, we’re planning to go trout fishing tomorrow,” stated Jim. “All over the country, from Nova Scotia to Vancouver Island, men are planning tonight to go trout fishing tomorrow.”

“What could we do if we stayed home?” I demanded. “Could we make one shell? Could we help assemble one tank? Is there a single thing we could do tomorrow, by staying home, that would have the slightest effect on the course of the war?”

“Yes,” said Jim, “there is. A mighty and powerful effect on the war. We would be sacrificing something we really care about. We would be sacrificing, actually, for the first time.”

“Tens of thousands of Canadian homes have given up sons and husbands,” I asserted.

“The average home,” retorted Jim firmly, “is undisturbed. All the baloney about our individual war effort in soaking money away in war bonds and savings is just so much taffy to a lot of people who are kidding themselves that they are in the war. They are not losing. They are gaining.”

“Any number of modest, decent people,” I declared, “are depriving themselves of luxuries and even necessaries in order to save for the war.”

“Being thrifty,” stated Jim, “whether by instinct or as the result of exhortation, is not sacrifice. Sacrifice means losing something. For keeps.”

“Like a season’s fishing,” I submitted. “If I live to be 60, I have only 11 fishing seasons left.”

A Real Sacrifice

“Your private life and the even tenor of your way,” declared Jim, “must be upset before you start to function on a war basis. Everybody else in Canada has to give up something they love as much as you love fishing. And then watch Canada go to war.”

“Well,” I sighed, “I had everything packed. My rods and packsack are stacked in the vestibule, waiting. I’ve got my fishing clothes all hung ready in my closet. My fishing boots are greased. I put a red bandanna in the hip pocket of my old fishing pants. I put a handful of matches in the right-hand pocket. I spent the whole of last night getting everything ready…”

“I’m glad,” said Jim. “Now you will feel the loss more keenly. It would be no good if you gave up fishing without a pang. Whatever we give up, we should give up with bitterness. Then we’ll function.”

“As a matter of psychology, Jim,” I proposed, “don’t you think it would be even a greater sacrifice if we gave up fishing after the first trip of the year? So that our suffering will be all the keener?”

Jim reflected.

“You’ve got something there,” he mused. Which explains the fact that you might have seen us driving heartily northward over the week-end along with all the rest of the angling fraternity for the opening of the trout season.

Jim and I agreed not to mention the war from start to finish of the trip. We would pretend it was just the same glorious old opening as ever. But deep in our hearts we would know that this was the end. That every jewel of an hour spent on the streamside was one hour nearer the end of our sport for a long time to come. Anyone seeing us wading the stream and casting our flies would little dream that we were participating in a psychological ceremony the purpose of which was to make us bigger and better citizens.

The opening of the trout season is to an angler what Christmas is to a saint or the last day of school is to a schoolboy. It has religious elements in it as well as a sort of elemental joy that cannot be reasoned out. A man is at best a poor captive to civilization. It was fear that drove men into communities in the long, long ago; but sparks of courage still linger in the ashes of men’s hearts, and when those sparks fly a man feels an almost desperate desire to escape into the open to do primitive things.

It was a lovely day when we left the city. There was what the Scottish anglers call an “airt.” That means the atmosphere is so soft and humid, you can almost feel it between your thumb and finger. It was a day for birds to sing, for flies to fly, for bees to fall on the stream and for fish to rise up from the wintry bottom of their home and take a slash at the sky.

But when we crossed over the Caledon ridge a few miles north of the city, there came a change. The trees were not so advanced in bud. The fields had a sad and wintry look. And there was no airt.

And far ahead the horizon had a solid bank of gray cloud, as though April had not yet given up.

And when we reached the trout country itself, we had come under that gray bank and you might have thought we had driven two weeks back into time.

“Should we try to set up the tent?” I asked Jim, “or should we go right in to the farm and get Roy to put us up in the spare room?”

“I hate suddenly descending on a farm,” said Jim. “It isn’t merely that they have to get the room ready for us. They are upset in all ways. They feel they have to get to work and cook up special menus. Visitors on a farm are a matter of ceremony.”

“Maybe we could sleep in Roy’s barn,” I suggested. “The hay would be comfortable.”

“Let’s put up the tent,” urged Jim. “This is good-by, to trout fishing. Let us do it up in the traditional fashion.”

“It will be mighty chilly when night falls,” I pointed out.

“And it might even rain,” admitted Jim.

Might even rain! Ten miles this side of the river the rain began in a fine drizzle. By the time we reached the sideroad into Roy’s it had started in earnest. The clouds sagged down as they only can in May, as though to wake the earth with their kiss. The rain pelted. The road, rutted and filled with big holes, became a little river itself. And when we reached the creek we hardly recognized it. It had overflowed its banks and was running the color of church social coffee.

“How about, Roy’s?” I demanded.

“Let’s sit and enjoy the rain,” countered Jim. “After all, this is one of nature’s moods. We love them all.”

So there we sat in the car, with the windows up, while the rain pelted in slanting streaks and the whole earth became flooded and the stream steadily rose until the fences in the fields were waving in its current and the road had tides, across it.

For an hour the rain pelted. Then a patch of blue appeared and we put on our rubber boots and ventured forth.

“There isn’t a dry spot big enough for the tent within miles,” I declared.

“The tent has a waterproof floor,” reminded Jim. “Come on. Let’s do this up like men, not like sissies.”

He dragged out the tent in its bag and we walked up the road a few paces to study a little hillock of sand.

“Dry as a chip,” cried Jim. “Once we get the tent over it, she’ll be as cosy as a fox’s den.”

“It looks like an all-night rain to me,” I professed.

“Come on, grab hold,” said Jim.

So we spread out the tent on the soaking herbage and started to look about for a couple of poles. And suddenly the blue patch above vanished in a thick brown cloud and down came the deluge again. We rolled the tent up hastily and ran back to the car.

Now the rain really came down.

“To Roy’s,” I voted firmly.

Jim started the engine and went into low gear. The car shifted violently down on one corner.

“Now we’re done for,” I informed him.

The shoulder of the road had given way under our weight and the grab of, the car wheel. The more Jim tried the deeper we sank into thick mud.

“We’ll have to get Roy after all,” I submitted.

We walked along the flowing side road in the whirling rain and up to Roy’s farm, where there was nobody home but a little girl who said her father wasn’t expected until supper-time.

The next nearest farm,” I reminded Jim, “is that bird we had the row with last year about fishing on his part of the stream.”

“Tell your Daddy,” said Jim to the little girl, “that Mr. Frise is expecting him down at the stream.”

“Let’s wait here,” I suggested, looking out from the warmth of the house to the sweeping rain.

“This is a fishing trip,” replied Jim, “and I’m going to at least wet a line.”

Back to the car we trudged. From beneath the wet and bedraggled tent, which we had not restored to its bag, we fished out our rods and fly hooks. With heads bowed, we fastened on our reels and threaded up our lines; hitched on the leaders and tied on a couple of big, gaudy flies that we thought might catch the eye of a trout in that soup-colored stream roaring by.

Jim fished up and I fished down. It was ridiculous to cast a line at all. Great sticks and roots sailed along in the flood. It was impossible even to remember the shape of the stream or where its banks and familiar holes were.

It was growing dusk and with the rain came a new chill in the air. I quit and fought wet brush out to the road and came back to the car, where I found Jimmie on the running-board emptying his boots and taking down his rod.

“I think I heard Roy drive in,” he said wetly.

“Jim,” I declared, getting into the car, “what is there about fishing that attracts intelligent people like us? It’s always the same. It always turns out like this. What is the delusion we are under about the joy of fishing?”

“I was just thinking,” said Jim, “that it would be no sacrifice to give up fishing, after all.”

“You’re quite right,” I agreed. “We’ll have to study up some other sacrifice.”

So when Roy arrived over the fields with a team of horses to haul us out, we declined his ardent invitation to spend the night and said that as the stream would not be down to normal for a couple of days at least we might just as well go on back home to the city.

Which we did.

By Gregory Clark, illustrated by James Frise, August 24, 1946.

“Well,” sighed Jimmie Frise, “summer is practically over.”

“The heck it is,” I protested indignantly. “We’ve got all September and …”

“September isn’t summer,” declared Jim bleakly. “September is autumn.”

“After the 21st,” I insisted firmly. “We’ve got nearly another month of summer. Don’t make it seem any shorter than it is.”

“It isn’t me that makes summer seem short,” said Jim doggedly. “It IS short. In Canada, we don’t get two months of summer.”

“Jim, you’re very ungrateful. Think,” I reminded, “if we lived in a country like Bermuda. Summer all the time!”

“Oh, boy!” gloated Jim.

“But no contrasts,” I warned. “No feeling of appreciation. Every day the same, year in, year out. Summer, summer, summer.”

“It would suit me,” declared Jim.

“I’d die,” I submitted, “of sheer boredom. What I love about Canada is its versatility. When you go to bed in Canada, you haven’t the vaguest idea what kind of a day it’s going to be tomorrow. Man, that’s adventure. That adds zest.”

“One thing I know,” asserted Jim somberly. “In about two months, it’s going to be cold and bleak and the leaves are going to be tumbling ahead of the wind on the ground …”

“What a thought on a day like this!” I snorted, looking out from the cottage veranda over the keen, sparkling water.

It was one of those rarest days of summer in Canada. A hale west wind blowing. A fine mid-August westerly. All the trees in the full health of leaf and bough, bending in the wind and making a strong clear rushing sound. By mid-August, the tree foliage is leathery and tough and made to bathe in these fine tangy winds from the west.

“Do you realize, Jim,” I demanded, “that this week and next are the two finest bass fishing weeks of the whole year?”

“I don’t recall any famous catches at this season,” said Jim.

“The records prove it,” I stated. “For 30 years, The Toronto Star maintained a prize contest for the biggest black bass. And with few exceptions across those 30 years, the winners were caught in the latter part of August. The six-and-a-half-pounders, the seven-pounders.”

“Coincidence,” suggested Jimmie.

“Not a chance,” I corrected. “It stands to reason, Jim. Big bass are big because they have been successful in escaping death at the hands of anglers. Big bass are big because they are wily and cunning. In July, when the season first opens, the weather is mild and fine. A smart bass can detect the approach of the fisherman’s boat 100 yards off. The weeds are young and easily seen through. The big bass may be hungry, but he knows he has all summer ahead of him to feed up. So he uses judgment and tact in selecting his food. He doesn’t grab hold of the first bait that passes him, as younger fish do. So he grows big and old and wise.”

Bass Goes a-Hunting

“And how,” inquired Jim, “does he fall for it in late August?”

“This hale west wind,” I pursued, “suggests to the bass what it suggested to you a few minutes ago. It suggests that summer is blowing to its end. That autumn is coming. And the big bass, remembering other years, decides it is about time he started feeding up against the lean months.”

“I can follow that,” agreed Jim.

“Yes, sir,” I went on. “So the big bass leaves his hiding place beneath sunken log or behind rocky shelf, and under the influence of this fine wind, beating the water into a turmoil, he goes ahunting. He grows a little careless, as all men do when urgent need drives them. He comes along these wind-beaten shores, stuffing himself with minnows dazed by the waves, gorging on his favorite food, the crawfish, which have been washed from under the rocks by the continued pounding of the waves. There are fine pickings along the shores these days for a big bass with an eye to economy of movement.”

“It’s sort of harvest home for the bass, too.” suggested Jim.

“I,” I submitted, “could do with a real feast of bass. We will skin them, fillet them, and fry the fillets in an iron frying pan on a good hot stove.”

“With chopped parsley right on them as they fry,” contributed Jim.

“And no vegetables,” I menued, “but plenty of toast, some slightly bitter leaf lettuce – not that awful, watery, head lettuce! …”

“And,” rounded off Jim, sitting up smartly, “a large plate of cold, ripe, sliced tomatoes!”

“Ah, that’s better,” I exclaimed, as Jim got to his feet full of resolve. “That’s more Augusty. I hate to see a man gloomy in August.”

“Have you any suggestions as to where we’ll fish?” asked Jim alertly, facing the wind and catching a big lungful.

“Any place,” I suggested.

“No, sir. I’ve got an idea,” said Jim. “You know that old settler up the road? Old man Mose, the kids call him?”

“Certainly: an old acquaintance of mine,” I stated. “Name of Colquhoun.”

“Colquhoun, is it?” said Jim. “Well, I saw him on the road a couple of days ago, and I said to myself-there’s an old guy knows every nook and cranny of this country like a book.”

“He does,” I admitted cautiously. “He does. But in the 40 years I’ve known him – and he was always old -he never imparted any of his knowledge to me. Or to anybody else in the summer resort, as far as I can find out.”

“A hermit, is he?” asked Jim.

“Well, no, not a hermit, exactly,” I explained. “A hermit is usually a little queer, maybe religious, maybe shy. Old man Mose, as the kids all call him for the past half century, isn’t queer, isn’t religious, isn’t shy. The way I heard it, he made an unfortunate marriage when he was a young man and simply ran away and hid up in this neck of the woods. He built a cabin, intending to live by trapping and poaching. It was when we summer resorters came along and found this heavenly spot that old Colquhoun took a scunner against us. He hasn’t spoken to any of us within my memory.”

“By golly, that’s true,” said Jim. “I greeted him the other day and he never let on. I thought he was deaf.”

“Nothing deaf about him,” I assured. “He Just doesn’t like tourists. He hates summer cottagers. They’ve ruined his trapping and poaching.”

“Well, I guess there’s no chance of getting him to tip us off to some secret, choice bass fishing spot,” surmised Jim.

“He’s a mean old cuss,” I certified. “He’s tight as wax. I doubt if he’s ever given anybody – even the other settlers around – so much as nail in his life. He’s famous for his meanness.”

“Rather an interesting old cuss,” mused Jimmie. “I like mean old characters. There’s always something curious and attractive about them. When you get to know them, you find the secret of their meanness, and it’s fascinating to discover how gnarled and twisted, and knotty and grainy human nature can become over some trifling little thing…”

“But not old man Mose,” I chuckled. “He’s just plain cussed.”

“Did you ever try to get acquainted with him?” demanded Jim.

“When I was a young man up here,” I recounted, “I went a long way out of my way to try to cultivate the old skinflint. But no use. He was laid up with flu one summer and I took him a whole carton of supplies–bacon, jelly, oranges, bread … He not only didn’t so much as say thanks, he just lay in bed, behind his beard, and studied me with shrewd, mocking, suspicious eyes. I tried to sit down and have a bedside chat. He pretended to have a bad coughing spell and then shut his eyes. I left.”

“Well,” cried Jim, “maybe the poor guy was sick. You don’t base your opinion on…”

“Oh, no,” I assured. “For the next two years, every time he saw me on the road he’d dart into the bushes to avoid me. Finally, I asked one of the other settlers what old Colquhoun had against me. And he told me the old boy was expecting me to hand him a bill for the groceries I brought him while he was ill.”

“No!” said Jim.

“He just can’t believe anybody is good-hearted,” I explained. “I have hundreds of examples. He’s quite a character.”

Bearding the Lion

“I’m going to pay him a visit,” said Jim with determination.

“Select some day when you have nothing better to do,” I suggested. “Let’s go bass fishing today.”

“I’m betting.” declared Jim, tightening his belt, “that that old character knows every bass hole in this country for miles around. And if he has never told anybody where they are – imagine the bass that’ll be in them!”

“You’re wasting your time,” I said.

“It’s only 15 minutes up this road to his shanty,” Jim calculated. “The walk would do us some good. I’ll be back in half an hour with old Colquhoun.”

“Yes, you will,” I laughed.

As I had a new line to put on my bass reel and one or two other little odd jobs, I went down to the boathouse while Jim headed up the rocky backwoods road around the end of the lake where old Colquhoun’s cabin occupied, by long odds, the finest point for a cottage in the whole countryside.

And you can imagine my astonishment, when I looked up from finishing reeling on my new line, to see, coming down the road together in full stride, Jimmie and old Colquhoun, in hearty converse.

Jim brought the old boy down to the boathouse and introduced us, neighbors for 40 years, man and boy, us if I were a newcomer to the district. Old Colquhoun looked at me with kindly interest as if he had never laid eyes on me before in his life. He shook hands firmly.

“Mr. Colquhoun,” announced Jimmie beaming, “knows a bass lake less than five miles from here that he says is simply teeming with great big five and six-pounders…”

“Where’s that?” I asked narrowly.

“Oh, it’s a little secret of me own,” said Mr. Colquhoun hoarsely but jovially. “A little secret I’ve had these past 50 years. Never a tourist into it.”

“In which direction?” I inquired cautiously. “I know most of the lakes within five miles.”

“No tourist would ever find it,” confided Mr. Colquhoun. “We can get there in your car. The road ain’t so good. But it ain’t so bad. A nice little light car like yours…”

“You mean my open job?” I asked sharply. “Why not take your car, Jim? A light car isn’t as good as a heavy car on these backwoods roads …”

“A heavy car,” put in Mr. Colquhoun, “would sink in the bog.”

“Any car,” I stated suspiciously, “would sink in the bog.”

“Oh, it ain’t that bad,” said Mr. Colquhoun. “Take whatever car you like. But all I say is, be prepared to have to pry her out of holes here and there…”

“Jim,” I cut in sharply. “We don’t have to go to any remote neck of the woods for some bass. We can get a feed of bass by taking the rowboat right out in front here…”

“Six-pounders,” announced Mr. Colquhoun “Seven-pounders even.”

“Well, I’m certainly going,” declared Jimmie. “I’m not going to pass up a chance of a lifetime…”

“I wouldn’t of tipped you off,” explained Mr. Colquhoun, “exceptin’ I am getting old. No use keepin’ secrets to the grave, is there?”

I looked at him steadily. He looked back at me, and if ever I saw just plain malignance in a human gaze, there it was. Flickering.

“I’ll go in my car, if you don’t want to come,” said Jim.

“I’ll come,” I said gloomily.

And we went in the cottage, leaving Mr. Colquhoun outside, to get our gear for the trip.

Tackling the Backwoods

“What did you do to the old bird?” I inquired of Jim inside. “Give him some kind of a sulpha pill or something? Maybe one of these new penicillin lozenges…?”

“As usual,” stated Jim, “your prejudices, acquired in early youth, have been robbing you all the rest of your life. I found him a decent, gnarled old boy. He was sitting thinking on his front step when I walked up. I asked him, matter of fact, if he could tell me of any good bass fishing off the beaten track…”

Well, wonders will never cease, I find.

So we got in MY car, the open job, with old Colquhoun in the back seat directing us. We drove up the road past his place, and on another couple of miles of very poor backwoods road, over rock and through deep pitch holes and around bald boulders. Then we turned off into what was nothing but a bare track over the waste places.

“Can’t we walk from here?” I protested.

“It’s another good two miles,” said Colquhoun, “and you’ll find it good going in a minute.”

It was never good going. It was awful going. The track disappeared for 100 yards at a stretch. Some ancient tote road of lumbering days, possibly. We wound through woods, we rode over bald rocky hills and we stumbled through swamps where vestiges of corduroy road still persisted. In all my years up in this country. I had never come across this trail before.

“This lake,” said old Colquhoun, “has got eight-pounders in it. I’ll be bound. But I never had the proper tackle to tackle them.”

He said this just as we reached the worst possible spot we had imagined. It was an old burn around swamp. You could see water in the swamps. But eight-pound bass are something to break world records with. I crawled ahead in low gear …

The corduroy collapsed. I could feel my back wheels spinning in muskeg.

Old Colquhoun jumped out of the car and ran up the hill, looking. I supposed, for a rail or something to pry me up.

Jim got out and took a length of dead tree in hand.

And then we heard old Colquhoun whooping.

“Here she is!” he exulted. “Just where I left her last fall.”

And he was waving an axe around in circles cutting capers of glee.

“Right where I left her!” he yelled, “Nobody found her. Nobody touched her. Exactly where I knowed I left her, in a stump…”

And he came bow-legging it down to the car, cuddling the axe in his arms.

“Boy!” he breathed deeply, as he laid the axe in the back seat, “is that ever a relief!”

“How far is the lake from here?” I demanded coldly.

Old Colquhoun scratched the back of his head, pushing his hat forward to do so. He studied the muskeg around. He gazed a little this way, a little that.

“Well, sir, I figger,” he said, “we’ll be there in another two miles, maybe two and a half …”

“And does the road stay like this?” I snorted angrily.

“I’m afraid the road,” said old Colquhoun, “don’t go any further than here. My memory kind of played me false…”

“You told me,” accused Jim, “that it was not half a mile off the road past your place. We’ve come four miles …”

“Distances,” stated old Colquhoun, “are very deceivin! You’ll find that out more as you grow older.”

“Can we walk from here?” demanded Jim.

“My walkin’ days are pretty well over,” said old Colquhoun “I could give you the directions and wait here…”

But something about the old man’s expression – out of the SIDES of his eyes, as it were – decided us to use what time and energy we had left in getting out of the swamp.

Which we did, with rampikes, rails, pieces of stump, stones and my jack. My car is at least two years older, in wear and tear.

But old Colquhoun has his axe. And Jimmie has one thing less to discover about old well-established skinflints.

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Editor’s Notes: “Menued” is an odd word, but basically means providing a menu.

“Old Man Mose” was a song written by Louis Armstrong in 1935, and re-recorded by many artists.

“Took a scunner against us” means “took a strong dislike to us”.

Sulfa Pills was a generic name for anti-bacterial drugs.

A corduroy road was used in pioneer times by placing logs, perpendicular to the direction of the road over a low or swampy area.

“Cutting capers of glee” means “doing a happy dance”.

A “rampike” is an upright, dead tree.