Tag: Fishing Page 1 of 4

By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by James Frise, July 5, 1941.

Faraway pools look better to fishermen. But these two anglers can’t agree on which faraway pool is best

“Have you seen,” inquired Jimmie Frise, “those new sectional punts for carrying on a trailer behind your car?”¹

“I’ve seen, boats that you could haul on trailers,” I admitted, “but not sectional.”

“This new one is a swell rig,” enthused Jim. “If you get a boat small enough to haul on a trailer, it is too small for comfort on the water. But this sectional punt is in two parts. It’s cut in half in the middle. You just bolt the front and back half together when you want to use it. And when you want to travel overland, you just unbolt it, hoist the stern half, which is like, box, on to the trailer wheels. Then you sow the front half in the box, and there you are.”

“That sounds pretty good,” I agreed.

“You can put all the rest of your junk in the outfit, too,” explained Jim. “It is as handy as any trailer, yet it’s a boat.”

“Maybe after the war,” I suggested, “we might be able to get one.”

“We’ll have one for our first bass fishing trip – this week,” cried Jim. “We can rent one. A chap I know had built a dozen of them this past winter and has them all ready for rent right now. In fact, I spoke for one for this week-end.”

“Now, that’s what I call enterprise,” I congratulated him. “There is always a lot of risk about renting a boat at the opening of the bass season. You get to where you want to fish and there isn’t a boat for love or money.”

“We’re all set this year,” said Jimmie. “We can go one place and if we don’t like it, we can unhitch in half an hour and be on our way to a better place. Who’s in the party this trip?”

“Just you and me” I said firmly. “Two’s company, three’s a crowd.”

“Aw,” said Jim, “it’s livelier with a gang.”

“All right, who will we take?” I demanded. “If we take Bill, he’ll go to sleep. If we take Vic, he’ll be fishing all the time we’re getting lunch, and the minute we’re through, he’ll see a fish rise and dash off just when the dishes are to be done.”

“How about Bumpy?” asked Jim.

“He’ll want to go ashore and sun bathe,” I protested. “And if we take Skipper, he’ll take charge of the party before we’re out of the city and boss us all over the place.”

Lure of the Bass

“See,” said Jim. “You want to be boss.”

“Boss nothing,” I retorted. “Let’s just go alone. A bass fishing trip is better with only two. Anyway, the boat will only hold two comfortably.”

“Any boat will hold three comfortably,” said Jim, “on a fishing trip. I like an extra man on the trip because then the majority can rule. If two of the three of us want to go one direction, then it’s easy to decide. But with only two of us in the boat, and want to go different directions …?”

“Now, when did we ever have any trouble agreeing which way to go?” I snorted.

“Okay, okay,” said Jim hastily. “I just thought it would be nice to have a third man.”

“The trouble with our friends, Jim,” I explained, “is, they are all fishermen. They all want to fish. And what’s more, they all have ideas as to where the best place to fish is, and how to fish and everything else. What we ought to cultivate is a friend who hates fishing. A guy that just likes to come along on the party. A guy that prefers to row the boat than fish. Somebody fond of camp fires and cooking and washing dishes, and that sort of thing. There are such people. We ought to cultivate one of them.”

“He wouldn’t mind cleaning fish, either,” added Jim.

“That’s the sort I mean,” I agreed.

“Well, we’ll go alone then,” said Jim. “And I’ll make all arrangements about the boat. And it’s agreed we fish Stoney Lake?”

“Agreed,” I said heartily, for Jim had shown me some grand bass he had caught in Stoney.

“Bass,” said Jim, lovingly and rolling the word around in that dreamy way you sometimes take a word and fondle it. “Bass. Bassssssss! What a lovely word. And what a swell fish.”

“Inch for inch,” I quoted the famous Dr. Henshall, “and pound for pound, the gamest fish that swims.”

“Isn’t the English language wonderful?” cried Jim. Think of that word bass. Bassssssss. It fairly pictures the fish. Short, sharp, rough, with the hisssss of a leaping fish or a racing line in it.”

“The word bass,” I informed him, “comes from the Dutch and Scandinavian word, barsh, meaning bristle. Barsh refers to the spines or bristles which are characteristic of bass. The word brush comes from the same root. So the English corrupted the word into bass, from barsh.”

“Corrupted?” scoffed Jim. “They took a silly word and made a beautiful word out of it. Bassssssssss!”

“It’s just the associations in your mind that make it beautiful,” I informed him. “A foreigner would think the word bass an ugly word.”

“Ah,” ignored Jimmie, his eyes raised, “what lovely associations. A little breeze riffling the water along the rocky shores. The reeds bending and waving. The lily pads lifting their hems. The chuckle of the water on the sides of the boat. And me sitting there, quiet as a mouse, casting and retrieving along the shore, selecting each spot to drop my lure, and trying, with art and science, to lay it exactly in that right spot…!”

“It’s the explosion of the strike I like,” I cut in. “No form of fishing has quite the excitement of that sudden explosion from the quiet depths when a bass comes up and takes the fly or the plug.”

“Anyway,” said Jim, “We agree that bass fishing is hard to beat.”

The Sectional Boat

Which closed the discussion until the next day we were well on the way to Stoney Lake with our curious boat trailing merrily behind us. The trailer wheels had a mere skeleton platform on them to which you bolted the rear half of the boat, a sort of box, and into this the front or pointed half nested. In these empty halves was plenty of room for storing all our fishing gear and luggage. It was a mighty nice little outfit. Jim wanted to go to the south end of Stoney, because it was a west wind that would make the return home easy. I preferred the north end of Stoney because, though I had never been on the lake, it was certainly less inhabited than the south end where there were farms and highways and villages.

“Of course,” said Jim, “I’ve only been on the lake about two hundred times. I wouldn’t know anything about it…”

“There are hundreds of people born right on the lake,” I retorted, “who don’t know where the good fishing is.”

So we agreed to go to the north end of the lake, where the map certainly showed fewer indications of habitation.

“Isn’t it a pity old Skipper isn’t along?” said Jim, apropos of nothing. “We’d have plenty of room in that punt for him.”

“Three in a boat is too crowded,” I replied.

“Let’s go right on to the north end of the lake,” suggested Jim, “and inquire at the gas station where’s the best place to launch the boat.”

“Listen, Jim,” I delivered, “what does a gas station know about where to fish for bass? All he knows is where the bass have been caught. We don’t want to know where they have been caught. We want to know where they haven’t been caught.”

“Okay, okay,” said Jim. “And how are we to find out where they haven’t been caught?”

And after scouting down a few side roads at the north end of Stoney, we came to a lonely looking bit of road, just a couple of ruts leading down to a farm where the farmer assured us it would be perfectly all right to park our car and launch our boat on his shore.

The shore looked magnificent. There were bouldery beaches stretching out in points, where the bass would just love to congregate in the evening to seek their favorite of all food crawfish. There were small bays filled with reeds and rushes and lily pads, where bass would love to take shelter from the sun during the heat of the day, keeping a lively eye skinned all the while for any frog that might venture to hop around the lily pads.

“Jim,” I said, “I can fairly smell bass.”

“Many’s the day’s limit I’ve taken out of it,” he replied, “though mostly at the southern end.”

We lifted all our gear out of the boat trailer and lifted the bow half out of the big box which was the stern half. We unbolted the stern half from the axle framework and laid them end to end. It was no trick at all to bolt them together. Steel lined holes for the bolts made a watertight joint and in a jiffy we were lifting the punt down to the shore.

“We’ll row turn about,” said Jim. “On the hour, we change.”

“Okay, you row the first hour,” I proposed, “because I’ve got my rod all set up anyway.”

“Okay,” agreed Jim. And stowing our tackle aboard, we pushed off.

“Turn down,” I suggested. “I like the look of those little bays.”

“Let’s turn north,” protested Jimmie, “and then it will be easier coming back down with the wind.”

“You’ve got wind on the brain,” I told him. “There isn’t enough breeze to make any difference.”

“Look at those gravelly points,” said Jim, still rowing north. “Try at those points and if we don’t get anything, I’ll turn back down the shore.”

“I should think the man who has to do the fishing,” I stated, “should have the say as to where he wants to fish.”

“I gave in,” pointed out Jim, “about which end of the lake we’d come to. Now let me pick the direction we’ll fish.”

“My dear man,” I said, “it is not a question of taking turns. It’s a question of where the obviously best fishing is. Anybody who knows bass fishing can see that those little bays…”

Jimmie dug the oars in so violently that he nearly dumped me over the back of the punt. It is curious how a man’s temper seems to get on edge the minute he goes out of doors. The greatest test of a man is to get him in the great out-of-doors. That’s where the seams show.

“Cast there,” said Jim, slackening the oars and indicating the first gravel bar.

“No self-respecting bass,” I said, “would be exposing himself in broad sunlight on a shallow bar like that.”

Jim rowed a few boat lengths farther on and at the next point, where large boulders beneath the water gave shade for any crawfish-hunting bass, I cast my plug and started to retrieve. It had only come four or five slow turns of the reel before there was that sudden glorious explosion and boil in the water, and when I tightened the line on him, he came out in a furious leap that was practically part of the original rush.

“What did I tell you?” yelled Jim.

“A stray one,” I said, “but a beauty.” He dived deep to see what was the matter. Then he came to the top again in an enraged rush, my line hissing through the water, until like a bronze bomb he burst out and shook himself madly, like a bulldog shaking a rat. But my plug clung to his jaws. And after a little while, and two or three more leaps, he began to tire and I told Jim to sink the net.

“Now, now,” I commanded, “sink it. Put it under the water and I’ll lead him over the net. None of this scooping…”

Jim, all eagerness as the bass came slowly fighting his last; sank the net well under water and I started to lead the bass over it. But Jim, to my horror, suddenly made a vicious swipe with the net. The rim caught the bass amidships. With a desperate shake, the bass jerked the plug’s hooks into the mesh of the net and with a wriggle, he was free. Over the rim he slid and back into the water.

I was speechless.

“Of all the…” I said apoplectically.

“Okay,” said Jim grimly. “Okay, okay, okay.”

And to my astonishment, he seized the oars and began rowing straight to shore.

“I’ll take the front half, you take the back half,” he said between his teeth. “You go south. I’ll go north. Okay, okay, okay.”

The boat grounded on the pebbles, Jim leaped out and hauled her half ashore. With a twirl of his fingers, he undid the bolts. And then he calmly shoved my half off, and tossed one of the oars in after me.

“See you later,” he cried cheerfully.

“Jim, don’t be an ass,” I shouted. “This thing won’t steer.”

“It’ll steer a lot better than mine,” called Jim, shoving his half of the boat in. And it was true; because the pointed end of the punt was a pretty skimp barnacle of a craft on the water.

As Modestly as Possible

“Jim,” I protested, “this is ridiculous.”

“It suits me fine,” he called back. “Now you can go south as far you like.”

So I seized the oar, there being nothing else to do, and experimented at propelling half a boat. It was tippy. It was cranky. It went where it listed. But somehow I got south and around the first point. And not until I was out of sight of Jim did I start to fish again.

My prognostication as to the good fishing spot was right. Almost on my first cast, I was into a fine two-pound bass. And when I had tired him out, I drew alongside, sank my net, drew him over the net and gently lifted. And there he was in the boat.

“Now,” I said aloud to myself, “that’s the way to do it.”

In the next hour, I had 15 strikes, and connected with two, both of which got free, due to the unwieldy character of my half-boat. But in less than two hours, in those reedy bays, I have five of the most beautiful bass you ever saw. And then I heard the car horn blowing mournfully.

“Poor Jim,” I said. “Fed up and ready for home already. That shows what comes of a hasty temper.”

And I thought of him whirling round and round in that front half of a boat, casting vainly on those barren rocky bars and getting nothing but exercise. The horn honked sadly.

“All right, all right,” I said, looking happily at my five glowing beauties laid out in a row in the bottom of the craft.

This would be a lesson to him. This would show him that it is best to follow the lead and counsel of a bass-wise man.

I reeled up and took the oar. I paddled back against the wind and it was, hard but cheerful going, with five such fine object lessons on the floor. When I rounded the point, I could see Jimmie sitting abjectly on the running board of the car, his half of the boat pulled up on the beach waiting for me.

I decided to be magnanimous; to let the whole matter rest. I would carry my five fish up to the car as modestly as possible.

“Well, sir,” I called out as I drew near, “it’s a pity to quit.”

“I’ve got my limit,” replied Jim happily, “so I thought you might want the other half of the boat.”

When I beached my half, Jim came down and looked at my five in the boat.

“Mine are just mates to those,” he said, holding out his hand. So we shook.

“It’s been a swell afternoon,” I gloated.

“It’s a pity we didn’t have Skipper along,” said Jim.

“Good old Skipper,” I said. “We should have brought him.”

---

Editor’s Notes:

1. Also known as Nesting boats now. This is an example. ↩︎

By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by James Frise, June 26, 1946.

“Personally,” declared Jimmie Frise, “I don’t like it.”

“Jim,” I submitted, “business is business,”

“Some things,” asserted Jim, “are too sacred for business to intrude into. And fishing is one of them.”

“All we’ve got do,” I pleaded, “is take these two birds on a fishing trip. They’ve got their own car. We don’t have to travel with them. We arrive at Henderson’s lake. And old man Henderson will have the boats ready for us. You and I’ll go in one boat. They’ll go in another. To all intents and purposes, we aren’t really fishing with them at all.”

“I think Bud has got his nerve asking us to take them,” growled Jim. “Why doesn’t he look after his own business acquaintances?”

“These,” I explained, “are two big shot Yanks. They are one of Bud’s most important connections.”

“Then why doesn’t he take them fishing?” insisted Jim.

“Pawff, what does Bud know about fishing!” I laughed. “He’s a golfer.”

“Yeah,” sneered Jim, “and he’s trying to apply the morality of golf to the noble art of fishing. Golf, as anybody knows, is prostituted to business. Golf is a game designed and maintained for purposes of salesmanship. Buying and selling, putting over deals, kissing the boss’ big toe… that’s what golf is! Whenever the buyer of the big company comes to town, what do you do? Why, you take him out and let him beat you at golf. And then, sitting on the clubhouse veranda, you sell him a big bill of goods.”

“Bud tried to put these two Yanks up at his golf club,” I explained.

“Golf,” gritted Jim. “You get the idea the boss is acting a little stiff with you. So you invite him for a game of golf, let him whale the tar out of you. And everything grows rosy once more.”

“We don’t play golf, Jim,” I cautioned. “Maybe we don’t know the whole story.”

“Well, when I look at the guys who golf,” said Jim, “and compare them with the guys who go fishing, I can’t help suspect that there is something pretty cunning about golf. Did you ever notice that it is the successful business men who play golf, and the unsuccessful businessmen who fish?”

“Oh, I wouldn’t say that,” I protested. “These friends of Bud’s are pretty successful business men. Bud says they’re both millionaires.”

“Millionaires, eh?” mused Jim.

“That’s right,” I clinched, “Millionaires.”

“Any millionaires I’ve ever seen,” declared Jim, “I wouldn’t care to go fishing with.”

“Look, Jim, “I wound up, “business is business. I asked Bud if he could wangle us some lumber for the addition to the cottage. You know we’ve got to have that back end of the cottage repaired.”

“We’ve no right to any lumber,” countered Jim, “with the housing shortage. Lumber for a summer cottage…!”

“We only need a couple of hundred board feet,” I reminded. “Just enough to repair the back and put an end to those leaks that make the kitchen a mess every time it rains.”

“Did Bud say he could get us some lumber,” demanded Jim.

Blame It On Bud

“Not right away.” I admitted. “But along about August, he said he could probably get us some undressed lumber suitable for the back end of the cottage. Jim, we’ve got to do something about it!”

“Okay,” snorted Jimmie, “but we don’t have to take two millionaires fishing!”

“Bud said,” I presented, “that if we’d rescue him from the jam he’s in, he’d see we got the lumber.”

“I don’t like it,” concluded Jim.

“Look,” I begged. “For the past couple of years, Bud has been telling these guys what wonderful fishing we have up here. At conventions and things, he’s been bragging about his fishing friends. We’re his fishing friends. Now, all of a sudden, these two big shots an-ounce they are coming up to Canada. And Bud’s bluff is called. He’s simply got to show them some fishing.”

“Okay, let him,” said Jim.

“But Bud never wet a line in his life!” I cried. “He’d feel an awful fool taking two big shots fishing… both of them expert fishermen, who have fished all over the U.S.”

“Now, you look!” exclaimed Jim indignantly. “This is the opening the bass season. This is the high day of the year. This is like King’s Plate day. And you want to ruin it by taking a couple of perfect strangers fishing with us, for business reasons!”

“Please, Jim,” I coaxed, “will you get it through your head that we don’t have to travel with the guys, we don’t have to fish with them. We simply have to make arrangements for them. They’ll be as anxious, as like as not, to be by themselves as we are. We’ll send them around the south shore of Henderson’s lake and we’ll go around the north side. Maybe we’ll have to spend 15 minutes in all talking to them or having any contact whatever with them. At the end of the day, we send them on to the hotel. And we go to our own cottage.”

“They don’t come to the cottage with us?” demanded Jim.

“Not at all,” I assured. “At the end of the day, we bid them good-night, and that’s the last of them. From there on, they make their own arrangements for fishing.”

“Well…” sighed Jim doubtfully.

“Anyway,” I pointed out, “I’ve written old Henderson and reserved two boats.”

Lobby Patrol

“Good old Henderson,” smiled Jim more cheerfully, “There’s a great old character.”

“One of the best,” I agreed. “A true Canadian. It’s a pity the whole country isn’t modelled on Henderson.”

“What irks me,” said Jim, “is having to take a couple of strangers, a couple of rich, snooty strangers, with us on to old man Henderson’s lake. I look forward to seeing old Henderson as one of the high spots of my year. He refreshes. He revives. Just to meet him once a year and be near him for a little while sort of renews my Canadianism. And here we have to spoil it all by shepherding a couple of tycoons from Cleveland…”

“Chicago,” I corrected.

“I don’t care where they come from,” cracked Jim. “But just having them on our hands… a couple of cold-blooded, mercenary guys that we have to take over for business reasons… and introduce them to old Henderson! That sweet, gentle old hillbilly.”

“Forget it,” I pleaded.

I called Bud on the telephone to inform him, in that jovial, outdoorsman style, that Jim and I were all set to take his big business tycoons off his hands as soon as they arrived in town.

Bud was overjoyed. He had “built us up,” he explained, to his visitors. That’s a business expression. You build people up to one another. It makes business dealings easier. Bud assured us that we were the two greatest fishermen in Canada, in the opinion of the two gentlemen who were to arrive before night. They were driving from Chicago and were prepared push straight on to Henderson’s lake in the morning.

At supper time, Bud called me to say his important friends were at a downtown hotel having supper, and would we be good enough to come downtown right away so he could introduce us to them.

“Well, I’ve got to finish my supper…” I suggested.

But Bud explained that his friends had a couple of important business conferences to handle during the evening, and he thought if we could get the introductions over with, so as to leave them their evening free…

So I called Jim, who was at his supper. And with crumbs still on our vests, so to speak, we drove downtown and met Bud, who escorted us importantly up 10 storeys in the hotel to meet the big shots.

They were out. Bud left us standing in the deserted corridor, while he went down and scouted the dining-rooms and lobbies, without success. After about 15 minutes, he came hurrying back up to us, with that eager big business air, and told us to come and sit in the lobby for a few minutes until his friends turned up.

So we sat in the lobby about an hour, while Bud kept jumping up and exploring. It was Jim who got mad first.

“Look,” he said, rising. “Tell your friends to telephone us in the morning…”

“No, no,” cried Bud. “These are real fellows, real big shots, you’ll love to meet them. It’ll save a lot of time and, anyway, it will look a lot better if we are here to meet them. Sort of impressed, as it were. We should appear impressed…”

“Impressed my neck!” said Jim without tact. “What is this? A couple of guys want to go fishing. We’ve undertaken to show them where the fishing is. What is all this hokey- pokey about being impressed…!”

Bud looked at me very shocked.

“But look,” he said weakly. “You don’t understand. These aren’t just a couple of ordinary little tourists. These are important big business executives. It’s important to Canada. We have to make a good impression. We’ve got to appear to make something of them. After all…”

Jim, refusing to sit down in the big hotel lobby settee, gave me a long, bitter look.

“Golf,” he said hollowly.

“Jim,” I protested.

“The opening of the bass season,” pursued Jim. “The high and holy day. And what are we doing?”

We waited another half hour in the lobby and Bud’s friends did not show up. So I got a little mad, too, and explained as tactfully as I could to Bud that Jimmie and I were just a couple of homespun characters who didn’t altogether appreciate or understand the protocol, as it were, of modern business.

Meet The Boys

Bud, apparently, was prepared to spend the whole night sitting in the lobby, watching bright-eyed for his important friends. So we left him, arranging for a telephone call right after breakfast, when we would meet his friends and lead them, by car, to Henderson’s lake.

About half-past midnight, Bud telephoned me, getting me out of bed, to inform me in a very hearty and chummy voice that he was up in his friends’ room, and wouldn’t I run down just to meet the boys…

I demurred. He then cried, “Wait a minute,” and he introduced me to them in turn over the telephone. If there is anything more ghastly, at half-past midnight in a silent house with everybody gone to bed, than trying to be hearty and cheerful over the telephone to a couple of gentlemen from a far country whom you have never seen in your life, I can’t think of it.

However, after a few muffled exchanges on my part and some very cautious exchanges from the gentlemen at the hotel, I got back to bed.

And we met our friends, by arrangement, in the lobby at 8.50 a.m., with Bud there, fresh as a daisy, and balancing beautifully between telling his friends what wonderful guys and famous fishermen Jim and I were, and telling us what swell guys and important big shots his friends were…

They were just two average-looking Americans; that is, they both looked a little like General Eisenhower. If they were rich, they didn’t show it. If they were important. it wasn’t evident. If they were friends of Bud’s, they weren’t very effusive about it. They seemed bored and doubtful and a little blase. And in a hurry get going.

So Jim and I drove off, with the Americans in their big car following us.

We passed out of the city on Yonge St. We ripped off the miles northward, the Americans holding fast to our tail. We stopped a couple of times to see if they wanted a cup of coffee or anything, and they just ran their car windows down and said, “No.”

“Cold fish,” said Jim, as we led off.

“The executive type,” I explained.

“I suppose guys like them,” mused Jim, “could like fishing the same as anybody else.”

“Well, one thing,” I submitted, “they won’t be any bother to us. All we do is show them their boat and, as far as I can see, they won’t notice us again.”

“Poor Bud,” laughed Jim, “trying to warm up a couple of finnan haddies¹ like them!”

“That’s the business world, Jim,” I explained. “Somebody has to be the life of the party.”

It is a fairly long drive to Henderson’s. About four hours. Occasionally the American car would sneak up uncomfortably close to my rear bumper, and I got the impression they wanted us to put on more speed. But I have my gait, and I stick to it.

It was just noon when we turned off the highway on to the road to Henderson’s lake and 20 minutes later, I lifted over the hill and saw old man Henderson’s well-remembered layout spread before us along the margin of the lake called after him.

The Persuasive Dollar

I noticed with interest that already several boats were out on the water, the occupants busily bait casting along the rocky evergreen shores for some of the finest, gamest bass to be found in Ontario.

The Americans’ car drew off the road as Jim and I debussed and gathered our tackle together. When I reached the head of the path, I saw a boat just leaving Henderson’s small wharf. A boat with two men in it.

Old Henderson, bless his brindled hide, waved to me as I started down the path.

“Hi,” he said. “So it’s you.”

“Where’s our boats?” I inquired.

“Sorry,” said old Henderson cheerfully. “They’re let.”

“What do you mean, they’re let?” I shouted.

“First come, first served,” said old Henderson.

“But…” I spluttered, “I telephoned you two nights ago, and arranged for you to save me two boats!”

“So you did,” said old man Henderson.

“Well, then,” I burst out, “what about it? I’ve got two very important big executives come all the way from Chicago.”

“Well, you see,” said old Henderson having a spit, “business is business.”

“What do you mean, business is business?” I snorted. “Isn’t an agreement over the telephone business?”

“Business is business,” repeated old Henderson. “You was renting two boats for the one day. At $2 per, that’s $4, isn’t it?”

“What’s that got to do,” I demanded outraged, “with our agreement over the long distance telephone only two nights ago?”

“Now, along comes these gentlemen out there,” said old Henderson, “and they rent three cabins, for three days, that comes to $9. Plus all my boats at $2 per diem, for three days, that comes to… let’s see now… that comes to four boats, by golly, that comes to $24. Plus nine is $33.”²

“But a contract,” I shouted, “is a contract. You contracted to rent me two boats…”

“Business,” repeated old Henderson with another spit, “is business.”

I heard the two Americans breathing down the back of my neck.

“Hey, you…” I shouted across the water to the nearest boat, the one that had just left the wharf. “I’ve rented that boat.”

“Have you now?” replied the man in the stern, who was bailing. He tossed a pailful of water in my direction cheerily.

“Henderson,” I gritted, “you’ve got to do something about this.”

“Business,” said old Henderson, edging past me on the wharf, “is business. That’s what I always say.”

I turned and saw Bud’s two big shots already half way up the path.

Jim stood grinning off into space.

I saw the two big shots throw their tackle into the car. I saw them get in. I heard them slam the doors and they drove off in a cloud of dust.

“You can’t intrude business,” said Jim, very guardedly, “into fishing.” So we drove on to the cottage and put five hours’ work on the dock, which had been begging a little attention for three years.

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Editor’s Notes:

1. A Finnan haddie is a haddock that has been cured with the smoke. There was a popular song from 1938 called “My Heart Belongs to Daddy” where it is referenced. I’m not sure of the context in calling people that, but it does not sound good. ↩︎
2. $33 in 1946 would be $602 in 2026. ↩︎

By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by Jim Frise, May 8, 1948.

Jim and Greg learn that guddling is not so much a sport as it is a hazard

“Let’s guddle them!” suggested Jimmie Frise suddenly.

“Guddle?” I questioned.

“Tickle,” explained Jimmie. “It’s the Scotch word for tickling trout. Did you never hear of tickling trout?”

“I’ve heard of it,” I admitted. “But I don’t believe everything I hear.”

We were standing on a wooden bridge, having met after a fruitless morning. We had been up at dawn, and had fished nearly a mile of a very beautiful trout stream without having connected with a single keepable fish. Being strictly fly fishermen, we had started together, wading the stream side by side. But after an hour had passed without any luck, we had separated; Jimmie turning downstream until he was out of sight. Whereupon, he rolled over a log on the river bank and got himself a good big fishworm. And I, being sure he was unable to see me, managed to catch a very small chub, which I sliced up with my knife, using its tail as bait. By such niceties – I mean, the care we take not to see each other or to be seen – are the fine old traditions of fly fishing maintained.

Jim drifted his gob of worm down under all the logs and into all the quiet pools. I dribbled my chub tail through all the riffles and rapids, and let it dangle far into the eddies and backwaters at the foot. But something was wrong. The trout were not in the mood. Nary a fish did we get.

“Guddling trout,” declared Jimmie, “is said to be no end of fun. And you get the biggest ones that way.”

I shifted my fly rod from one hand to the other, holding it so Jim could see it. Of course, all traces of chub tail had been removed. A march Brown decorated the end of my leader.

“Guddling,” I said, with dignity, “is hardly a thing that fly fishermen could stoop to.”

“Aw, you misunderstand me,” said Jim, easily. “Here we are, with nothing to do. The trout aren’t rising to the fly. Now, what would ordinary trout fishermen do in this case? Why, they would start bait fishing. They’d go and roll over a log and find a worm. Or they’d catch a chub and slice it up for bait.”

“But not us,” I stated firmly.

“I wasn’t suggesting that we guddle trout,” pursued Jim, “merely to capture some trout. I thought we could try out something we’ve often read about in the old fishing books.”

“Izaak Walton mentions it,” I admitted, “in ‘The Compleat Angler¹.”‘

“Yes, and I’ve talked to Scotchmen,” assured Jim, “who have often done it back home in Scotland.”

“I doubt if you could do it here in Canada.” I suggested. “Conditions are different.”

“Not in the least,” cried Jim. “All you have to do, according to what I’ve heard, is find a place in the stream with a low bank where the water has cut under the bank, making a hole. That’s where the trout hide. That’s where the big ones go when they aren’t out feeding in the fast water. A trout has to have some repose. You don’t suppose a trout is going to spend 24 hours a day fighting the current out there in the fast water…”

“Then what do you do?” I asked.

“It’s really a poacher’s trick,” confessed Jim. “You have to be a poacher at heart to be a successful guddler.”

“If we got any,” I submitted, “we could throw them back. We’re not poachers. It would be just for the experience we’d do it. If we happened to get a big trout, even a two-pounder, we’d throw it back.”

“Certainly,” agreed Jim. “Well, as I was saying, you have to be as skilful as a poacher. You have to approach the low bank very quietly and cautiously, so as not to shake the bank with your footfall. Then you lie down on the bank, with your arm bared to the shoulder. You cautiously slide your hand down into the water, and in under the bank. If there is a hole, you explore it, barely moving your hand, as you feel for the smooth, cold sides of a trout.”

“At the sight of your hand,” I scoffed. “a trout would be a mile away.”

“No, it’s dark in those holes under the bank,” declared Jim. “According to what I’ve heard and read about guddling, the trout might move away from your hand, when it feels you touch it. In fact, that’s how you know a trout is in there, but THAT is where the guddling or tickling process begins. The minute you touch something that moves, you start your fingers moving delicately, as you grope around. And when you touch the trout, you start gently and delicately tickling its stomach. It stays perfectly still! It LIKES it! You continue tickling slowly along until your hand reaches its neck. Then you GRAB!”

Jimmie was demonstrating the system as he spoke, delicately waving his fingers in the air.

“Ugh!” I shuddered. “Suppose you guddled an eel! Suppose it was a mudcat you grabbed by the neck?”

“In a trout stream, like this,” said Jim glancing affectionately about at the rippling water, “it wouldn’t be eels or mudcats. It would be a trout. There’s nothing but trout in such beautiful water as this, except a few little chub.”

“Jim,” I said, “I’d be willing to watch you guddle. But I don’t quite see myself sticking my bare arm into the ice cold water up to the shoulder and risking my hand down in any dark unseen hole under the bank.”

“Did you see any trout this morning?” asked Jim, leaning his fly rod against the bridge railing.

“Oh, there’s plenty of trout here,” I assured him. “I saw schools of them darting madly up and down stream, as I waded. Some of them were beauties. But they wouldn’t touch a thing I offered them. Flies, that is.”

“In a trout stream, like this.” said Jim glancing affectionately about at the rippling water, “it wouldn’t be eels or mudcats. It would be a trout. There’s nothing but trout in such beautiful water as this, except a few little chub.”

“Jim,” I said, “I’d be willing to watch you guddle. But I don’t quite see myself sticking my bare arm into the lee cold water up to the shoulder and risking my hand down in any dark unseen hole under the bank.”

“Did you see any trout this morning?” asked Jim, leaning his fly rod against the bridge railing.

“Oh, there’s plenty of trout here.” I assured him. “I saw schools of them darting madly up and down stream, as I waded. Some of them were beauties. But they wouldn’t touch a thing I offered-them. Flies, that is.”

“Did you spot any really good big ones?” pressed Jim.

“I saw a real dandy, maybe a 15-incher,” I admitted grudgingly. “It was up at that pool where the wire fence crosses the stream.”

“Aha!” cried Jim. “The very place! I didn’t see any big ones this morning. I saw plenty of nice ones. But no lunkers. What do you say we go up to that fence pool?”

So we picked up our rods and went out to the pasture fields to save time. Rather than wade up, or push our way through the cedars and alders that border the stream, we went over the fields about one-third of a mile until we came to the wire fence which leads down though the woods and crosses the brook to keep the cattle from straying.

We parked our rods in the cedars and proceeded, very cautiously, through the thick underbrush, until we came to the pool. Up stream from the fence, the little river roared and rattled over a rapids created by boulders and gravel and old logs and roots that has accumulated over the years. Just before the fence crossed, the rapids gushed out into a long eddy. And this side of the fence, the eddy slowed into a beautiful narrow pool, three or four feet deep, and quiet and shadowy: a paradise for resting trout.

“Move like a cat!” whispered Jim, as we crouched in the brushwood.

I nodded. There is something that brings a lump into the throat of a fly fisherman in the sight of such a pool that lay before us. Though there were no leaves yet on the trees, there were enough cedars and a pine or two to shade the pool at all times of the day. The water, smooth and sparkling from its passage over the rapids up above, coiled crystal clear through the sombre pool.

It was secret, mysterious, curiously wild.

“Where did you see the big fellow?” murmured Jim.

“It came from downstream, there,” I pointed, “and he was poised in the middle of the pool. When he saw me, he darted upstream a little way and then turned in toward the bank.”

“Which bank?” hissed Jim.

“This one,” I whispered. “That’s the last I saw of him.”

“Easy now,” warned Jim. “We’ll stand up slowly, and take a look. If he’s visible…”

From our crouched position in the brush, we cautiously seated ourselves. Jim suddenly squatted, dragging me down with him.

“He’s there!” quivered Jim. “He’s two pounds, if he’s an ounce! My gosh! And he saw me…!”

“Aw!” I consoled.

“But he darted this way!” gloated Jim low, starting to remove his windbreaker. “Easy!”

He rolled up his shirt sleeve, right arm.

“Jim,” I warned, “do be careful, fumbling around…”

“Tempting the unknown!” whispered Jim. “The famous Henry Van Dyke², remember what he said? ‘Nothing so attracts human nature as tempting the Unknown with a fishing line!'”

“Yeah, with a fishing line,” I muttered. But not your HAND!”

Jim had got his sleeve rolled as high on his biceps as it would go.

“Now!” he whuffed.

Crouching low, he began crawling on hands and knees toward the boggy bank. Six feet from its edge, he lay flat on his stomach and began inching himself forward like a commando fighter, barely moving. Three feet from the edge, he lowered his head until he was flattened completely. His right arm began to extend. His hand reached the grassy margin and disappeared into it. Slowly, he wormed forward and I saw his arm start to vanish over and down.

I could see he was now so completely advanced to the edge that his shoulder was over the bend and his whole arm must be immersed.

Suddenly, he turned his face toward me and it was lighted with an unholy glee. His mouth was open and his eyes were starting from their sockets.

“Easy!” I warned.

Jim’s eyes rolled as he felt cautiously at something unseen, deep in that shadowy depth. His body tensed.

I saw him suddenly convulse as he made a vicious grab.

“Watch out!” he yelled, heaving.

Then he really DID yell.

For, instead of pitching a two pound trout out onto the bank, he was grabbed and held by some implacable and unseen force. He struggled furiously, he writhed and whipped around on the bank, digging his knees in, yelling and thrashing.

His arm, well over the elbow in the water, was gripped and held. I rushed forward, seizing an old dead stick. But in his struggles, Jim had muddied the water of the pool, and the current was spreading the silt in clouds. I could see nothing but Jim’s white arm disappearing in the clouds.

“Jim! Jim!” I yelled. “What is it?”

“I don’t know!” gasped Jim, holding his arm still, while perspiration burst in beads on his face.

“Does it hurt?” I begged.

“Like fury,” choked Jim, biting his lip.

“Maybe a snapping turtle?” I cried, poising my stick. “Maybe a giant snapping turtle? Is it chewing?”

“No, it’s just got me…” collapsed Jim.

“Let the mud settle,” I gritted. “Keep still. I’ll get you out of this.”

I crouched on the bank, watching over the side, my club at the ready.

The mud and silt, wafted by the current, thinned, cleared. I had a swift vision of Jim’s hand. Something dark and terrible had hold of it, straight across.

The silt wafted thinner. I caught sight of what seemed be old rusty chain. It cleared more. Like glimpsing the moon through flying clouds, I saw Jim’s hand gripped by a dirty old muskrat trap.

“Look!” I commanded, heavily.

Jim looked. We reached down and pried the trap loose. His hand was red, but not skinned.

“Some poacher,” I snarled indignantly, “abandoned that old trap there…!”

Jim was nursing and rubbing his hand.

“Fly fishermen,” he growled, “have no business…”

“Guddling,” I concluded.

---

Editor’s Notes:

1. The Compleat Angler is a book by Izaak Walton, first published in 1653. It is a celebration, in prose and verse, of the art and spirit of fishing. ↩︎
2. Henry van Dyke was a professor of English literature at Princeton between 1899 and 1923. ↩︎

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.”

---

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.

---

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).