This is a plain account of a fishing party. It is not a story. There
is no plot. Nothing happens in it and nobody is hurt. The only point of
this narrative is its peculiar truth. It not only tells what happened
to us--the five people concerned in it--but what has happened and is
happening to all the other fishing parties that at the season of the
year, from Halifax to Idaho, go gliding out on the unruffled surface
of our Canadian and American lakes in the still cool of early summer
morning.
We decided to go in the early morning because there is a popular belief
that the early morning is the right time for bass fishing. The bass is
said to bite in the early morning. Perhaps it does. In fact the thing
is almost capable of scientific proof. The bass does _not_ bite between
eight and twelve. It does _not_ bite between twelve and six in the
afternoon. Nor does it bite between six o’clock and midnight. All these
things are known facts. The inference is that the bass bites furiously
at about daybreak.
At any rate our party were unanimous about starting early. “Better
make an early start,” said the Colonel, when the idea of the party was
suggested. “Oh, yes,” said George Popley, the bank manager, “we want to
get right out on the shoal while the fish are biting.”
When he said this all our eyes glistened. Everybody’s do. There’s a
thrill in the words. To “get right out on the shoal at daybreak when the
fish are biting,” is an idea that goes to any man’s brain.
If you listen to the men talking in a Pullman car, or an hotel corridor,
or, better still, at the little tables in a first-class bar, you will
not listen long before you hear one say: “Well, we got out early, just
after sunrise, right on the shoal.” And presently, even if you can’t
hear him, you will see him reach out his two hands and hold them about
two feet apart for the other man to admire. He is measuring the fish.
No, not the fish they caught; this was the big one that they lost. But
they had him right up to the top of the water. Oh, yes, he was up to
the top of the water all right. The number of huge fish that have been
heaved up to the top of the water in our lakes is almost incredible. Or
at least it used to be when we still had bar rooms and little tables
for serving that vile stuff Scotch whisky and such foul things as gin
Rickeys and John Collinses. It makes one sick to think of it, doesn’t
it? But there was good fishing in the bars, all the winter.
But, as I say, we decided to go early in the morning. Charlie Jones,
the railroad man, said that he remembered how when he was a boy, up in
Wisconsin, they used to get out at five in the morning--not get up
at five but be on the shoal at five. It appears that there is a shoal
somewhere in Wisconsin where the bass lie in thousands. Kernin, the
lawyer, said that when he was a boy--this was on Lake Rosseau--they used
to get out at four. It seems there is a shoal in Lake Rosseau where you
can haul up the bass as fast as you can drop your line. The shoal is
hard to find--very hard. Kernin can find it, but it is doubtful--so I
gather--if any other living man can. The Wisconsin shoal, too, is very
difficult to find. Once you find it, you are all right; but it’s hard to
find. Charlie Jones can find it. If you were in Wisconsin right now he’d
take you straight to it, but probably no other person now alive could
reach that shoal. In the same way Colonel Morse knows of a shoal in
Lake Simcoe where he used to fish years and years ago and which, I
understand, he can still find.
I have mentioned that Kernin is a lawyer, and Jones a railroad man
and Popley a banker. But I needn’t have. Any reader would take it for
granted. In any fishing party there is always a lawyer. You can tell him
at sight. He is the one of the party that has a landing net and a steel
rod in sections with a wheel that is used to wind the fish to the top of
the water.
And there is always a banker. You can tell him by his good clothes.
Popley, in the bank, wears his banking suit. When he goes fishing he
wears his fishing suit. It is much the better of the two, because his
banking suit has ink marks on it, and his fishing suit has no fish marks
on it.
As for the railroad man--quite so, the reader knows it as well as I
do--you can tell him because he carries a pole that he cut in the bush
himself, with a ten-cent line wrapped round the end of it. Jones says
he can catch as many fish with this kind of line as Kernin can with his
patent rod and wheel. So he can too. Just the same number.
But Kernin says that with his patent apparatus if you get a fish on you
can _play_ him. Jones says to Hades with _playing_ him: give him a fish
on his line and he’ll haul him in all right. Kernin says he’d lose him.
But Jones says _he_ wouldn’t. In fact he _guarantees_ to haul the fish
in. Kernin says that more than once--in Lake Rosseau--he has played a
fish for over half an hour. I forget now why he stopped; I think the
fish quit playing.
I have heard Kernin and Jones argue this question of their two rods,
as to which rod can best pull in the fish, for half an hour. Others may
have heard the same question debated. I know no way by which it could be
settled.
Our arrangement to go fishing was made at the little golf club of our
summer town on the veranda where we sit in the evening. Oh, it’s just
a little place, nothing pretentious: the links are not much good for
_golf_; in fact we don’t play much _golf_ there, so far as golf goes,
and of course, we don’t serve meals at the club, it’s not like that--and
no, we’ve nothing to drink there because of prohibition. But we go and
_sit_ there. It is a good place to _sit_, and, after all, what else can
you do in the present state of the law?
So it was there that we arranged the party.
The thing somehow seemed to fall into the mood of each of us. Jones said
he had been hoping that some of the boys would get up a fishing party.
It was apparently the one kind of pleasure that he really cared for. For
myself I was delighted to get in with a crowd of regular fishermen
like these four, especially as I hadn’t been out fishing for nearly ten
years, though fishing is a thing I am passionately fond of. I know no
pleasure in life like the sensation of getting a four-pound bass on the
hook and hauling him up to the top of the water, to weigh him. But, as
I say, I hadn’t been out for ten years. Oh, yes, I live right beside
the water every summer, and yes, certainly--I am saying so--I am
passionately fond of fishing, but still somehow I hadn’t been _out_.
Every fisherman knows just how that happens. The years have a way of
slipping by. Yet I must say I was surprised to find that so keen a sport
as Jones hadn’t been out--so it presently appeared--for eight years. I
had imagined he practically lived on the water. And Colonel Morse and
Kernin, I was amazed to find, hadn’t been out for twelve years, not
since the day--so it came out in conversation--when they went out
together in Lake Rosseau and Kernin landed a perfect monster, a regular
corker, five pounds and a half, they said; or no, I don’t think he
_landed_ him. No, I remember, he didn’t _land_ him. He caught him--and
he _could_ have landed him, he should have landed him--but he _didn’t_
land him. That was it. Yes, I remember Kernin and Morse had a slight
discussion about it--oh, perfectly amicable--as to whether Morse had
fumbled with the net or whether Kernin--the whole argument was perfectly
friendly--had made an ass of himself by not “striking” soon enough. Of
course the whole thing was so long ago that both of them could look
back on it without any bitterness or ill nature. In fact it amused them.
Kernin said it was the most laughable thing he ever saw in his life to
see poor old Jack--that’s Morse’s name--shoving away with the landing
net wrong side up. And Morse said he’d never forget seeing poor old
Kernin yanking his line first this way and then that and not knowing
where to try to haul it. It made him laugh to look back at it.
They might have gone on laughing for quite a time, but Charlie Jones
interrupted by saying that in his opinion a landing net is a piece of
darned foolishness. Here Popley agrees with him. Kernin objects that if
you don’t use a net you’ll lose your fish at the side of the boat. Jones
says no: give him a hook well through the fish and a stout line in his
hand and that fish has _got_ to come in. Popley says so too. He says let
him have his hook fast through the fish’s head with a short stout line,
and put him (Popley) at the other end of that line and that fish will
come in. It’s _got_ to. Otherwise Popley will know why. That’s the
alternative. Either the fish must come in or Popley must know why.
There’s no escape from the logic of it.
But perhaps some of my readers have heard the thing discussed before.
So, as I say, we decided to go the next morning and to make an early
start. All of the boys were at one about that. When I say “boys,” I use
the word, as it is used in fishing, to mean people from say forty-five
to sixty-five. There is something about fishing that keeps men young. If
a fellow gets out for a good morning’s fishing, forgetting all business
worries, once in a while--say, once in ten years--it keeps him fresh.
We agreed to go in a launch, a large launch--to be exact, the largest
in the town. We could have gone in row boats, but a row boat is a poor
thing to fish from. Kernin said that in a row boat it is impossible
properly to “_play_” your fish. The side of the boat is so low that
the fish is apt to leap over the side into the boat when half “played.”
Popley said that there is no comfort in a row boat. In a launch a man
can reach out his feet and take it easy. Charlie Jones said that in a
launch a man could rest his back against something, and Morse said that
in a launch a man could rest his neck. Young inexperienced boys, in the
small sense of the word, never think of these things. So they go out
and after a few hours their necks get tired; whereas a group of expert
fishers in a launch can rest their backs and necks and even fall asleep
during the pauses when the fish stop biting.
Anyway all the “boys” agreed that the great advantage of a launch would
be that we could get a _man_ to take us. By that means the man could see
to getting the worms, and the man would be sure to have spare lines, and
the man could come along to our different places--we were all beside the
water--and pick us up. In fact the more we thought about the advantage
of having a “man” to take us the better we liked it. As a boy gets old
he likes to have a man around to do the work.
Anyway Frank Rolls, the man we decided to get, not only has the biggest
launch in town but what is more Frank _knows_ the lake. We called him up
at his boat-house over the phone and said we’d give him five dollars to
take us out first thing in the morning provided that he knew the shoal.
He said he knew it.
I don’t know, to be quite candid about it, who mentioned whisky first.
In these days everybody has to be a little careful. I imagine we had all
been _thinking_ whisky for some time before anybody said it. But there
is a sort of convention that when men go fishing they must have whisky.
Each man makes the pretence that one thing he needs at six o’clock in
the morning is cold raw whisky. It is spoken of in terms of affection.
One man says the first thing you need if you’re going fishing is a good
“snort” of whisky; another says that a good “snifter” is the very thing;
and the others agree that no man can fish properly without “a horn,” or
a “bracer” or an “eye-opener.” Each man really decides that he himself
won’t take any. But he feels that, in a collective sense, the “boys”
need it.
So it was with us. The Colonel said he’d bring along “a bottle of
booze.” Popley said, no, let _him_ bring it; Kernin said let him; and
Charlie Jones said no, he’d bring it. It turned out that the Colonel had
some very good Scotch at his house that he’d like to bring; oddly enough
Popley had some good Scotch in _his_ house too; and, queer though it is,
each of the boys had Scotch in his house. When the discussion closed
we knew that each of the five of us was intending to bring a bottle of
whisky. Each of the five of us expected the other to drink one and a
quarter bottles in the course of the morning.
I suppose we must have talked on that veranda till long after one in the
morning. It was probably nearer two than one when we broke up. But we
agreed that that made no difference. Popley said that for him three
hours’ sleep, the right kind of sleep, was far more refreshing than ten.
Kernin said that a lawyer learns to snatch his sleep when he can, and
Jones said that in railroad work a man pretty well cuts out sleep.
So we had no alarms whatever about not being ready by five. Our plan was
simplicity itself. Men like ourselves in responsible positions learn to
organize things easily. In fact Popley says it is that faculty that has
put us where we are. So the plan simply was that Frank Rolls should come
along at five o’clock and blow his whistle in front of our places, and
at that signal each man would come down to his wharf with his rod and
kit and so we’d be off to the shoal without a moment’s delay.
The weather we ruled out. It was decided that even if it rained that
made no difference. Kernin said that fish bite better in the rain. And
everybody agreed that man with a couple of snorts in him need have no
fear of a little rain water.
So we parted, all keen on the enterprise. Nor do I think even now that
there was anything faulty or imperfect in that party as we planned it.
I heard Frank Rolls blowing his infernal whistle opposite my summer
cottage at some ghastly hour in the morning. Even without getting out of
bed, I could see from the window that it was no day for fishing. No, not
raining exactly. I don’t mean that, but one of those peculiar days--I
don’t mean _wind_--there was no wind, but a sort of feeling in the air
that showed anybody who understands bass fishing that it was a perfectly
rotten day for going out. The fish, I seemed to know it, wouldn’t bite.
When I was still fretting over the annoyance of the disappointment I
heard Frank Rolls blowing his whistle in front of the other cottages. I
counted thirty whistles altogether. Then I fell into a light doze--not
exactly sleep, but a sort of _doze_--I can find no other word for it. It
was clear to me that the other “boys” had thrown the thing over. There
was no use in my trying to go out alone. I stayed where I was, my doze
lasting till ten o’clock.
When I walked up town later in the morning I couldn’t help being struck
by the signs in the butcher’s shops and the restaurants, FISH, FRESH
FISH, FRESH LAKE FISH.
Where in blazes do they get those fish anyway?