Bill helped Tatanka and Barker to smoke the fish they had caught and
then was ready for another trip.
"Can't we go again, before it gets too cold?" he asked. "Let us go
again, Mr. Barker, this meat won't last long. I just wish Tim could go,
too!"
The old trapper himself had also caught the fever. "I reckon, boy," he
admitted, "we ought to make another haul or two, but the next time we'll
take a seine. Did you ever fish with a seine! It is more fun than with a
gill-net, but we must go soon, before the water gets too cold, for in
seining, the fisherman gets as wet as the fish."
On the next warm day, Barker remarked at breakfast: "Bill, this looks
like a good day. I guess we'll be off right away."
The two fishermen rode down stream to a place where a deep bayou or
slough joined the main river. They started to seine half a mile up the
bayou. One end of the seine was tied to a stout pole driven into the
bottom of the bayou. The other end, they swung around in a half-circle,
Bill rowing the boat and the trapper managing the seine from the stern
of the boat. They caught all kinds of fish in the same manner that boys
and fishermen catch minnows. Their troubles began when they started to
make a haul in a strong current in deep water near the mouth of the
bayou. The net caught on a submerged stump and could not be pulled off
against the current.
"I reckon we're stuck," said Barker, as he found it impossible to move
the seine either one way or the other.
"Let me dive in and fix it," begged the boy, as he began to strip.
Barker thought the water was too cold, but Bill said he wouldn't mind
it, and it wouldn't take long to try it.
Bill splashed some water over himself and then swam quickly to the spot
where the net was caught. He dived, opened his eyes and could see
clearly every mesh of the net as it was held fast by the current over a
sharp stump. He lifted it off quickly and threw it over the stump down
stream and struck out for shore. His skin was blue and his teeth
chattered as he hurriedly got into his clothes. Then he ran back and
forth on the sand a few minutes to get warm.
"Now, Mr. Barker," he said, "let's make the haul and see what we get out
of this deep hole. There ought to be some big ones in it."
Both men slowly pulled the seine through the deep hole, where by means
of small leads attached to the lower edge of the seine, the big drag-net
swept the bottom, driving all deep-water fish before it.
As the bag-like middle part of the seine slowly crept into shallower
water on a rising sandbank, there was a great stir in the enclosed pool.
Big fish of several kinds came to the surface. Some showing a silvery
flash for just a moment, dived again to the bottom in their attempt to
escape, others, bolder or made more desperate, shot with a loud splash
over the seine back into free water.
Bill pulled as he had never pulled on anything before.
"Pull, Mr. Barker, pull!" he shouted. "We've got a wagon-load of big
ones, but they're breaking away."
The old trapper pulled as hard as Bill, but he didn't hear what Bill
called to him, for the fish in their last desperate effort to escape
made a deafening confusion and noise with splashing, jumping and
flapping about. The big bag was alive with a wildly struggling mass of
fish of all sizes; and so heavy was the catch that the two fishermen
could not move the net another inch.
"Drop the rope," commanded the old man, "and throw them out on the
sand."
As Bill sprang into the shallow water, a big flopping fish, the like of
which he had never seen before, got between his legs and laid him
sprawling flat on his stomach amongst the madly struggling fish. In a
moment Bill was on his feet again.
"Help me, Mr. Barker, help me," he called. "I can't hold him; he'll get
away!"
"Grab him in the gills!" the trapper shouted, as much excited as his boy
friend.
The black giant was just splashing into open water when Bill threw
himself forward and caught him firmly in the gills.
"Catch him, Mr. Barker, catch him!" Bill spluttered as he blew the water
out of his nose and mouth. "I can't lift him."
By their united effort, they dragged the monster on shore.
"We've caught a whale, a real whale," Bill shouted, and danced around
like a wild Indian. "What is it, Mr. Barker! Is it a whale?"
"It is a paddle-fish, but sure a big one, I reckon," the trapper told
him as he dragged the ungainly monster into the grass. "He must weigh a
hundred pounds, and he measures six feet, if he measures an inch."
Sorting the fish and loading them into the boat took some time, and when
the work was done, the two fishermen could not help laughing at each
other. Their clothes were dripping wet and covered with mud and
fish-scales all over, but they had a boat-load of fish.
"That's all a part of fishing," Barker remarked, with his quiet smile.
"It is a saying among us trappers that dry fishermen and wet hunters
have had poor luck. I guess our luck was worth getting soaked for."
Before they started for camp all small fish or fish not wanted were put
back in the water. Bill had already learned the maxim of the old
trapper: "Never waste any of God's wild bread and meat. What you do not
need to-day, you may want badly to-morrow."
"I have seen the days," the old man had often told the boys, "when I was
mighty glad to dip a mess of minnows out of a spring-hole in winter, and
I have many times thanked the Good Lord that porcupines can't run as
fast as deer.
"One winter while I was trapping in upper Michigan I lost my gun while
crossing a treacherous stream, and if I could not have killed
porcupines, fool-hens, and snowshoe rabbits with a club, I should have
had to pull out of the country and leave my traps and furs."
When they arrived at camp, Tim was wild at the sight of the giant
paddle-fish, and the boys found that the odd paddle-shaped snout of the
fish was almost half the length of the fish.
"What does he do with his big paddle?" Tim wanted to know. But neither
the Indian nor the trapper could answer the question.
"Have they a paddle when they are just hatched?" Bill asked, but neither
Tatanka nor Barker had ever seen a paddle-fish less than a foot long.
The life of the paddle-fish or spoonbill is a mystery to this day, and
little more is known of it now than was known to Indians and whites when
Bill and Tim camped on Lake Pepin.
The armor-plated gars and paddle-fish are found only in the Mississippi
and its tributaries, while bass and pickerel and eel are found in most
waters flowing into the North Atlantic, both in America and Europe.
Both gar and spoonbill are still caught in Lake Pepin. A European fish,
the German carp, has become naturalized in the Mississippi basin and
many carloads of it are shipped to Eastern markets every year. However,
the game fish of the old days are still all there and will never become
scarce, if good fish and game laws are wisely administered.
In the days of Barker and Tatanka, fishing with any kind of net or
tackle was lawful, but to-day both commercial fishermen and anglers have
to observe the laws, or our lakes and streams will become fished out;
for the resources and gifts of nature are not inexhaustible, and the
number of men and boys who go fishing increases each year.
For fishing, camping, and canoeing, for grand scenery, for
house-boating, motor-boating, for trees, flowers, and birds and for all
kinds of water creatures such as clams, crayfish and muskrats, the
Mississippi, the "Everywhere River" of the Chippewa Indians, has no
equal on the northern hemisphere and is surpassed only by the Amazon of
South America.
In the Itasca Forest of Minnesota, the Mississippi begins as a tiny
stream, which sometimes loses itself in a tamarack swamp, and which the
beaver people, the little animal engineers, can easily dam with mud and
brush. When it leaves Itasca, it is large enough to carry a canoe. But
the rippling little creek grows rapidly by receiving the water from many
lakes and streams and long before it reaches Minneapolis, where it
furnishes power to grind the wheat grown over half a continent, it is a
stately navigable river, whose enormous volumes of flood-water only the
most skillful engineer can control.