The late meeting of the State Fish Commissioners at Milwaukee was an
important event, and the discussions the wise men indulged in will be
valuable additions to the literature of the country, and future readers of
profane history will rise up and call them blessed. It seems that the
action of the Milwaukee common council in withdrawing the use of the water
works from the commissioners, will put a stop to the hatching of
whitefish. This is as it should be. The white fish is an aristocratic
bird, that will not bite a hook, and the propagation of this species of
fish is wholly in the interest of wealthy owners of fishing tugs, who have
nets. By strict attention to business they can catch all the whitefish out
of the lake a little faster than the State machine can put them in. Poor
people cannot get a smell of whitefish. The same may be said of brook
trout. While they will bite a hook, it requires more machinery to catch
them than ordinary people can possess without mortgaging a house. A man
has got to have a morocco book of expensive flies, a fifteen dollar bamboo
jointed rod, a three dollar trout basket with a hole mortised in the top,
a corduroy suit made in the latest style, top boots of the Wellington
pattern, with red tassels in the straps, and a flask of Otard brandy in a
side pocket. Unless a man is got up in that style, a speckled trout will
see him in Chicago, first, and then it won't bite. The brook trout is even
more aristocratic than the whitefish, and should not be propagated at
public expense.
But there are fish that should be propagated in the interest of the
people. There is a species of fish that never looks at the clothes of the
man who throws in the bait, a fish that takes whatever is thrown to it,
and when once hold of the hook never tries to shake a friend, but submits
to the inevitable, crosses its legs and says "Now I lay me," and
comes out on the bank and seems to enjoy being taken. It is a fish that is
a friend of the poor, and one that will sacrifice itself in the interest
of humanity. This is the fish that the State should adopt as its trade
mark, and cultivate friendly relations with, and stand by. We allude to
the bullhead.
The bullhead never went back on a friend. To catch the bullhead it is not
necessary to tempt his appetite with porter house steak, or to display an
expensive lot of fishing tackle. A pin hook, a piece of liver, and a
cistern pole, is all the capital required to catch a bullhead. He lays
upon the bottom of a stream or pond in the mud, thinking. There is no fish
that does more thinking or has a better head for grasping great questions,
or chunks of liver than the bullhead. His brain is large, his heart beats
for humanity, and if he can't get liver, a piece of a tin tomato can will
make a meal for him. It is an interesting study to watch a boy catch a
bullhead. The boy knows where the bullhead congregates, and when he throws
in his hook it is dollars to buttons that "in the near future" he will get
a bite. The bullhead is democratic in all its instincts. If the boy's
shirt is sleeveless, his hat crownless, and his pants a bottomless pit,
the bullhead will bite just as well as though the boy is dressed in purple
and fine linen, with knee breeches and plaid stockings. The bull head
seems to be dozing--bulldozing we might say--on the muddy bottom, and a
stranger might say that he would not bite. But wait. There is a movement
of his continuation, and his cow-catcher moves gently toward the piece of
liver. He does not wait to smell of it, and canvas in his mind whether the
liver is fresh. It makes no difference to him. He argues that here is a
family out of meat. "My country calls and I must go," says the bullhead to
himself, and he opens his mouth and the liver disappears.
It is not certain that the boy will think of his bait for half an
hour, but the bullhead is in no hurry. He lays in the mud and proceeds to
digest the liver. He realizes that his days will not be long in the land,
or water, more properly speaking, and he argues if he swallows the bait
and digests it before the boy pulls him out, he will be just so much
ahead. Finally the boy thinks of his bait, and pulls it out, and the
bullhead is landed on the bank, and the boy cuts him open to get the hook
out. Some fish only take the bait gingerly, and are only caught around the
selvage of the mouth, and they are comparatively easy to dislodge. Not so
with the bullhead. He says if liver is a good thing you can't have too
much of it, and it tastes good all the way down. The boy gets down on his
knees to dissect the bullhead, and get his hook, and it may be that the
boy swears. It would not be astonishing, though he must feel, when he gets
his hook out of the hidden recesses of the bullhead, like the minister
that took up a collection and didn't get a cent, though he expressed his
thanks at getting his hat back. There is one drawback to the bullhead, and
that is his horns. We doubt if a boy ever descended into the patent
insides of a bullhead, to mine for Limerick hooks, that did not, before
his work was done, run a horn into his vital parts. But the boy seems to
expect it, and the bullhead enjoys it. We have seen a bullhead lay on the
bank and become dry, and to all appearances dead to all that was going on,
and when the boy sat down on him and got a horn in his elbow, and yelled
murder, the bullhead would grin from ear to ear, and wag his tail as
though applauding for an _end core_.
The bullhead never complains. We have seen a boy take a dull knife and
proceed to follow a fish line down a bullhead from his head to the end of
his subsequent anatomy, and all the time there would be an expression of
sweet peace on the countenance of the bullhead, as though he
enjoyed it. If we were preparing a picture representing "Resignation," for
a chromo to give to subscribers, and wished to represent a scene of
suffering in which the sufferer was light hearted, and seemed to recognize
that all was for the best, we should take for the subject a bullhead, with
a boy searching with a knife for a long lost fish hook.
The bullhead is a fish that has no scales, but in lieu thereof is a fine
India rubber skin, that is as far ahead of fiddle string material for
strength and durability as possible. The meat of the bullhead is not as
choice as that of the mackerel, but it fills up a stomach just as well,
and the _Sun_ insists that the fish commissioners shall drop the hatching
of aristocratic fish and give the bullhead a chance. There's millions in
it.