Crowded Out o Crofield | Page 6

face
fell a little as he looked at it.
"There are more fellows than fish here," he said to himself, with an air
of disgust.
There was a boy at the end of the dam near him, and a boy in the
middle of it, and two boys at the flume, near the mill. There were three
punts out on the water, and one of them had in it a man and two boys,
while the second boat held but one man, and the third contained four. A

big stump near the north shore supported a boy, and the old snag jutting
out from the south shore held a boy and a man.
There they all were, sitting perfectly still, until, one after another, each
rod and line came up to have its hook and bait examined, to see
whether or not there had really been a bite.
"I'm fairly crowded out," remarked Jack. "Those fellows have all the
good places. I'll have to go somewhere else; where'll I go?"
He studied that problem for a full minute, while every fisherman there
turned to look at him, and then turned back to watch his line.
"I guess I'll try down stream," said Jack. "Nobody ever caught anything
down there, and nobody ever goes there, but I s'pose I might as well try
it, just for once."
He turned away along the track over which he had come. He did not
pause at the road and bridge, but went on down the further bank of the
Cocahutchie. It was a pretty stream of water, and it spread out wide and
shallow, and rippled merrily among stones and bowlders and clumps of
willow and alder for nearly half a mile. Gradually, then, it grew
narrower, quieter, deeper, and wore a sleepy look which made it seem
more in keeping with quiet old Crofield.
"The hay's about ready to cut," said Jack, as he plodded along the path,
near the water's edge, through a thriving meadow of clover and timothy.
"There's always plenty of work in haying time. Hullo! What
grasshoppers! Jingo!"
As he made the last exclamation, he clapped his hand upon his trousers
pocket.
"If I didn't forget to go in and get my sinker! Never did such a thing
before in all my life. What's the use of trying to fish without a sinker?"
The luck seemed to be going directly against him. Even the
Cocahutchie, at his left, had dwindled to a mere crack between bushes

and high grass, as if to show that it had no room to let for fish to live
in--that is, for fish accustomed to having plenty of room, such as they
could find when living in a mill-pond, lined around the edges with boys
and fish-poles.
"That's a whopper!" suddenly exclaimed Jack, with a quick snatch at
something that alighted upon his left arm. "I've caught him!
Grasshoppers are the best kind of bait, too. I'll try him on, sinker or no
sinker. Hope there are some fish, down here."
The line he unwound from his rod was somewhat coarse, but it was
strong, and so was his hook, as if the fishing around Crofield called for
stout tackle as well as for a large number of sportsmen. The big,
long-limbed, green-coated jumper was placed in position on the hook,
and then, with several more grumbling regrets over the absence of any
sinker, Jack searched along the bank for a place whence he could throw
his bait into the water.
"This'll do," he said, at last, and the breeze helped him to swing out his
line until the grasshopper at the end of it dropped lightly and naturally
into a dark little eddy, almost across that narrow ribbon of the
Cocahutchie.
Splash--tug--splash again--
"Jingo! What's that? I declare--if he isn't pulling! He'll break the
line--no, he won't. See that pole bend! Steady--here he comes. Hurrah!"
Out he came, indeed, for the rude, strong tackle held, even against the
game struggling of that vigorous trout. There he lay now, on the grass,
with Jack Ogden bending over him in a fever of exultation and
amazement.
"I never could have caught him with a worm and a sinker," he said,
aloud. "This is the way to catch 'em. Isn't he a big fellow! I'll try some
more grasshoppers."
There was not likely to be another two-pound brook-trout very near the

hole out of which that one had been pulled. There would not have been
any at all, perhaps, but for the prevailing superstition that there were no
fish there. Everybody knew that there were bullheads, suckers, perch,
and "pumpkin-seeds" in the mill-pond, and eels, with now and then a
pickerel, but the trout were a profound secret. It was easy to catch
another big grasshopper, but the young