Crowded Out o Crofield | Page 7

sportsman knew very well that
he knew nothing at all of that kind of fishing. He had made his first cast
perfectly, because it was about the only way in which it could have
been made, and now he was so very nervous and excited and cautious
that he did very well again, aided as before by the breeze. Not in the
same place, but at a little distance down, and close to where Jack
captured his second bait, there was a crook in the Cocahutchie, with a
steep, overhanging, bushy bank. Into the glassy shadow under that bank
the sinkerless line carried and dropped its little green prisoner, and
there was a hungry fellow in there, waiting for foolish grasshoppers in
the meadow to spring too far and come down upon the water instead of
upon the grass. As the grasshopper alighted on the water, there was a
rush, a plunge, a strong hard pull, and then Jack Ogden said to himself:
"I've heard how they do it. They wait and tire 'em out. I won't be in too
much of a hurry. He'll get away if I am."
That is probably what the fish would have done, for he was a fish with
what army men call "tactics." He was able to pull very hard, and he was
also wise enough to rush in under the bank and to sulkily stay there.
"Feels as if I'd hooked a snag," said Jack. "May be I've lost the fish and
he's hitched me into a 'cod-lamper' eel of some kind. Steady--no, I
mustn't pull harder than the fish."
He was breathless, but not with any exertion that he was making. His
hat fell off upon the grass, as he leaned forward through the alder
bushes, and his sandy hair was tangled for a moment in some stubby
twigs. He loosened his head, still holding firmly his bent and straining
rod. One step farther, a slip of his left foot, an unsuccessful grasp at a
bush, and then Jack went over and down into a pool deeper than he had
thought the Cocahutchie afforded so near Crofield.

There was a very fine splash, as the grasshopper fly-fisherman went
under, and there was a coughing and spluttering a moment afterward,
when his eager, excited, anxious face came up again. He could swim
extremely well, and he was not thinking of his ducking--only of his
game.
"I hope I haven't lost him!" he exclaimed, as he tried to pull upon the
line.
It did not tug at all, just then, for the fish on the hook had been rudely
startled out from under the bank and was on his way up the
Cocahutchie, with the hook in his mouth.
"There' he is! I've got him yet! Glad I can swim--" cried Jack; and it did
seem as if he and this fish were very well matched, except that Jack had
to give one of his hands to the rod while his captive could use every fin.
Down stream floated Jack, passing the rod back through his hands until
he could grasp the line, and all the while the fish was darting madly
about to get away.
"There, I've touched bottom. Now for him! Here he comes. I'll draw
him ashore easy--that's it! Hurrah! biggest fish ever was caught in the
Cocahutchie!"
That might or might not be so, but Jack Ogden had a three-pound trout,
flopping angrily upon the grass at his feet.
"I know how to do it now," he almost shouted. "I can catch 'em! I won't
let anybody else know how it's done, either."
He had learned something, no doubt, but he had not learned how to
make a large fish out of a small one. All the rest of that afternoon he
caught grasshoppers and cast them daintily into what seemed to be
good places, but he did not have another occasion to tumble in. When
at last he was tired out and decided to go home, he had a dozen more of
trout, not one of them weighing over six ounces, with a pair of very
good yellow perch, one very large perch, a sucker, and three bullheads,

that bit when his bait happened to sink to the bottom without any lead
to help it. Take it all in all, it was a great string of fish to be caught on a
Saturday afternoon, when all that the Crofield sportsmen around the
mill-pond could show was six bullheads, a dozen small perch, a lot of
"pumpkin-seeds" not much larger than dollars, five small eels, and a
very vicious snapping-turtle.
Jack stood for a moment looking down at the results of his experiment
in fly-fishing. He felt, really, as if he could not more than half believe
it.
"Fishing doesn't pay,"