mbered 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