.
They, too, are a nuisance when baiting with worms, and anyone who
desires a few of the "shell-backs" can be abundantly accommodated.

For more than two miles of this lovely stream any man who knows how
to handle a rod or throw a fly can land, or at least hook, some of
the liveliest two to three pounders he could wish for, and although
bass vary in their tastes at different periods of the day, I know
nothing better than the common trolling spoon as a regular thing.
There is one pool where I would almost be inclined to wager that I
could get a strike with either spoon or fly every ten minutes during
the first two hours of daylight, or from five to eight in the
evening. That is saying a good deal, but it is a fact.

The best fish I caught last season was when I was going up stream in
the canoe near the mouth of the lake and close to the right side. By
a sudden movement I shot under some willow branches. I was just
letting my line run out after a weed strike and was holding the
paddle in my left hand, with the line between my teeth, using my
right hand to give a good push to clear the boughs, when "zip, zip!"
a beauty seized my bait as I floated out. I got nervous, upset my
canoe and rolled into the water, but waded on shore and landed my
fish. He weighed four pounds, seven ounces, live weight, and I have
his head and tail and a clear conscience to prove it.

The last half day of the season I was fishing at Milton Lake, and I
caught eighteen fine bass, and two eels, the latter as large round as
a policeman's club and as dirty and slimy as usual. Eels always
remind me of a skinny circus contortionist. When I am unfortunate
enough to hook one, I generally make a clean cut of two yards of silk
line, hook and all, and tie him up to the fence, or bow stay of my
canoe. I would willingly let all of them go again only from a
lingering remnant of a boyish superstition that they would go and
tell all the bass how horribly indigestible my bait was.

I remember catching a big snapping turtle, weighing about twelve
pounds, in the lake one day. When I pulled it up, my companion
grabbed it, and I really think I would have jumped overboard but for
the fear that others might be around to make things more pleasant for
me for jumping "from the frying pan into the fire." I suppose a
salt-water fisherman would have yelled and danced for joy; I am not
built that way. When I fish for bass, I want bass, and when I fish
for turtles--No! I wo