Morning journal and courier., 1883-08-09

he let our lures alone. As family friend, we all used to drop him line in turn, while our opinions differed as to the best methods of enticing him into correspondence. My father, whose views were of the severely honest order, would never attempt anything but the straightforward if artificial hy and the times that he has vriggled at full length up the bank covering behind some oppor- tune t1ssocks of reeds and grass, only to be disappointed of rise, would make all sym pathetic and right feeling angels weep.
 One frequent visitor of ours, MT. Cliff ford, was desperately enRmored of this re- tiring trout, and there were no stratagems that he held too base to employ for his cap- ture. He general waited till the brook was in flood, and then dropped in large lob worms at the top end of the culvert, letting the stream carry them nicely in the direction of the monsters jaws. Live mlnnows too with hook delicately inserted under the skin so as to leave them full scope for their most natural gambols in the water, were dis patched in the same direction; but never & bite came but once. That once shall never forget I was sitting the bridge, when all of moment saw my friends eyes go round as saucers, and his fingers tighten con vulsively upon the rod. q have him noW,n he missed between his teeth, as the line be- came taut and the rod bent double. For one instant there was a determined resistance, the next an aHdacious quarter E-af-a-pounder was flying wildly through the air at the rate of forty miles an hour, over the head of the disgusted Mir. Clifford. He never heard the last of that. but it did 1ot make him desist from his efforts at turing the coy beauty. Why the big trout was never caught a nap ping when the water was colored we could not make out. I had theory Git may be romantic, but gave that fish credit for all human sagacity) that when he saw one of faY a1or bearing down upon him, he used to sail up stream till he got above the bait, and then drop down sideways in the current few inches above it. to see If his portly form encountered the unseen resistance of a casting line.
 for him; had great idea of ''dibbing" or 'daping" with the natural fly, blue bottle, grasshopper, or what not, impaled upon a tiny hook. As my feeling was that this sus- picious customer was always looking out for casting lines, my notion was, don't let him have any of those troublesome things in the water to bother him and get in his way ''Dibbing" is the very thing for him; you keep big bumblebee Hopping up and down on the top of the water, and if you only make it look lifelike enough you'll get him one of these days. But the day was long in coming. I shall never forget peeping tiously through the reeds and seeing the sar- donic look upon his lordship's face as kept agitating the rod point and keeping large mayfy dancing wildly about two feet from his stately nose. He never showed the slightest desire to possess himself of the dainty, and only acknowledged the delicate attention at last by sheering a foot farther of This want of confidence hurt me very much.
 The keepers idea was that a fish like that was better out of the brook than in-''al- ways eating of the small fry" as he ele- k1xx lzl
 teens was allowed to have grand field day, when he summoned two or three other choice spirits, and, after mature deliberation, they agreed to block up both ends of the culvert with nets, and then frighten him into one of them. So the geniuses set to work with their apparatus, and refreshment in the shape Of large stone jar of heady ale. And first they blocked up one end, watching to see he didn't bolt, and then they closed up the oth- CT. Now they were sure they had got him, and they sent word up to the house for the gentlemen to come and see the big trout caught. But we didn't quite like the idea of 6 game fish being done to death in that fash ion, so none of us went down-fortunately as it happened, for in the event there was very little to see. When they had got their nets down, one intrepid spirit volunteered to go in under the culvert with 8 stick, to ''prod' him out, In he went, and splashed under the culvert, in a very cramped and un- eomfprtsble position, should rather fancy but aftaf 'prodding" away foxs-a zsquHRtsE Of an hour without bolting the big fish, he came out again looking rather in want of fresh air, and said two or three big ''snags' had drift ed in with the stream under the culvert, and the trout must be trotting up and down un- der these, for he never could even feel him with all his ''prodding."
 After some bad language, and finishing the contents of the stone jar, Velveteens then disbanded his talented coterie, and sent up to the house to know if he might shoot him next time he might "'appen upon i'm hout- side the culvert." But this reused the finer feelings of our very imperfect nature for so far we had been consenting unto his untime- ly end by nets and 'tprodding.'' But now we felt that his escape was providential, and we unanimously declared that so fine fish should never come to his end save by fair and lawful methods
 Alas for such goodly resolution! Only the next week we had two troublesome school boy cousins to stay with us, and we were sorely put to 1t to provide them with enter tainment Fortunately they were, consider ing their age and experience, determined an- glers; and as the contemplative sport took up much of their time and very little of ours, we always encouraged their disposition towards it to the fullest extent We even went so far as to tell them all about our pet trout, laughing in our sleeve the while to think what @ pretty dance he would lead
 
 endeavors for his capture. We really turned an apoplectic purple with inward laughter when giving them full instructions how to ap- proach the culvert without being observed by the ever-watchful fish But laughed too soon.
 It was only one short hour afterwards that two members of our party, they were leisurely pacing up and down the terrace walk, heard howIs of delight proceeding from the vicinity of the Mill plantation cul- vert, howls so inexpressibly dreadful that their first thought was that one of these un- ruly school boys was murdering the other, and that this devoted other was strenuously resisting his own untimely demise. Full of this idea, they fled wildly in the direction of the culvert, and were rewarded on arrival at the brock by seeing these two pleasant boys squatting like red Indians upon their hams, yelling with an irrepressible emotion, and in the midst of them, Hopping vainly on the grass was fosr pound trout
 The rest of this sad story is soon told. Our instructions how to approach unseen had been all too perfect. With an ingenuity that was positively fendish, they had frs made cross line out of ball of string we had unwittingly lent them to fly their kites with and had attached to the middle of this line yard of strong salmon gut, and to that again, three powerful hooks tied back to back as in pike fishing, with live bait. This done, like some crafty Ojibbeway upon the warpath, one willy school boy had squirmed along, centre te1Te, and across the cuiyert till he was safe on the further bank, and ex- actly opposite the unconscious fish, taking one end of the cross line with him. With Macchiavellian cunning had they then ap- preached the water down either bank, till they could both just get peep of the mons- ter through the rushes, and could drop the books softly down into the water not far from his noble tail. He had no suspicion of his danger, but lay, they said, without ever moving, til they worked the hooks stealthily along, using fair ''give and take' with the cross line, right under his belly fins; and then-ho7vesco refereus !-they regularly "snatched" him. One good upward jerk from two powerful school boy arms, acting in barnoonious accord, fixed the hooks firmly into the under part of his body, and then his ssplay" Cor so they called it. for what was death to him was sport to his inhuman -. hriaf hnt trannandona