The Bolivar bulletin. [volume] (Bolivar, Hardeman County, Tenn.) 1865-1888, 1883-08-30
THAT BIG TROUT.

We knew him very well. Year after
year, as winter gave place to kindly
spring, he used to come back to his old
haunt under the culvert that ran over the
Middleton brook, beside the Mill planta-
ton. And there, on fine warm even
ing, we could generally see him if we
peeped cautiously over, lazily sucking
in what flies the eddies carried right
into his mouth; for he would barely Stir
a yard to gObble up the finest "green
drake " that ever got into limbo by
dallving with the treacherOusly smiling
waters edge. No, he was not a greedy
fish, but took what good things Fortune
sent him, without troubling himself
about the flotsam and jetsam that passed
him by on the right hand and on the
left. But probably his lazy, easy tenn
permanent Kept him in high condition,
for he was a lusty trout, with n girth
and sides that would have done credit
to our London aldermen. To see him
was to admire and long after him. For,
rs near as we could guess from so
long an acquaintance with his lord
ship of the brook, he would be three
and half pounds weight, or even q
little over. And how we did long to
have him on dry land, that the ac-
curacy of good British standard weights
might decide to n nicely whether our
Judgment was discriminating or at
fault! But the difficulty was to inveigle
the monster. And that perhaps lent
him his greatest charm. He was so far
from curious, so little inclined to be
hasty in his action, that minnow and
worm and fly, if hooks were part of
their appendagc, could never extract
from him the faintcst semblance of 4" a
glorious nibble.' No matter, either,
whether the water was thick and brown
with a thunder shower, or clear with
summer drought, he let our lures alone.
As a family friend, we all used to drop
him n line in turn, while our opinions
differed as to the best method of en-
ticing him into n correspondence. My
father, whose views were of the severe
ly honest order, would never attempt
anything but the straightforward if
artificial fly, and the times that he has
wrigglcd at full length up the bank,
covering behind some OppOrtune tus-
socks of reeds and grass, only to be dis
appointed of a rise, would make all
sympathetic and right-feeling angels
weep.
One frequent visitor of ours, Mr..
Clifford, was desperately enamored of
this retiring trout, and there was no
stratagems that he held too base to en-
ploy for his capture. He generally
waited till the brook was in flood, and
then dropped in large lobworms at the
top end of the culvert, letting the
stream carry them nicely in the direc-
ton of the monsters jaws. Live min
nows, too, with a hook very delicately
inserted under the skin SO as to leave
them fun scope for their most natural
gambols in the water, were dispatched
in the same direction; but never bite
came but once. That once / shall never
forget | was sitting on the bridge,
when all of a moment | saw my friend $
eyes 90 round as saucers, and his
fingers tighten convulsively upon the
rod. Il have him now" he Kissed be-
tween his teeth, rs the line came taut
and the rod bent double. For one in
slant there was determined resistance,
the next an audaciOus quarter-of-a-
FOUNDER was flying wildly through the
air at the rate of forty miles an hour,
over the head of the disguised Mr..
Clifford. He never heard the last of
that; but it did not make him desist
from his efforts at Turing the coy beauty
Why the big trout was never caught
mapping when the water was colored
we could not make out. l had a
theory Git may be romantic, but 1 gave
that fish credit for all human
sapacitv) that when he saw one of these
tempting lobworms or lively minnows
bearing down upon him, he used to sail
up stream till he got above the bait, and
then drop down sideways in the current
n few inches above it, to see if his portly
form encountered the unseen resistance
of a casting line.
20 aome TO my owR pet way Of ang-