Iron County register. [volume] (Ironton, Iron County, Mo.) 1867-1965, 1894-01-04
JERRY SIMPSON AND THE EEL
4 Game Catch That Whipped Dog and
Got Back Into the Water.

4 Game Catch That Whipped Dog and
| Got Back Into the Water.
DO any of you gentlemen like to
hsh?" asked Jerry Simpson from be-
hind his gold-bowed glasses 81 am
passionately fond of angling as pas
time. l can't say fish as Amos Cum
mings and some of the other Izaak
WaltOns of the house. l heard Cum
mings talking the other day to fish
| ing friend, and they mentioned as
| among part of their tackle such things
| as b1ack-bass neckties and weak-fish
pants and tarpon suits. When people
go in that far they get beyond my
depth.
still, in lowly, common way, I
like to fish. The last time I essayed
this gentle sport was out on the Wal
nut river. in Kansas. A colored per-
son showed me the place. It
was sublime place. I cut
pole right there among the
plum bushes. 1t was a splen-
did pole, big as my arm at the
butt, and strong enough so you could
have landed a cow with it if one had
bit. 1 baited, under the guidance of
the colored person, with a piece of
liver. The line was accoutred with a
red bob. or float. The mission of this
float, as 1 will explain to mex
perienced people, is to apprise one
when there is bite. That is its mis-
sion. 1t lies in the water and you
watch it. When it moves about un-
easily that isn't bite. That's n nib
BILE. You don't do anything when you
have a nibble. When the bob goes
clear under water that's bite, and
you sock it to him.
''Some people like to fool with fish
and let him tow around on their lines
and run and flibuster and make no.
quorum points and think he's getting
away. 1 don't do that way. I'm a
plain man. l am perfectly frank with
fish and don't believe in raising false
hopes, even in the bosom of a bass. So
/ simply yank 'em forth unhesitating-
ly and give 'em the worst at once.
'After awhile, this time on the Wal
nut. I had bite. The float disap-
peared like the surplus during the
Harrison administration. 1 let him
have it. It was an eel. I fetched him
through the atmosphere looking like a
letter S, and slammed him against the
great SCdU6 OIL AdUSStS. IL WdS IO1t
which ought to have 1oosened every
tooth in his head.
81 want to pause right here to say
that, talking about game fish, an eel is
the gamest fish that ever lived. Talk
about black bass? Do you know what
a bass would have done if I'd smashed
him against my district that way?
Well, he wouldn't have done any
thing. He'd just sprawl there.
Maybe he'd curl his tail a trifie.
but that's the limit. But this
eel of mine. He surely was the
galaest eel 1 ever met. He sprang up
the moment ne hit the grass and made
for the water on the run-pole, line
and all. And game! When I headed
him off that eel stood right up on his
tail and fought me. The colored per-
son had a dog named Body-Guard.
Dog had record, too. He got on the
warpath once and closed every store in
town.
eve sicked BodyGuard on the eel.
My eel whipped him in two and half
minutes. He was the gamiest eel ever
known. No, didn't get him, either.
He went back in the Walnut, where he
lived. You might as well have tried to
stop the senate. kansas City Times