The Wichita daily eagle. [volume] (Wichita, Kan.) 1890-1906, 1896-03-17
FUN WITH THE SMELLS.

| In the State of Maine.
If one wants TO see smelts caught for
fun, and to learn how pleasure and
profit can form partnership and both
Ieclare satisfactory dividends, he
should come down here and visit the
portable villages along the lazy Baga-
duce. The Bagaduce river goes the
longest distance to find an outlet half
mile away of any stream in the world.
Rising in Walkers pond, the headwa-
tiers of which are but 20 rods inland
from Eggemoggin Reach, it flows east
and then north, dividing Sedgwick
from Brooksville, and, turning sharp
to the west, parts Brooksville from
Penobscot until it strikes Castine, when
It curves to the south and finds the
Atlantic ocean between Castine and
West Brookville, not 100 rods from
where it started. Besides the big Is
mile blight, which the Bagaduce forms
IN trying to make Brooksville an island,
1t is looping and making a snake Of it
self all the way, as if it got mileage
fees for travel, like member of con-
gress. From its mouth to its source
the devious Bagaduce is alive with fat
smelts, and up in Walkers pond are
millions more to fill vacancies.
When winter has wusted the
stream with ice and the minnows be
gin TO hold family reunions in the
muddy hollows under the ice, it is time
10 catch smelts. The outfit of the
smelter is inexpensive. 1t consists OF
homemade four-by-six wooden house
on runners, a tinker's stove that will
hold half bushel of mill blocks, four
hooks, two lines, two crescent sinkers
with line from each point, plug OF
black navy tobacco and a clay pipe.
If there is any money left over, he gets
another pipe. For bait he dips pailful
of live minnows from under the ice.
AS these will stay frozen solid for a
week and thaw out in perfect health,
they are not counted in with the bill.
Cutting two holes in the river ice
near the channel, the fisherman pushes
bis house sled over them, takes up a
floor board, and lets down his lines
with two baited hooks attached to each.
After this his labor consists in smoking
his pipe, pulling up fish and keeping the
stove filled with wood. AS the house is
too small for him to lie down, he sits on
low block with his legs each side of
the stove and with his hands holding
the lines between his knees. In a
corner is a tin pail filled with dough
nuts, homemade sausage, and butter
milk biscuits, to which he refers as hum
ger dictates. At night he hangs a lam
tern to the peak of the roof, SO he can
see the smoke from his pipe; and if the
wind shifts 50 as to blow in at the door,
Re does not attempt to change it, but
goes outside and turns his house back
side before Now and then brisk gals
will break his box away from its moor
ings, and send it sliding off down
stream. In this case the owner does not
worry. He waits.until the house stops,
cuts new holes and resumes fishing,
knowing he will come back to the old
grounds again when the wind shifts.
IL he finds an extra good fishing place
and wants to hold it, a pail of water
poured over the runners makes an
anchor for all winter. Sitting thus
with his back to the wall and his legs
embracing the stove, he will smoke and
dream and fish all day and night if nee
essary, enjoying life as it passes and
thanking his stars there are people IN
the world who are able to pay fog
snelts.
After shutdown the stream is dotted
with blinking lights as fer as one can
see. They are strung out in single file
for rods, then punched in villages of
ten or dozen houses, and again, after
spaces Of darkness, are other shining
hanlets dwindling away until the fur
Their lights wink to the stars on the
horizon. AS soon as supper is over, the
whole town comes out on the ice. The
children slide away on sleds or skates,
the wives sit in the doors of their hus-
hands camps with blankets about their
feet, knitting and talking as good wives
will, while the grown-up boys and girls
so off in peirs TO solitary camps where
they can fish with the lanterns turned
down. Visiting is always in order.
Callers do not drop in" the way they
do on land, because the houses are toe
small, but they stand outside, asking;
How do they bite?" and discussing the
latest smelt quotations in the city pa
Iers. 1t is settled beyond a question
that the New Brunswick and Nova
Scotia smelts are lean tomoods travel.
ing in disguise. They wouldn't be SO
cheap II they were real smelts-oi
course not. Having solved the problem