The Birmingham age-herald., 1913-02-23
BY WELLINGTON VANDIVER

casting, and scoopnet landing. and
smells, and leaders, and hings, until my
head aches, and l goes out and i'm
b1bes, pretty frequent to sorter allie
viate the pain. l am notified by these
angling experts that science in captur-
ing the finny denizens of the waters is
their main holt, and that the deed was
to be. did with scientific tools.
IF you will believe them, success in
capturing fish depended on first get
ting their opinion. and listening to the
advice of these two celebrated r-chu-
o-so- es-they was the onliest pebbles
on the beach, when it came to delood-
ing anything that wore scales. They
didn't need to have me tell them where
the best holes was-no indeed-ey, but
their expert knowledge of the general
tendency, and surroundings of these
streams, fixed 'em so they'd know to
a dot whore to fling in a hook, and
pull out five pound trout
Hadn't more than got our lines in
the creek when one of them local in
habitants of Clay appeared, organized
to fish some himself. This particular
citizen wasn't no chrome to look at.
His trowsers were pulled about six
months before they was ripe, while his
whskers looked like they had birds
nests in em.
He resembled them Bible pictures of
Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, mounted on
a iackass, going down into Egypt to
buy corn. This aged party plunked his
hook into the creek, close to where my
millionaires inteded to angle, making
as much noise in doing it as you'uns
would raise in tearing down a barn.
His fishing outfit consisted of a bent
pin, at the end of a cotton line, hitched
on to crooked hickory pole, about as
big as a chair leg. lie had gourd
full of red worms with which to seduce
the fish.
"One of my capitalists suggested to
the other that Old Spinach would plash
about and skeer all the fish away
and so he politely offered to show the
old snoozeT a better place to fish at,
than close to them.
Mighty careful and supercilous, he
piloted the patriarch down the stream,
finally anchoring him alongside of a
pool where a trout wouldn't infest from
now until the millennium, according 10
what the Duke as l called that bond
holder, figured The other podner of
the Duke him as | called the 'Commo-
dore,' was a powerful soft hearted
chap, and he allowed that 1t was a
pity to fool the old pelican thataway,
and he got so sorry for him that he
meandered off down the creek to where
the Clay specimen was sitting in the
hot sun, blinking like an owl. and Of
fered to lend him pair of smell hooks.
and a brown hackle fly for bait But
the mossback party from Clay refused
these offers, allowing that he didn't
need none of them new tangled dingus-
es. as he generally yanlled 'em out
with muscle and red worms. and when
them didn't prevail he deluded fish
with splitting on the bait and ambush
ing them with er infant wasp.
Then he tied nail on his line for
a sinlker. expectorated on the bait. and
slammed the outfit into the water, like
killing snakes The duke and the conf
modsre sniggered at his crude methods
and laid bets that he wouldn't get /,
nibble from a minnow with his anna
teurish style of angling. in a month of
sundays. But the Clay county rube
didn't seem to mindWt much, but Just
sat there kicking gravel into the
stream with his bare feet, and singing.
Il wan to be er nangel,' at the top of
his voice. and otherwise made much
fuss as a nigger at dance. 1T amuses
me- said the duke. to observe one OF
these ignorant rural. amateurs angle
for game fish. with their barbarous