Daily Kennebec journal. [microfilm reel] (Augusta, Me.) 1870-1975, 1914-03-31
JUST FISH STORIES.
Being "reminiscences of Boyhood Days
OF Some Augusta Citizens.

man, and it might be said every man.
Will stretch the truth when it comes
to telling fish stories. No matter how
upright he may be and how truthful
even though his reputation for verac-
1ty may be known far and wide, let
him but start in to tell about a fish
that he has caught or that some 9TH
er fellow has caught, and in nine cases
out of 10, although the act may be
one of inadvertence, he will stretch
the truth of the yarn that he is spin
ming until it is even as tissue and thin
tissue at that. Why this tendency
for man to stretch the truth when
telling fish stories exists has never
been explained and probably never
will be.
An incident Of this kind came to
notice the other morning in one of
the local barber shops, where three or
four Augusta citizens had assembled
for the purpose of having treated in
one way or another their facial pro-
portions. It may be said by way of
explanation that the artist who pre-
sides over the second chair and is
known among his friends by the name
of Ellery, is an inveterate fisherman,
and is a past master of the art of
angling, even in it's highest branches.
He is never tired of telling of the fish
that he las caught, and also of some
of those which got away, and when
he gets another fisherman in his chair
he asks no greater happiness, except
perhaps the joy that comes when in
the very act Of fishing.
On the morning in question he was
cutting the hair of a druggist named
Nat, also a fisherman, and the alter
mating current of fish talk between
the two was working fine, as we'll as
tremendously. 1t is characteristic of
Ellery to try and tell story just a
little larger than the other fellow, a
desire which he cannot curb, and
when Nat had told him of a fishing
trip during which he had landed a
five-pound trout, Ellery could not be
content in the enjoyment of his
friends success but had to go to work
and tell a story which he had read in
a Sunday paper of a man down on
the Connecticut river who had landed
a 20-pound pickerel, using pound and
a half of pork for bait.
This yarn, although it put Nat out
of the running, reminded one of the
others in the shop of yarn that Ell
lery used to tell about catching lob
sters off the wharf down in Wiscas-
set when re was a boy, and when
according to his story they were so
plenty that all he had to do was to
take an old hoopskirt--one of those
big crinolines that were in style away
back in Civil War times, tie up the
hi ri
line to the other end. drop it off the
wharf and then pull it up full of lob
sters.
This started the conversation on
Holsters and got a rise out Of Frank.
a dealer in wall papers, paints, etc,
and reminded him of how plentiful
Holsters were down around George
town when he was Il boy. No one in
Georgetown, he said, considered lob
q ters a delicacy in those times, and
never thought of eating any part of
them except the claws, and seldom ate
those. This yarn was followed by an
other along the same line by another
member of the party, who allowed
that in the early SOS, down at Cape
Newagen, Southport Island, he had
seen the fishermen farmers get rid of
short" Holsters by the thousands by
plowing them into the burrows on
their potato patches.
Those two yarns ended the disserta-
ton on Holsters and might have gone
unchallenged had it not been for an
other member of the party who had
hitherto been silent. His name is Jo-
seph but he is called "Joe" for short
and is a member of the largest law
firm of the city. With that winning
smile for which he is noted he laid
down the pink-tinted paper which he
had been perusing and said that the
stories which had been going round
had to him been amusing, especially
those about the Holsters, as they car
ried him back to the days when he
was a boy down in Belfast.
At that time, he said, mackerel
were very plenty in the harbor and
used to come in in schools of millions,
so that the water would be alive with
them. One day in particular. he said,
he went down to the wharf to see the
steamer leave for Boston, and that af-
ter she backed away from the wharf
a short distance she stopped AS she
stopped her stern lifted somewhat as
if she had run on sand bar. but
there was no sand bar there and when
they came to investigate the cause of
her stopping there it was found that
she had gone aground on big school
Of mackerel.