"I wish we had more hooks," said Kate. "We would fish at different points around the pond."
After about the same interval of time and in the same odd, migratory manner, the beautiful school came around four times more in succession; and every time I swung out a handsome one. Kate then took the pole and caught one. Then Ellen caught one; and afterwards Theodora took her turn and succeeded in landing a fine fellow which flopped off the dam once, but was finally secured. In the scramble to save this last one, however, I rolled a loose stone off the dam into the water; and either owing to the splash made by the stone, or because the trout had completed their survey of the pond, they did not return. We saw nothing more of the school although we had not caught a fifth part of them.
After waiting fifteen or twenty minutes we went along the shore on both sides of the pond but could not discern them anywheres. It is likely that they had gone back to the larger pond, two miles distant.
At that time, the very odd circumstances attending the capture of these trout did not greatly surprise me; for I knew almost nothing of fishing. But within a considerable experience since, I have never seen anything like it.
We laid the nine large trout in a row on the dam, side by side, and then strung them on a forked maple branch. They were indeed beauties! The largest was found that night to weigh three pounds and three quarters; and the smallest two pounds and an ounce. The whole string weighed over twenty-two pounds. Going homeward, we first took turns carrying them, then hung them on a pole for two to carry.
Our folks were at supper when we arrived at the house door with our cedar and our fish. When they saw those trout, they all jumped up from the table. Addison and Halse had never caught anything which could compare with them for size; both of the boys stared in astonishment.
"Where in the world did you catch those whopping trout?" was then the question which we had to answer in detail.
Kate carried three of them home with her; and we had six for our share. The Old Squire dressed two of the largest; and grandmother rolled them in meal and fried them with pork for our supper. I thought at the time that I had never tasted anything one half as good in my life!
Next morning Addison got up at half past four and having hastily milked his two cows, went over to the old mill-pond, to try his own hand at fishing there. He found Tom Edwards there already; but neither of them caught a trout, nor saw one. Addison went again a day or two after; and the story having got abroad, more than twenty persons fished there during the next fortnight, but caught no trout.
Evidently it was a transient school. I never caught a trout in the mill-pond, afterwards; although the following year Addison made a great catch in a branch of the Foy stream below the dam under somewhat peculiar circumstances.