"Then the lake bottom varies?"
"Oh, yes! To get an idea of what the bottom of the lake is like, take a look at the land about you. Here you find a hill, or a succession of rolling hills. Here is a stretch of flat prairie. There are deep gulches and bluffs. You will find clay, sand, loam, small stones, boulders. As I've already said, the lake's bottom is almost exactly like the land about it."
"What's the deepest part?"
"Baptiste LeClaire and I once sounded a place off the Wisconsin peninsula. We touched bottom with a thousand feet of line, and I think that may be the deepest place in Lake Michigan, though I cannot be sure. I have not sounded every place in the lake and, for that matter, neither has anyone else."
"Are there deep-water fish?"
"The trout ordinarily seeks deep water, though they may be found in shallows in the spring. However, there are not enough trout to be worth a fisherman's while. Some day this may change."
"Is there any way to set a net so a fisherman may be sure of a good catch?"
"Not once in ten times, if he is just beginning, can a fisherman be certain of a good catch, or of any catch. The tenth time is the exception. I am sure, for instance, that there must be a vast number of whitefish in this bay, because the food for them is here. Otherwise, the fisherman must be taught by experience, or by another fisherman, where to set his nets so that he will make a good catch. Watch it now. We are about to land."
The nose of the little boat bumped gently against the sand beach, and Hans stepped out into knee-deep water. Paying no attention to his soaking-wet shoes and trousers, he uncoiled the rope as he walked up the beach and tied it through a hole which he had drilled in the spindle of the hand windlass. More gingerly, not afraid of getting wet but not anxious to do so, Ramsay stepped to the nose of the boat and leaped onto the dry beach.
Pieter and Marta joined them, and all turned puzzled glances on Hans; they knew almost nothing about the technique of fishing and must look to him. Ramsay watched the fisherman test the taut rope with his hand, and a little smile of satisfaction flitted across his face.