“If you’ll not go out of sight of the house you may go for an hour,” says the mother, for she too has ears to hear the call of the brook and can understand its charm for her lad. “Just up in the pasture-lot above the bridge,” calls back the boy, and starts off with his pole and a supply of angleworms wrapped up in paper. Take special notice of that pole, for it is the joy of the boy’s heart.
[Original]
He had thought that a cedar sapling, peeled and thoroughly dried, made an ideal outfit, until a friend gave him a straight cane-pole painted a brilliant blue. In after years he owned not a few jointed rods, made by hand of split bamboo; but the tide of joy and pride has never risen higher in his heart than on the day when he became the possessor of the blue cane-pole.
There is a place in the pasture-lot where the brook stretches itself out in a long reach of still water. Above and below are rippling shallows. Wary as is his approach, the boy sees the shy trout darting from the riffles into the darker water. Patiently he dangles his baited hook by the side of a sunken log, and trails it temptingly back and forth before the coverts where the cunning fish lie hidden, but all in vain. They have learned by experience that the presence of a blue jumper and a blue pole spells out danger for them, and refuse to take any risks. Is this, like so many other fishing trips, to end in failure? Watch the boy! Laying the blue pole carefully on the ground, he rolls his sleeves to his shoulders and, lying on his stomach on the bank of the brook, thrusts one hand very gently into the water. With the utmost caution he feels here and there under the overhanging sods until at last his fingers touch something that sends an electric thrill tingling through the length of his little body. He feels a trout, and strangely enough it does not stir. The little fingers gently tickle the belly of the trout as they work their way towards its head, and when they have encircled the body at the gills they suddenly contract and the fish is thrown far back upon the grass. This performance is repeated three or four times, and then the trophies are gathered up in the jumper and with blue pole over his shoulder the boy goes proudly homeward.
Many years after the boy had grown to manhood he was riding with a friend on their way to a famous trout preserve. Naturally, the conversation turned to fishing experiences, and he told the story of the brook and of catching trout with his hands. The friend looked a whole volume of incredulity and exclaimed, “Well, of all the fish-lies I ever heard that takes the cake.” When the clubhouse was reached the keeper, a canny Scotchman, was interviewed. “Andrew, did you ever hear of catching trout with the hands?”
“Is it guddlin’ you mean? Mony a time. I’ve caught plenty of ‘em in the burns when a boy.” The skeptic was silenced if not convinced. Since that time a heated discussion of this mooted question has appeared in a prominent sporting journal, and able arguments have been adduced to prove the impossibility of any such feat as that ascribed to the boy. But he knows, and the brook knows, and the blue pole knows; and those may doubt who will.
“May I go fishin’ down in the woods?” The question came from an anxious heart, and the boy proceeded to support his request with reasons. “The biggest trout are down there. Edwin Crumb caught one that weighed ‘most a pound down there last week. There are no big ones in the pasture-lot. I’ll be careful, and I’m ‘most seven now, you know.” It was a momentous question. For two miles after leaving the bridge the brook ran through the woods, and the mother fancied all manner of possible and impossible dangers to her boy lurking among those trees. But then, the lad must be allowed to go out of her sight some time, and the day was full of sunshine.
“If you’ll be very careful, and not go far, and be back early, you may go.”