Well, we fished on, all of us hoping for another fish, but not a one of us caught one, so pretty soon we got discouraged again and pulled up anchor. Then Poetry said, “Whyn’t we go get him and go home, and everybody go swimming?” which sounded like a good idea. It’d be a lot more fun to do that than to sit on a hard boat seat watching a rubber balloon bobbing on the surface of a lake that didn’t have any hungry fish in it.
“Let’s troll over,” Snow-in-the-face said. “Sometimes when you can’t catch fish any other way, they’ll bite when you do that.”
Dragonfly said it was a good idea too, ’cause there might be a “lost, strayed or stolen” fish all by itself between here and that balloon, so we all left our lines in the water while Snow-in-the-face and Little Jim took the oars and rowed us kinda splashily out toward that nice yellowish balloon which I was going to get and take home to Charlotte Ann.
In a little while we were almost there, and I was getting ready to reach out my hand and get the balloon when quick as a flash I saw Little Jim’s line go taut, and his pole bend down clear to the water, while he dropped his oar and quick grabbed his pole and yelled excitedly, “Hey, I’ve got a fish!” Just as Dragonfly’s line did the same thing, and then WHAM!—my own line went tight and the next thing we knew most of us in our boat found ourselves in the middle of one of the most exciting fishing experiences of our whole lives. We yelled and pulled, and our lines went singing out as our reels unwound; and almost at the same time, Dragonfly and Little Jim and Poetry and I all landed a walleye apiece, and laid them, flopping and splashing water in every direction, in the bottom of the boat.
“WE’VE STRUCK A SCHOOL!” Poetry cried. “MY FISH TOOK US RIGHT TO THEM! HE KNEW EXACTLY WHERE THEY WERE!”
7
WELL you aren’t supposed to yell like a lot of wild Indians on a warpath when you start catching a lot of fish, on account of you might scare the fish away; so almost right away we all shushed each other, and only made a noise when we caught a fish, which was just about as fast as we could bait our hooks and get our lines into the water again.
We quick anchored right close to where the balloon was, and the other boatful of the rest of the gang came rowing over as quietly as they could, and anchored close by.
Talk about excitement. We’d never had so much fishing fun in our whole lives as we were having right that minute. And then, just like Sugar Creek school getting out and the kids tumbling out the door and all going away from the red brick schoolhouse, our school of walleyes moved on and we stopped getting bites. I knew something was going to happen the minute I saw the yellowish balloon start moving fast out toward deeper water.