“There comes another big one, Dick! Oh! isn’t it too mean, he just gave a terrible plunge, and broke away. That’s bad luck, I’m afraid,” exclaimed the younger of the fishers, in a disappointed tone.
“And I suppose he was the biggest of the whole lot?” the other remarked with a laugh.
“There, something’s at my bait again!” ejaculated Roger, eagerly. “Don’t I hope he swallows it, hook and all!”
He braced himself for the tug, having learned what tremendous pullers these so-called buffalo fish of the rivers could be, when they had the whole force of the current back of their efforts. A few seconds later his line gave a sudden jerk.
“Hurrah! I’ve got my second one, and that makes three!” he whooped gleefully, as he started to pull in hand over hand, for they were not fishing with poles, and such things as reels were unknown among the early settlers of the West.
Half way did Roger drag his expected prize in, when he uttered a dismal cry.
“He’s gone, Dick, worse luck!” he exclaimed in a disappointed tone. “Perhaps there’s something wrong with the barb of my hook, they seem to get off so easy of late; I’d better be looking after it. Anyhow, the bait must be gone, and I never yet caught a fish with a bare hook. Hope you have better luck with yours,” as Dick started pulling his line in, with something that wriggled tremendously at the other end.
“All of which,” remarked the other boy, with a smile, “goes to show that, as Grandfather Armstrong says, it’s poor policy to count your chickens before they’re hatched; and a fish on the hook isn’t always a fish in the boat. Look what I’ve caught!”
“An eel, and a big one at that!” exclaimed Roger, looking up from examining the point of his hook, which he found to be in excellent condition after all, so that the fault, if any there was, did not lie there, but possibly in his manner of giving the wriggling fish too much slack line. “Better knock him on the head before you take him in, because a slippery customer like that will soon own the whole boat, and drive us over the side, if he gets to whipping around.”
This was good advice, as Dick well knew, and, picking up a billet of wood which they used to dispatch their fish in a humane way when caught, he finally succeeded in killing the large fresh-water eel.