Lines in Pleasant Places: Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler

by William Senior

But the fish had not been biting well for a week. It was incomprehensible, but true, that the boats had never returned so empty of fish as latterly. One shrewd boatman, who fell to our lot for the day, said that the Indians, of whom the small remnant of a tame tribe lived as agriculturists on the island, had a tradition that in August and part of September the 'lunge shed their teeth, and that during this period they never take the bait, or feed in any shape or form. What fish did Scugog contain? Well, there were shiners, suckers, eels—— Oh! sporting fish! Ah, well, there were no trout, but there were 'lunge, perch, and any number of green, or large-mouthed, bass. This was Ben's information, elicited by cross-examination as we sat on the veranda before unpacking our effects.

As to what he considered a reasonable bag, he had often, from a four or five hours' outing, returned with a dozen and a half of 'lunge or bass, the former averaging 9 lb. or 12 lb., the latter 2 lb. or 3 lb. The opening day was June 15, and at daylight the lake, so he said, was alive with boats, each containing its fisherman. He had known a ton of 'lunge and bass landed every day for the first week. I am not to be held responsible for these statements, but everything I subsequently heard from gentlemen who weigh their words and know what they are talking about, confirmed the assertions of the Port Perry professional. 'Lunge of 40 lb. had been taken moreover, but not often. These were the encouragements which dropped like the dew of Hermon; refreshing us into temporary forgetfulness of the undoubted fact that the visitors who had been angling on the lake had met, even on the previous day, with bitter disappointment. The boats had not been able to account for more than perhaps a brace each of four or five pound fish.

Skipper Ben stared in amaze at the preposterous tackle with which I proposed to try and catch my first 'lunge. I had much better take the rig-out provided with the boat. If, however, he disapproved of my equipment, how shall I describe my feelings with regard to the vessel for which (man and tackle included) we were to pay two dollars per diem. It was a canoe of the smallest, built to hold one person besides the man at the small oars. It was impossible to stand up in such a cranky craft, and your seat was about 6 in. from the bottom boards. No wonder all the fishing was done by hand-lines. The local method was simplicity itself. To fifty yards of line of the thickness of sash-cord was attached a large Colorado spoon, armed with one big triangle, and mounted on an eighth of an inch brass wire. The canoe was slowly rowed about, up and down and across the lake, the spoon revolving behind at the end of from ten to fifteen yards of line. All that the angler had to do was to sit tight on his tiny seat in the stern of the cockle-shell, holding the line in his hand, and dodging the inevitable cramp as best he could by uneasily shifting his position from time to time.

This, of course, is trailing in its most primitive form, and it is the method adopted by the majority of fishing folks on Canadian inland waters. Even the grand lake trout (Salvelinus namaycush really) are taken in this way in the spring and fall when they come in upon the shallows. The fish hook themselves, and are generally hauled neck and crop into the boat; but the careful boatman will have a gaff on board for the emergency of a ten-pounder or over. Many, however, do not affect this luxury, but treat great and small alike on the pulley-hauley principle. They say, nevertheless, that few fish are lost. The hooks are so big and strong that there is no reason why they should be lost when once they are securely hooked, as they will almost invariably be by this easy style. The boatman is always maintaining his steady two mile an hour pace, just sufficient in fact to keep the spoon on the spin, and the lightly hooked fish of course quickly find freedom by honest and abrupt tearage. The coarse triangle fairly within the bony jaws would be instantly struck into solid holding ground, and with tackle fit for sharks, there would be no more to be said. Something, however, there would be to be done, and the same simplicity which characterises the style of angling is carried on to the process of dealing with a hooked fish.

"Yank him in," is the order for medium sizes, and I had the opportunity very early of seeing how it was done. We were nearing a canoe in which a gentleman was seated, holding his hand-line over the gunwale, and slightly jerking it to and fro; suddenly he struck with might and main. The effort should, as one would suppose, have wrenched the head off an ordinary fish, and I should say this event often happens with 2-lb. or 3-lb. victims. In this instance there was no harm done. Out of the water, like a trout, ten yards or so astern of the canoe, came a yellow-hued, long, narrow-bodied fish, and presently, hand over hand, it was dragged up to the side and lifted in by sheer might. It was a 'lunge of apparently 7 lb., and the only one taken by the fisher, though he had been out three or four hours.

We had not been long afloat before I began to see that Ben was not far wrong in preferring his rude tackle to mine, though he was all abroad in his reasons for ruling me out of court. His belief, expressed in the vigorous language of the born colonial, was that it was darn'd nonsense to suppose that my line would hold a fish, or that my rod was other than a toy. The difficulty, of course, was with the boat. For the sort of spinning to which we are accustomed in England the thing was useless. The discomfort was vast and continuous, and as the hooks were everlastingly fouling in loose weeds, and the progress of the boat converted the hauling in of the line into not inconsiderable manual labour, the outlook became barren in the extreme. My companion A. in the stern was furnished with the orthodox hand-line, and I sat on the second thwart facing him. The rod rendered this necessary, and A. told me afterwards that Ben spent most of his time winking and contemptuously gesticulating over my shoulder. Probably this accounted for the number of times he pummelled the small of my back with the clumsily advanced handles of his oars.

My rod, I might explain, was the trolling or sea fishing version of a capital greenheart portmanteau rod, to which I had treated myself in hopes of use in Canadian waters, and was a stiff little pole (in this form) of a trifle over 9 ft. The medium dressed silk trout-line on a grilse winch was about a hundred yards in length, and quite sound, and on a twisted gut trace I had attached a 3-in. blue phantom. Ben impartially, not to say profanely, objected to the lot. We had ample opportunity to admire the very pretty scenery of the lake shores, and the charmingly timbered island which for ten miles diversified the blue water. The depth was seldom over 6 ft. or 8 ft., there were subaqueous forests of weeds in all directions, but there was a kind of channel known to Ben where one had the chance of intervals of peace—spells of clear spinning for A.'s great spoon to starboard and my delicate phantom to port. In those times of tranquil leisure we learned much as to the splendid duck-shooting of the fall and the wonderful stores of fish in the lake.

Scugog is not a show place, but it is beautiful in its quiet way; the surroundings are quite English, and Port Perry is a pleasant type of the small, prosperous Canadian town where nobody perhaps is very rich and nobody very poor. The aforesaid island in the centre makes the lake appear quite narrow, and, indeed, its length of fourteen miles is double its widest breadth with island included. And it is one of a chain of Ontarian waterways so vast that, had we been so minded and properly prepared, we might have passed through close upon 200 miles of lakes and connecting channels. Two hours of incessant hauling in of weed bunches, and no sign of a run of any other kind, were enough; you could not be always admiring the green slopes and woodlands of maple and pine; discussions of local topography cannot be indefinitely prolonged.

Thank the gods my good shipmate and travelling companion A. was cheery to the backbone, as, in truth, a good-looking fellow of fourteen stone, and with nothing to do but travel about the world and enjoy himself, ought to be. Being no angler, it was all the same to him whether fish sulked or frolicked; his patience was as inexhaustible as his amiability, and when my questioning of Ben about fish and fishing ceased by force of self-exhaustion, A. would quietly cut in with reminiscences of his recent run out to Colorado, former campings in the Rockies, adventures in Japan and all parts of Europe, and personal acquaintance with the States and the Dominion. The trouble that dear A. saved me in looking after baggage and tickets, the reliance I felt in his fighting weight and well set-up body, the placid smile with which he took life whatever it might be, were invaluable to me; and, though he accepted the ill-luck of our forenoon as only what he expected, as being, indeed, the ordinary outcome of most fishing expeditions, my chief desire was that he should have the bliss of landing a good fish. For myself I was not hopeful, and we went fishless ashore in the hot sun at mid-day, glad to release ourselves from the cramped positions in which we had been enduring the discomforts of that wretched skiff.

In the afternoon we went out again. What would I not have given for a boat really fit for the work—a steady, square-sterned craft, on the floor of which one might have stood firm, casting right and left, and able to take every advantage of those weeds which now made trailing a positive nuisance? Ben's theory was that twelve yards of line were enough for his style of business; that though a fish might be temporarily scared aside by the passage of the cockle-shell, it would be just about restored to quiet when the spoon came along, and more likely to dash at it than with a greater length of line. Of course, I stuck to our English ways, and kept my phantom engaged at a distance, when possible, of never less than thirty yards. In course of time Ben's objections and protests were once for all silenced; he gave me up as an opinionated ass, whom it was waste of time to trouble about any more.