Nightfall comes rapidly when you are fishing. Before I know it the sky is crimsoning for the sunset and up and down the river the wood ducks begin to fly in flocks of three to ten crying plaintively, “Oo—eek, oo—eek.” My pool seems fished out and I begin to move on restlessly, trying new spots. In one of these I get a sudden rush of a bite, such as should come from a husky Northern bass and pull out a pickerel-like fish with scales like those of a snake and a long pointed snout set with bristling teeth. That is the last. I put him on the slender string with the others and plod along toward home in the crimson glory. Out of a drainage ditch I startle a half dozen killdeer plover and they dash madly away, screaming their lonely, querulous note. Every ditch has its killdeers and I suspect them of feeding on the young bass which I use for bait. By and by I am on the road again and as I pass a house set among pineapple and orange groves with its little patch of ladyfinger bananas behind it, some lively urchins cease their play to gaze rather critically at my string of fish.
“What do you call this one?” I ask, exhibiting my several pound “sea trout,” with carefully concealed pride.
“That one?” comes the reply with undisguised scorn, “that’s no good. That’s a mudfish. Some folks eat ’em.”
They all looked at me to see if I was of the “some folks” sort that would eat a mudfish and I hastened to disclaim any such intention.
“Nobody eats catfish, either,” went on my informant.
“And this one; what’s this?” I hazarded, exhibiting the long-snouted, piratical, pickerel-like one.
“That’s a garfish,” they replied in chorus, “that’s no good either.”
As I went on up the road I heard them snickering among themselves, though they had been politely solemn to my face.
“Huh!” said one. “He didn’t even know what a garfish was.”
But then, like all the local fishermen they called the wide-mouthed bass “trout.” Knowledge is no one person’s monopoly, anyway.