The Lure of the Mississippi

smoke the fish they had caught a

asked. "Let us go again, Mr. Barker, this meat

or two, but the next time we'll take a seine. Did you ever fish with a seine! It is more fun than with a gill-

breakfast: "Bill, this looks like a goo

the bayou. The other end, they swung around in a half-circle, Bill rowing the boat and the trapper managing the seine from the stern of the boat. They caught all kinds of fish in the same manner that boys and fisherm

as he found it impossible to move t

strip. Barker thought the water was too cold, but Bill sai

esh of the net as it was held fast by the current over a sharp stump. He lifted it off quickly and threw it over the stump down stream and struck out for

haul and see what we get out of this deep

eans of small leads attached to the lower edge of the seine, the b

losed pool. Big fish of several kinds came to the surface. Some showing a silvery flash for just a moment, dived again to the bott

had never pulled o

ed. "We've got a wagon-load of big

t to escape made a deafening confusion and noise with splashing, jumping and flapping about. The big bag was alive with a wild

ed the old man, "and thr

had never seen before, got between his legs and laid him sprawling flat on his

me," he called. "I can't

he trapper shouted, as muc

open water when Bill threw himself for

l spluttered as he blew the water out o

ort, they dragged t

shouted, and danced around like a wild Indi

him as he dragged the ungainly monster into the grass. "He must weig

one, the two fishermen could not help laughing at each other. Their clothes were drippi

. "It is a saying among us trappers that dry fishermen and wet hunter

water. Bill had already learned the maxim of the old trapper: "Never waste any of Go

hty glad to dip a mess of minnows out of a spring-hole in winter, and I have

erous stream, and if I could not have killed porcupines, fool-hens, and snowshoe rabbits

giant paddle-fish, and the boys found that the odd paddle-sh

m wanted to know. But neither the Indian

" Bill asked, but neither Tatanka nor Barker ha

is day, and little more is known of it now than was known t

i and its tributaries, while bass and pickerel and eel are found in mo

the Mississippi basin and many carloads of it are shipped to Eastern markets every year. However, the game fish o

fishermen and anglers have to observe the laws, or our lakes and streams will become fished out; for the resour

s and for all kinds of water creatures such as clams, crayfish and muskrats, the Mississippi, the "Everywhere River"

ith mud and brush. When it leaves Itasca, it is large enough to carry a canoe. But the rippling little creek grows rapidly by receiving the water from many lakes and streams and long before it reaches