Traditions Continued from page 63 its head [and] the sharp gaff of the silent boatman slipped beneath its white neck and held it while it beat the water with lusty blows, and three men, one on the island, cheered insanely. Given its quietus, the smiling Bill lifted the splendid fish, and held it that the sun might display its beauties, its tigerlike stripes, its fierce mouth and teeth, its glaring wolf-like eyes. Ah, if I could have taken it! But . . . in many seasons I never took one of this size. I fished for days and weeks in quest of this elusive but game fish. I tried for it with gold and silver spoons, which flashed like diamonds in the deep channel near the Canada shore, but always with poor luck, until one glorious day when I hooked and landed after a spirited play a muskallunge hardly a foot in length, the dwarf of the tribe. Indeed, I believe it is still the record fish of the St. Lawrence for scurvy meanness of visage, for contemptible size; yet it was a mus-
kallunge, and desperate, I determined to claim all the honors pertaining to such a catch. It was the happy custom at Westminster [ed. note—probably Westminster Park on Wellesley Island] in those days to spread out famous catches on the lawn in front of the hotel, or have them exhibited covered with water lilies, and served whole like the boar’s head, with befitting ceremony. Moreover, it was the rule if anyone caught a muskallunge to run up a white flag when coming into port, that the admiring and envious inhabitants might gather and see the giant and gaze enviously upon the victorious angler. So I ordered the boatman to hoist the white flag, and as the boat made the beach there was a crowd to receive us. The curious throng drew closer to see the giant yellow perch, bass, suckers, sunfish, walleyed pike, and then the muskallunge was laid out, the meanest, puniest fish seen on any river since time began. For a moment they gazed upon it in silence, then turned in a body upon me, and I fled before an outraged people.
I still claim to have taken the record muskallunge in this particular section, but unless warmly pushed I never refer to its weight, which I now disclose in confidence: it was but two and three-quarter pounds! I hold the record for the smallest muskallunge ever born. Would that I could with Macbeth “Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow, Raze out the written troubles of the brain. And with some sweet, oblivious antidote Cleanse the stuffed bosom of that perilous stuff Which weighs upon the heart.” n
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f the descriptions of the smallmouth fight sound like the Victorian version of an Xbox video game, part of the blame goes to James Henshall’s famous claim of “pound for pound the gamest fish that swims” that appeared in his Book of the Black Bass (1881). Every writer thereafter glorified the smallmouth battles, which often went on
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