The Whole Year Round

CHAPTER III In the Toadfish’s Shoe I was winding up my summer vacation with a little fishing party all by myself, on a wharf whose piles stood deep in the swirling waters from Buzzards Bay. My heavy-leaded line hummed taut in the swift current; my legs hung limp above the water; my back rested comfortably against a great timber that was warm in the September sun.

Exciting? Of course not. Fishing is fishing—any kind of fishing is fishing to me. But the kind I am most used to, and the kind I like best, is from the edge of a wharf, where my feet dangle over, where my “throw-out” line hums taut over my finger, in a tide that runs swift and deep and dark below me.

For what may you not catch in such dark waters? And when there are no “bites,” you can sit and wait; and I think that sitting and waiting with my back against a big warm timber is just as much fun now as it used to be when I was a boy.

But after all it is fish that you want when you go fishing; and it is exciting, moreover, just to sit as I was sitting on the wharf, with all the nerves of your body concentrated in the tip of your right forefinger, under the pressure of your line. For how do you know but that the next instant you may get a bite?

And how do you know what the fish may be?

When you whip a trout stream for trout—why, you expect trout; when you troll a pond for pickerel, you expect pickerel; but when you sit on a wharf with your line far out in big, deep waters—why, you can expect almost anything—except shoes!

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