Rensselaer Republican, Volume 17, Number 2, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 18 September 1884 — A Strange Fish. [ARTICLE]

A Strange Fish.

Some traveling men were talking over their experiences in the Plankinton House one evening, when the subject turned upon fishing, and each gave a racy experience. One told how some Sparta lellows got him to go out trout fishing, by telling him that,about eight mil6s out there was a stream which was alive with trout, and how he hired a livery team and took the boys with him, and how they put him on the stream and told him to follow it down about four miles where they would meet him at a bridge with the wagon. He broke brush all the forenoon, got mired in the mud, had a cow chase him up a tree, and farmers drove him out of fields with pitchforks, and finally he arrived at the bridge, without having a bite except from mosquitoes, and found the wagon gone, and he walked to come home, supposing he had Sparta and lound that the boys had got to the bridge ahead of them, and got a ride to town with a farmer. He swore they played it on him on purpose, and said that it cost him twelve dollats.

Another told ot hiring a man to row him on Lake Winnebago, to troll, and how he trolled all the afternoon and never got a bite, and being near sighted never found out until he got back to the hotel that his oarsman rowed rrght around in one place all the time, where there was no wind and no fish, being too lazy to go out where the wind blew and where fish would bite. Others told of spearing suckers, bobbing for catfish on the Mississippi river, until finally it came the turn of the man who sells platform scales, and he opened up. Said he : “Boys, I have caught something that no live man ever caught.” “If there is anything we caught We want to hear it,” said the boot and shoe man. “Well, you shall hear about it,” said the scale man, lighting a cigar. “I was trolling for bass in a lake up north, with a man rowing the boat for me. YVe had noticed a loon swimming around and diving, and keeping watch of us, and I was wishing I had a rifle, when the loon dove, and I got about half asleep when all of a sudden 1 felt a yank on my line that nearly pulled me out of the boat. It was just as though a horse was hitched on the hook and running away. The oarsman turned pale and said I had got a muscallonge. I grabbed the line and began to reel in, when there was the awfullest pulling and fight'ng 1 ever felt on a fish line. Pretty soon the loon came to the surface with the hook in his mouth, flew a few yards, got tangled and dove again and began to swim off. Then we saw that the loon had been swimming around and had seen the minnow on my hook,-and swallowed it. It —was a-new experience, and I reeled him in until he got near the boat, when the oarsman was going to kill the bird, but I insisted on keeping him alive, to give to some historical society as the only loon ever caught with a hook and line. He came near swamping us, getting him in the boat, and fought us after he was in. YVe sat on him ami held his wings to keep him from beating our hands black and blue, and he was more trouble than a white elephant drawn in a lottery.

The hook was so far down his neck we couldn’t get out without killing him, so I cut the line near his bill, and put on another hook. The boatman put the loon down in the bow of the boat, under the end seat, and piled coats and the lunch basket on him, but he kept fighting, pinched the oarsman in the pants with his long sharp bill, and finally he worked the coats off his body and flew out of the boat and dove under water, and when he came up he was thirty rods away, shaking his head and trying to get the hook out. He went down again, and came up farther off, and looked around at us and squealed as though he was expressing his opinion of a man that would deceive a poor bird that way. We lost sight of the loon, and were sorry to lo*e him, but I never think of that experience without laughing right out, when 1 think of the disgusted look about the loon’s eyes w en lie was pulled up to the boat, and how he seemed to say, 'You think you are darned smart, don’t you,’, when he got loose and bid us good bye. I suppose a man riiight fish a life time and not catch another loon.” ~ The boys looked at each other with a sort of disbelief in the story, though it was true, and when a Chicago grocery man started in to tell about catching an ostrich on a pin hook once, they all adjourned to the cigar stand where the cigar man was telling about catching the ague. Everything is catching, among the boys.— Peckls Sun.