“Can’t we go again, before it gets too cold?” he asked. “Let us go again, Mr. Barker, this meat won’t last long. I just wish Tim could go, too!”
The old trapper himself had also caught the fever. “I reckon, boy,” he admitted, “we ought to make another haul 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-net, but we must go soon, before the water gets too cold, for in seining, the fisherman gets as wet as the fish.”
On the next warm day, Barker remarked at breakfast: “Bill, this looks like a good day. I guess we’ll be off right away.”
The two fishermen rode down stream to a place where a deep bayou or slough1 joined the main river. They started to seine half a mile up the bayou. One end of the seine was tied to a stout2 pole driven into the bottom of 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 fishermen catch minnows. Their troubles began when they started to make a haul in a strong current in deep water near the mouth of the bayou. The net caught on a submerged stump3 and could not be pulled off against the current.
“I reckon we’re stuck,” said Barker, as he found it impossible to move the seine either one way or the other.
“Let me dive in and fix it,” begged the boy, as he began to strip. Barker thought the water was too cold, but Bill said he wouldn’t mind it, and it wouldn’t take long to try it.
Bill splashed some water over himself and then swam quickly to the spot where the net was caught. He dived, opened his eyes and could see clearly every mesh4 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 shore. His skin was blue and his teeth chattered5 as he hurriedly got into his clothes. Then he ran back and forth6 on the sand a few minutes to get warm.
“Now, Mr. Barker,” he said, “let’s make the haul and see what we get out of this deep hole. There ought to be some big ones in it.”
Both men slowly pulled the seine through the deep hole, where by means of small leads attached to the lower edge of the seine, the big drag-net swept the bottom, driving all deep-water fish before it.
As the bag-like middle part of the seine slowly crept into shallower water on a rising sandbank, there was a great stir in the enclosed pool. Big fish of several kinds came to the surface. Some showing a silvery flash for just a moment, dived again to the bottom in their attempt to escape, others, bolder or made more desperate, shot with a loud splash over the seine back into free water.
Bill pulled as he had never pulled on anything before.
“Pull, Mr. Barker, pull!” he shouted. “We’ve got a wagon-load of big ones, but they’re breaking away.”
The old trapper pulled as hard as Bill, but he didn’t hear what Bill called to him, for the fish in their last desperate effort to escape made a deafening7 confusion and noise with splashing, jumping and flapping about. The big bag was alive with a wildly struggling mass of fish of all sizes; and so heavy was the catch that the two fishermen could not move the net another inch.
“drop the rope,” commanded the old man, “and throw them out on the sand.”
As Bill sprang into the shallow water, a big flopping8 fish, the like of which he had never seen before, got between his legs and laid him sprawling9 flat on his stomach amongst the madly struggling fish. In a moment Bill was on his feet again.
“Help me, Mr. Barker, help me,” he called. “I can’t hold him; he’ll get away!”
“Grab him in the gills!” the trapper shouted, as much excited as his boy friend.
The black giant was just splashing into open water when Bill threw himself forward and caught him firmly in the gills.
“Catch him, Mr. Barker, catch him!” Bill spluttered as he blew the water out of his nose and mouth. “I can’t lift him.”
By their united effort, they dragged the monster on shore.
“We’ve caught a whale, a real whale,” Bill shouted, and danced around like a wild Indian. “What is it, Mr. Barker! Is it a whale?”
“It is a paddle-fish, but sure a big one, I reckon,” the trapper told him as he dragged the ungainly monster into the grass. “He must weigh a hundred pounds, and he measures six feet, if he measures an inch.”
Sorting the fish and loading them into the boat took some time, and when the work was done, the two fishermen could not help laughing at each other. Their clothes were dripping wet and covered with mud and fish-scales all over, but they had a boat-load of fish.
“That’s all a part of fishing,” Barker remarked, with his quiet smile. “It is a saying among us trappers that dry fishermen and wet hunters have had poor luck. I guess our luck was worth getting soaked for.”
Before they started for camp all small fish or fish not wanted were put back in the water. Bill had already learned the maxim10 of the old trapper: “Never waste any of God’s wild bread and meat. What you do not need to-day, you may want badly to-morrow.”
“I have seen the days,” the old man had often told the boys, “when I was mighty11 glad to dip a mess of minnows out of a spring-hole in winter, and I have many times thanked the Good Lord that porcupines12 can’t run as fast as deer.
“One winter while I was trapping in upper Michigan I lost my gun while crossing a treacherous13 stream, and if I could not have killed porcupines, fool-hens, and snowshoe rabbits with a club, I should have had to pull out of the country and leave my traps and furs.”
When they arrived at camp, Tim was wild at the sight of the giant paddle-fish, and the boys found that the odd paddle-shaped snout of the fish was almost half the length of the fish.
“What does he do with his big paddle?” Tim wanted to know. But neither the Indian nor the trapper could answer the question.
“Have they a paddle when they are just hatched?” Bill asked, but neither Tatanka nor Barker had ever seen a paddle-fish less than a foot long.
The life of the paddle-fish or spoonbill is a mystery to this day, and little more is known of it now than was known to Indians and whites when Bill and Tim camped on Lake Pepin.
The armor-plated gars and paddle-fish are found only in the Mississippi and its tributaries14, while bass15 and pickerel and eel16 are found in most waters flowing into the North Atlantic, both in America and Europe.
Both gar and spoonbill are still caught in Lake Pepin. A European fish, the German carp, has become naturalized in the Mississippi basin and many carloads of it are shipped to Eastern markets every year. However, the game fish of the old days are still all there and will never become scarce, if good fish and game laws are wisely administered.
In the days of Barker and Tatanka, fishing with any kind of net or tackle was lawful17, but to-day both commercial fishermen and anglers have to observe the laws, or our lakes and streams will become fished out; for the resources and gifts of nature are not inexhaustible, and the number of men and boys who go fishing increases each year.
For fishing, camping, and canoeing, for grand scenery, for house-boating, motor-boating, for trees, flowers, and birds and for all kinds of water creatures such as clams18, crayfish and muskrats19, the Mississippi, the “Everywhere River” of the Chippewa Indians, has no equal on the northern hemisphere and is surpassed only by the Amazon of South America.
In the Itasca Forest of Minnesota, the Mississippi begins as a tiny stream, which sometimes loses itself in a tamarack swamp, and which the beaver20 people, the little animal engineers, can easily dam with mud and brush. When it leaves Itasca, it is large enough to carry a canoe. But the rippling21 little creek22 grows rapidly by receiving the water from many lakes and streams and long before it reaches Minneapolis, where it furnishes power to grind the wheat grown over half a continent, it is a stately navigable river, whose enormous volumes of flood-water only the most skillful engineer can control.
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1
slough
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| v.蜕皮，脱落，抛弃 | |
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stump
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| n.残株，烟蒂，讲演台；v.砍断，蹒跚而走 | |
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mesh
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| n.网孔，网丝，陷阱；vt.以网捕捉，啮合，匹配；vi.适合； [计算机]网络 | |
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5
chattered
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| （人）喋喋不休( chatter的过去式 )； 唠叨； （牙齿）打战； （机器）震颤 | |
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forth
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| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
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deafening
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| adj. 振耳欲聋的, 极喧闹的 动词deafen的现在分词形式 | |
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8
flopping
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| n.贬调v.（指书、戏剧等）彻底失败( flop的现在分词 )；（因疲惫而）猛然坐下；（笨拙地、不由自主地或松弛地）移动或落下；砸锅 | |
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9
sprawling
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| adj.蔓生的，不规则地伸展的v.伸开四肢坐[躺]( sprawl的现在分词 )；蔓延；杂乱无序地拓展；四肢伸展坐着（或躺着） | |
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maxim
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| n.格言，箴言 | |
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mighty
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| adj.强有力的；巨大的 | |
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porcupines
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| n.豪猪，箭猪( porcupine的名词复数 ) | |
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treacherous
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| adj.不可靠的，有暗藏的危险的；adj.背叛的，背信弃义的 | |
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14
tributaries
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| n. 支流 | |
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bass
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| n.男低音(歌手)；低音乐器；低音大提琴 | |
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eel
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| n.鳗鲡 | |
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lawful
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| adj.法律许可的，守法的，合法的 | |
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clams
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| n.蛤；蚌，蛤( clam的名词复数 )v.（在沙滩上）挖蛤( clam的第三人称单数 ) | |
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muskrats
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| n.麝鼠（产于北美，毛皮珍贵）( muskrat的名词复数 ) | |
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beaver
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| n.海狸，河狸 | |
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rippling
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| 起涟漪的，潺潺流水般声音的 | |
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creek
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| n.小溪，小河，小湾 | |
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