I have always been fond of goin’ fishing, and almost every sportin’ man I know is troubled with the same complaint. And yet there are really mighty few sportin’ or other men who know really much about fish. I suppose that is one of the reasons why fish stories are so popular, because it seems almost impossible to get hold of fish truths.
For instance, some people think that fishes can’t hear. I have heard it said that fishes have nothin’ which answer the purpose of ears. Perhaps some fishes can’t hear, but some can, and I am ready to verify it. A friend of mine has some fish in a tank at home which can tell when they hear the fiddle played well, and come to the surface to hear it. Yes, and they can tell when they hear the fiddle played badly, for in that case they dive down to the bottom of the tank and cover ‘emselves in the mud at the bottom of it, and wriggle around as if they had the colic.
Some people say, too, that fishes have no voices, that they can’t utter any sounds or express their feelings in any way. That is a mistake, altogether. I don’t know or care whether they have or haven’t what the scientific fellows call a larynx or lungs. But I know, and every old fisherman knows, that the pickerel can sigh–sigh like a lovesick woman or a disappointed politician. That the carp, when swimming along near the top of the water on a fine sunny day, utters a regular chuck or suck of satisfaction; and that the herrin’, when dyin’, gives a snap–a regular snap, a kind of dyin’ bark, that can be heard quite distinctly.
Then there has been a lot of twaddle written and talked about fish sufferin’ such untold agonies at bein’ caught, and all that sort of stuff. Why, if half of this was true, fishin’ would be the most cruel sport in the world, and a fisherman, instead of bein’ a sport, would be a murderer. But the fact is, that scientific men for once are all agreed upon one point, and that is that fishes have hardly any nerves to speak of, and so can’t suffer much, any way. Besides that, every old fisherman who has watched the fish knows that often a fish will snap at a second bait when the hook with the first bait was already inside of him, which proves that in that case the fish hook can’t hurt him very much. Then in trout fishin’ it has been noticed that if a trout is partly hooked once and escaped, that very same day it will rise at that fly again, in a very few hours afterward, in fact; provin’ that the pain of his first experience, if he experienced any, was so slight as to be very soon forgotten. In truth, I am inclined to half believe that fish like the excitement of bein’ hooked. Anyhow, all this talk about anglin’ bein’ so cruel is a big mistake and is almost an insult to the Creator; for, if He had made the fish so that they would suffer so much at bein’ taken, He would have hardly made it so easy and so nice for human bein’s to take ‘em.
Besides, we are only doin’ to the fish in a little way what they are all the time doin’ to each other in a big style. Fish are catchin’ fish and devourin’ ‘em up all the time–devourin’ their own kind, too. A friend of mine once caught a big pike or pickerel that had two other pickerel inside of him. Pickerel No. 1 had swallowed pickerel No. 2, and then had been swallowed himself by pickerel No. 3.
Why, even the oysters and the clams fight on their beds down at the bottoms of the bays, and the clam generally licks the oyster and kills it. Oysters, in fact, are a sort of shellfish that are always in trouble; sometimes they get choked in the mud, sometimes they get busted and broken by the dredgin’ hook, sometimes they get wrecked by the thousands in the big storms. Then the bore-worm pierces right through their shells and finishes ‘em, or else the sea horse fights with the oyster and destroys it. this sea horse is a curious little fellow, a regular sea monster in proportion to its size. It has a soft body, but very strong and supple, and has a head something like a horse, from which fact it gets its name. It ain’t over four inches in length, but it is certain death to the oyster.
The fact is that fishes are the most voracious and what they call pugnacious creatures to each other in existence. The battles, murders, and sudden deaths goin’ on in the land ain’t a circumstance to those that are all the time goin’ on under the water.
Charley Watkins–a regular “expert” at fishin’–went out fishin’ once, and his bait fallin’ short, he baited his hook with the eye of a dead perch. A live perch sprang right at the dead eye, but then escaped, leaving his own eye behind him. Charley used this “left” eye for bait, and that very one-eyed perch a minute or two after swallowed his own eye, and was hauled up on the hook that had it.
Charley Watkins was a tremendous hand at catchin’ pickerel. He caught ‘em any way, by fly, by trollin’, by spoonin’, or in still fishin’.
He used to go gunnin’ for pickerel, too, in the Spring of the year. You see the pickerel, as the season gets warmer, swim under the ice, and get into the sunlight as much as possible. Then the fisherman takes his gun and bangs away at ‘em. The fish are not exactly shot–they are stunned and scared, and lie still awhile, till you can catch ‘em.
Once Charley went with a young fellow who thought he was very smart, and instead of doin’ as Charley told him to do, wait till he got within a few yards of the fish, and then (allowin’ for the reflection of the light from the surface of the ice) fire at ‘em, this smart young fellow thought he would save himself a heap of trouble by makin’ a sure thing of it, and put the muzzle of his gun into the water, right among the fish. He did this, and then banged away. The result of this new patent way of labor-savin’ shooting was that the gun bursted, and the very smart young man was very nearly killed.
I once caught a big pike that had part of a young duck and part of a water rat inside of him. These pike will eat almost anythin’. A full grown pike will eat his own weight twice a week. What a healthy boarder a two-legged pike would make at a hotel.
When “off his feed” a pickerel can beat the fastin’ Dr. Tanner all hollow. When spawnin’ the pickerel won’t taste anythin’ but water for weeks and months, and the little fish, who are so afraid of him at other times, will now that they know he is off his feed, swim at and play all around him.
Two things Charley Watkins was never able to do, though he tried hard and often. He never could catch pickerel when there were any signs of a thunder storm or any other storm in the air, and he could never catch them just after a frost, when there was an east wind blowin’. He made a bet that he could do this, but failed, because anybody and everybody have failed in tryin’ to do the same thing.
Charley Watkins, take him for all in all, was a splendid man at catchin’ pickerel, and he made it a passion. The last years of his life he was at Geneva Lake, Piscataqua, and Fox Lakes, where the pickerel abound, and where Harry Donnell, a fine old English sport, is the boss fisherman. Charley caught cold one day fishin’ in Geneva Lake, and came back to New York to die.
Another veteran fisherman around New York waters and Jersey bays is old Joe Dodd, who is livin’ still, or who was a few months since. Most of the old fishermen are jolly, hearty chaps, and Joe is one of the jolliest and heartiest of the whole lot. He eats three square meals a day still, and enjoys each one of the three.
Joe some thirty or forty years ago used to be what was called “a shad charmer.” He was great on catchin’ shad, gettin’ the first catch of the season. One of his favorite places for catchin’ shad was right off “The Cedars,” near Newark, where Henry William Herbert afterward lived and died. Joe swears he has caught as high as 301 shad in twenty-four hours, and as Joe is one of the few fishermen I would believe, I am willin’ to believe myself in the extra one as well as the whole 300. Joe also “hereby solemnly” claims to have caught 1,600 pounds of bass in one day.
Joe Dodd once got into a row with some opposition fishermen round Newark, and sued the town for damages, and got ‘em, but the town was poor and couldn’t or wouldn’t pay up. So Joe set to work and got out an attachment against the fire-ladder of the town, and then the town came down with Joe’s money on the double quick.
Sam Clark, James Ginty, Nick Plympton, Pat Kelly and Bob Crane used to be great fishin’ chums of Joe Dodd’s, and together the six have fished in all the waters around New York island. But all are dead and gone save old Joe Dodd.
[Editor’s notes: While the above column’s notes on fish biology deserve scrutiny (or dismissal), more interesting are the fishermen that are mentioned. Though “Charley Watkins” can’t be positively identified, Harry Dunnell (not Donnell) was a long-established hunting and fishing guide of the Fox Lake area of northern Illinois. Fox Lake is connected to Pistakee Lake (aka Pishtaqua). Lake Geneva is a further fifteen miles northwest in Wisconsin. They were popular destinations for sportsmen on excursion from Chicago.
Of more interest in the New York area was Joe Dodd. The column above, which appeared on Sep. 11, 1881, likely was cribbing from a New York Times article that had appeared just a month earlier, on Aug. 12, 1881. Though Dodd was an interesting character, his thoughts are marred by some ugly racism, which the New York Times saw fit to print. Also, note that the article below states that the Passaic River was already too polluted by 1855 to contain fish (pizened=poisoned). That means that the author mentioned, Henry William Herbert, who was America’s first and foremost sporting writer–and who wrote guides to American fish–saw the river next to his home destroyed by pollution. Herbert committed suicide in 1858.]
