tts
to Florida while the pond pickerel is found from middle Maine to
Florida, and west to Louisiana and Arkansas. In spring the pond
pickerel goes up into the ready margins as far even as the brook
pickerel will and often I see him in water so shallow that his
back fin sticks up, looking like the sail of a miniature Chinese
junk. There he seeks the lovely little coppery swamp tree-frogs
that are but an inch long and look like talismans carved from
metal. These are his tidbits, but he will take most anything alive
that is small enough for him to swallow, and when in winter he
retires to the warmer layers of water next the pond bottom, his
omnivorous appetite in a large measure goes with him. Hence the
fishermen use many varieties of small fish for bait, all with some
success.

In the spring nothing else is quite so good as this tiny, swamp
tree-frog. In the winter in the majority of cases the little
silvery minnow known as "shiner" is best of all. Yet, the
fishermen will tell you, on some ponds the mummy-chogs which, I
take it, is the still surviving Indian name for the killi-fish,
are to be most esteemed as bait, and I have found fishermen
fishing with young perch and dace and other hard-scaled fish,
though I believe with indifferent success, nor did the fishermen
themselves look to be the real thing. I fancy that people had seen
these folk that fished with young perch come to the pond, perhaps
even knew them by name and where they lived, and that the bait had
been bought in a city market where they even keep young mud-fish
for sale as bait to the unsuspecting, and will assure them that
these are the young of dog-fish and are particularly alluring. But
the fishermen, the real fishermen, know better.

The mud-fish, more properly the bowfin, is a small, dark-colored,
ganoid fish which is so tough and will live under such discouraging
circumstances that it would make ideal pickerel bait if the
pickerel would have anything to do with it, but they will
not. So in some ponds it is with the mummy-chogs which are
admirably tough and live long and are lively when impaled. On the
other hook the shiner is a little, silvery, soft-scaled fellow so
gentle that he will come up to the pond side and eat cracker
crumbs out of your hand. I have had shiners so tame from
frequently feeding them in this way that I could handle them,
though not to their own good, for the shiner is as tender as he is
beautiful and just a few hard knocks,