that a mummy-chog would pass
with a flip of his tail, will wreck him. Yet for pickerel fishing
through the ice the shiner is the king of bait and fortunate
indeed are those fishermen who can obtain enough shiners to afford
to use them lavishly. Properly hooked, just under the after back
fin, they survive fairly well and their silver wrigglings are hard
for a pickerel to resist.

*****

Though I have said that I never see the fishermen off the pond I
do see them sometimes fishing for bait. They cut a big hole in the
ice for this, one big enough to let that monster pickerel that is
never caught come through, and through this they drop to the
bottom a big hoop net. This they bait with cracker crumbs and now
and then pull it eagerly to the surface, often with many shiners
in it. There are small ponds that are famous for being rich in
bait alone and from these the wiser fishermen draw their supply.
Though the fisherman about his fire up under the lee of the pines
on shore loves to tell tales of the fish of other days and other
ponds he is far from garrulous when on the ice and hard at it. And
usually he is too busy to talk. If the fish are biting well he
tears from one end to the other of his long rows of traps, playing
a fish here, hauling one out there, setting a trap that has been
sprung by the wind or the too eager wriggling of the bait, and on
most fishing days, whether the fish bite well or ill, he has to
constantly make the rounds of his holes, inspecting his hooks to
see if the bait has escaped or been stolen, handling new ones in
the icy water and skimming the young ice from the holes across his
fishing. Miles a day he runs in the keen air with his bait pail
and skimmer and however many fish he catches I am quite sure he
eats them all at the next meal.

And not all his catch are sure to be pickerel. Down below there in
the twilight of the warmest water next the bottom are perch and
dace, bass and eel, and all these are likely to hunger for shiner.
The largest eel I ever saw caught came up through the ice in this
way and I have even known the clumsy and stupid sucker to come out
of the hole on the hook, making the fisherman think for a moment
that he had hold of the one big pickerel of that particular pond.
I cannot conceive of a sucker actually attempting to eat a shiner,
even when impaled, impeded and wriggling, so such must have come
by the hook in some other way, probably accidentally caught as
they came by