PICKEREL SHOOTING ON THE MARSHES.BY O. W. HARD.
BY O. W. HARD.
O
ONE winter, more than a score of years ago—a winter ever memorable for its extreme cold and great depth of snow—I changed my residence to near the head of Shelburne Pond, one of the most beautiful sheets of water in Northern Vermont. The pond is, for the most part, skirted by low marshes, fringed with alders, pussy and red willows, but here and there a bold promontory projects into the water.
All my life I had been a keen fisherman, and from my youth up I had, in one form or another, pursued the finny denizens of the waters. I had lured the slippery, wriggling eel and festive bullpout from many a deep hole in the Little Otter, snatched the shy minnow from some sheltered cove, and landed the shiner and horndace from some still pool, panting on the sandy shore. I had trolled for pickerel on the lake, and seen them taken by the score in a seine, had even caught one through the ice; but of the modern method of annihilation—shooting—I was ignorant. All through the winter I listened to the stories told by old fishermen of wonderful shots, and of the number, ranging from one to five, killed at a single shot. I dreamed of pickerel, and my mouth watered in expectancy as I fancied I detected a fish-like smell arising from the pan. Having provided myself with a fowling-piece and a goodly store of ammunition, I waited patiently for the first signs of milder weather to appear on the southern swale. The phœbe and redbreast, the first harbingers of spring, were beginning to trill their morning carols, but spring still lingered in the lap of winter. At length, under the genial action of the sun, now high in the heavens, the snow began to fade slowly and almost imperceptibly away, and patches of brown sward to appear on the hillsides.
One warm afternoon toward the middle of April, when not a cloud flecked the sky, nor a breeze rippled the miniature sea, I sallied forth to try my luck among the finny drove. I soon reached the edge of the north marsh, and saw that the water was literally alive with fish, darting hither and thither through the turbid flood, and leaving shining wakes in the water. But a sluggish brook, now swollen beyond its capacity with banks overflowed, presented an effectual barrier between me and the pickerel. Not to be baffled, however, by a little water, I commenced wading through bog and fen till I reached a fence, on which I crossed the brook, and went splashing and floundering through a swamp, and finally reached a very small spot of dry land.
Here I was among myriads of shovel-nosed fellows, facing me, perfectly motionless in the water, like a ship riding at anchor, or darting from under my very feet into the channel of the stream. Wading out into the shallow flood, I spied a big fish parting the water with his dorsal and caudal fins, and swimming slowly from me. I took aim and blazed away. To my utter astonishment, instead of one, five speckle-sided, white-bellied pickerel floated up. If I had been excited before, I was more so now—I had drawn blood.
Quickly ramming a charge into my gun, I was up and at them again, and soon had a string that did credit to a tyro, and would have done any old fisherman’s heart good to behold. I kept up a continual fusillade among them until the blackbirds, perched on the alders and among the branches of the gray ashes, began to ring their evening curfew. Then, slinging the slimy string over my shoulder, I wended my way homeward, with the pleasing thought in my mind that, if I was wet, the traditional fisherman’s luck was not wholly mine.
According to Lesueur, the common pike of our inland waters, the long or shovel-nosed pickerel (Esox reticulatus), attains a length of one to three feet; the body isgreen above and golden yellow on the sides, with dark, irregular, longitudinal lines, which unite in imperfect reticulations; flesh-colored on the throat, lower parts white; beneath the eye a black vertical band; caudal and dorsal fins greenish black, while the others are flesh-colored. It is a very rapid swimmer, voracious and strong; it remains apparently motionless in the water, awaiting an opportunity to dart upon its prey, consisting of anything it can swallow excepting the perch. While the body is suspended there is an incessant motion of the last few rays of the dorsal and anal fins, with a rotatory movement of the pectoral and, occasionally, of the ventral and caudal. Such an exact equilibrium do these forces maintain that the fish does not move in the water. This recalls what I said before about the fish lying at anchor. He is the shark of fresh waters, and sometimes attains a weight of thirty pounds, though the common size is two to five pounds.
For shooting in shallow water, small shot are, perhaps, as good as anything, but in deep water buckshot or ball are the best. Any one at all familiar with pickerel shooting has noticed that many fish captured in this way show no marks; they are simply stunned or killed by concussion. The pickerel spawns in the early spring, for that purpose ascending narrow brooks, creeks and ditches as soon as the ice is clear. The shooting season generally lasts from one to two weeks, or as long as the fish run. While the ice remains firm in the ponds there is always good sport, but when that disappears and the frogs, with throats cleared of frost, set up their nightly croaking, it is ended.
During the last two decades there has been such a renaissance of sport, so to speak, among the American people, both in forest and on stream, that what was once regarded merely as the pastime of the idle and wealthy is now recognized as suitable even for the pillars of the church and state. Every class seeks relaxation from business cares and worries in outings with rod and gun. Whatever may be the cause of this change, the fact remains that sporting has been reduced to almost an exact science. The effects of this are very palpable; for instance, pickerel shooting to-day is not what it was twenty, or even ten years ago. True, we have a law which forbids catching them through the ice, or shooting them, yet no attention is paid to it, except to impose an occasional fine on fishermen using nets in the lake. In direct violation of this law, great numbers are taken through the ice, and very many shot, and were they not wonderfully prolific, the species would soon become extinct. Whereas a few years since only a few sportsmen shot fish, now every one that can lay his hands on a gun or muster a spear makes a wholesale business of it during the season.
The best sport is obtained when, after a heavy fall, the snow melts with a rush, so as completely to cover the marshes. On a certain Good Friday I remember shooting fish at the base of a cobble, where a Canadian named Isaac was chopping wood. Now Isaac had a sense of humor, and thought to spoil our fun. He was half blind, but he told us if we shot a fish “we’d have to be darned slide about it.” We rolled them up right under his nose, however, and he was apparently none the wiser. I have enjoyed many a day’s outing with the pickerel, but none that would quite compare in zest and novelty with the day when I made my first shot.
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