There was an elbow in the brook at the place where we crossed it, and a large tree lying across the stream had collected driftwood and formed a dam above which was a deep pool about thirty feet in diameter. Looking down from the bridge which the west wind had made for us to cross upon, we saw that the pool was alive with trout. The bottom seemed black with a solid army formation of fish, lying close together, sides touching, heads up stream; while schools of smaller trout, disturbed by our presence, swiftly swam around the pool reflecting the bright sunshine in brilliant rainbow hues. The scene was one to arrest the attention of the most casual observer, and Bige and I lingered long upon the bridge watching the movements of the hundreds of inhabitants of this natural aquarium.
On the way back to camp we discussed the possibilities of fishing this pool, deciding upon the best place of approach, where one could be partially concealed by bushes while casting. We spent all of the following day marking a trail down the mountain and across the valley, about three miles, from camp to the pool, cutting brush and clearing out a path; then one day when the weather conditions were favorable, Bige went out to headquarters to bring in some food supplies and I, with a fly rod, went down over our new trail to catch a few trout in a pool that had never been fished.
Cautiously approaching, when near the brook, I heard sounds of splashing in the water. Creeping on hands and knees, then slowly on stomach, I reached a position where, through the bushes, the surface of the pool came into view, when, crawling up the opposite bank, I saw a long, slender, shiny, water soaked, fur coated body which was surmounted with a cat-like head; the legs were so short they were invisible and the body appeared to drag upon the ground, while a tapering tail about a foot long followed in the rear. The Otter, including tail, was about three feet long and he had a trout in his mouth which he deposited on the ground and immediately slid down the bank and disappeared under the water. In less than a minute he crawled up the bank again with another fish in his mouth, which was dropped by the first one and the operation was repeated.
I do not know how long the otter had been fishing when I arrived, but I watched him work fully fifteen minutes, when he came to the surface without a fish. He then deliberately surveyed his catch, appearing to gloat over it, after which he started down stream, tumbling in and climbing out of the water as far as he could be seen and I heard him several minutes after he had gone out of view.
Coming out of my cramped position of concealment, I crossed over on the fallen tree and saw scattered over the opposite bank literally scores of trout, large and small; some had their heads bitten off, others were cut in half, all were mutilated. Obviously, the otter had eaten his fill and then had continued to fish just for the joy of killing, like some other trout-hogs in human form, such as we all have met.
I went back to camp that night without fish. We visited the pool later, several times, but never got a rise and never saw another trout in that hole. The otter had made a perfect and complete job of it. There was not left even a pair of trout for seed.
A TWENTY inch pickerel of my acquaintance, one day swallowed his grandson. This was an exhibition of bad judgment on the part of Grandad Pickerel. The mere fact of killing his near relative was not in itself reprehensible, since, if all pickerel were not cannibals they would soon exterminate from streams, ponds, and lakes, fishes of all other species. But this particular "pick" was a husky youngster, and while he might very properly have been bitten in half, or have been chewed up into small pieces, the older fish got himself into trouble when he swallowed the kid whole.
A few hours after the occurrence mentioned above, the elder pickerel, at one end of a trolling line, climbed into our boat; Bige, who had the other end of the line, assisting him aboard.
"Sufferin' Mackerel! Well by Gosh!! He's got a rudder on both ends; he can swim both ways without turning around, like a ferry boat," commented Bige, as we examined the floundering big fish, which had the tail end of a smaller fish protruding three inches beyond his snout, while the head of the younger was in the pit of the stomach of the elder pickerel.
I have heard and read many tales, illustrating the voracious appetite of pickerel. Boardman in his book, "Lovers of the Woods," tells how his guide, George, while fishing in Long Lake, lost his Waterbury watch overboard. Several days later, he caught a big pickerel and in dressing it found his watch inside, still running. It seems that a leather thong attached to the watch was wrapped around the winding crown and the other end of the thong was looped over the fish's lower jaw and hooked onto his teeth, so that whenever the pickerel opened and closed his mouth the watch was wound half a turn, and thus was kept running.
Not being an eye-witness, my testimony regarding this incident would not be accepted in a court of law. However, I have known pickerel to swallow frogs, crawfish, mice, sunfish and yellow perch with their prickly dorsal fins, young shell-drakes and gulls, and even bull-heads having three rigid horns with needle points projecting at right angles to the body, any one of which horns, it would seem, might pierce the anatomy of the pickerel. Somehow, they appear to get away with all these things, and more.
The pickerel has a large mouth and a multitude of teeth on both upper and lower jaws, in the roof of his mouth, also on tongue and palate. These teeth are long and sharp and they slope inward; some of them also bend down to allow objects to pass into the throat, but they effectually prevent ejecting anything that has been swallowed. So, Grandad Pickerel, if he had regrets after swallowing a member of his own family, found it impossible to throw him up, as the Good Book says the whale cast up Jonah.
Bige and I found we could not separate the two fishes without first performing a surgical operation. In doing so, we also released a shiner which had been swallowed with Bige's trolling hook and was wedged in the throat alongside the smaller pickerel. This was the most amazing part of the incident, and proves the gluttonous character of the pickerel and his complete inability to appreciate the limits of his own capacity.
We found upon examination that the process of digestion was operating, and that the head of the smaller pickerel was nearly dissolved in the stomach of the larger fish. Another hour, and grandson would have slipped down an inch and the process of digestion would have been repeated upon another section.
A white man cuts his fire wood the proper length to use in his fireplace. An Indian puts one end of a long branch or sapling into his fire, and when it has burned off, he moves the stick in and burns off another section, thus conserving labor.
Our pickerel was digesting his food Indian fashion, or, so to speak, on the installment plan.
BIGE and I were hunting. I was placed on a "runway" on the bank of a small stream which was the outlet of Minnow Pond. Bige had gone around to the opposite side of the mountain and planned to come up over the top and follow the deer path which ran down the mountain side, into and through an old log-road which had not been used for lumber operations for fifteen years, and which was now overgrown with bushes and young spruce and balsam trees. This log-road followed the windings of the brook down the valley to where it emptied into the lake, and where the logs were dumped into the water and floated down to the mill.