Therefore we gradually
learned something about its inhabitants,--pickerel, sunfish, black
bass, perch, shiners, pumpkin-seeds, ducks, loons, turtles, muskrats,
etc. We saw the sunfishes making their nests in little openings in the
rushes where the water was only a few feet deep, ploughing up and
shoving away the soft gray mud with their noses, like pigs, forming
round bowls five or six inches in depth and about two feet in
diameter, in which their eggs were deposited. And with what beautiful,
unweariable devotion they watched and hovered over them and chased
away prowling spawn-eating enemies that ventured within a rod or two
of the precious nest!
The pickerel is a savage fish endowed with marvelous strength and
speed. It lies in wait for its prey on the bottom, perfectly
motionless like a waterlogged stick, watching everything that moves,
with fierce, hungry eyes. Oftentimes when we were fishing for some
other kinds over the edge of the boat, a pickerel that we had not
noticed would come like a bolt of lightning and seize the fish we had
caught before we could get it into the boat.
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