The very first pickerel
that I ever caught jumped into the air to seize a small fish dangling
on my line, and, missing its aim, fell plump into the boat as if it
had dropped from the sky.
Some of our neighbors fished for pickerel through the ice in
midwinter. They usually drove a wagon out on the lake, set a large
number of lines baited with live minnows, hung a loop of the lines
over a small bush planted at the side of each hole, and watched to see
the loops pulled off when a fish had taken the bait. Large quantities
of pickerel were often caught in this cruel way.
Our beautiful lake, named Fountain Lake by father, but Muir's Lake by
the neighbors, is one of the many small glacier lakes that adorn the
Wisconsin landscapes. It is fed by twenty or thirty meadow springs, is
about half a mile long, half as wide, and surrounded by low
finely-modeled hills dotted with oak and hickory, and meadows full of
grasses and sedges and many beautiful orchids and ferns. First there
is a zone of green, shining rushes, and just beyond the rushes a zone
of white and orange water-lilies fifty or sixty feet wide forming a
magnificent border.
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