went the shark, whirling about, coming down with a crash, to rush for deep water, taking me down the beach on the run, reeling, giving line —an exhilarating experience the gaffer often having to wade out, waist-deep, to secure the plunging game.

Many of the shark tribe may be counted as excellent game if taken with rod and reel and allowed a modicum of fair play; but the prejudice which attends the shark and associates it with the vermin of the sea will, doubtless, always prevent the pastime from becoming popular. Again, the shark is usually caught when other game is in question, is a destroyer of sport and a sunderer of companies," all of which adds to its unpopularity. The present article may be considered merely as a suggestion to the angler to take sharks as they come and treat them as you would a game fish, when often what seems a destroyer of sport may be turned into a delight-giver, if robust sport is desired.

"DID

CHAPTER XI

THE WINTER ANGLER

ID it never occur to you," said the winter angler, one warm January day at the Tuna Club," that there is about as much delight in winter trout' fishing, as in summer? In fact, I do not know but that there is a little more. The trout are bigger, the salmon seem to leap higher, and under the beneficent influence of a rousing fire, all fish are larger, better, and harder fighters. Just how this happens I do not know, but I fancy I obtain almost as much sport out of fishing in talking it over a year later, as I do at the time. It is this feature of it that causes the layman to look upon the angling guild with indulgent suspicion. They think we are harmless, and so we are, to all except the big trout that rises to the fly beneath some low-lying, caressing willow or some sedgy bank where wild flowers nod, and bending over the rim, eye their beauties like Narcissus.

Speaking of flies, reminds me of an experience. I was fishing in Canada on a preserve I have, not far from Three Rivers, and casting in a beautiful lake with three flies. I do not be

lieve, and I say this advisedly, that those trout had ever seen an artificial fly before, and what they thought they were, no one knows. This made no difference, as the moment they touched the water it seemed to me, from the boiling of the water, that a hundred trout jumped at them, and before I knew it I had a trout on each hook, each a two-pounder at least, bounding into the air in a mad triangular duel. After a long play I brought them to the boat; but it was manifestly impossible to net them all at once, as they were so widely separated, so I told my boatman to carefully take off the trout highest up, or on the upper fly, which he finally did, and took him in, a fine two-pounder at least. The remaining fish made a combined rush that was irresistible and took forty or fifty feet of line before I could stop them. I was astonished at the fight they made, but in time I reeled them in.

"To my amazement and that of my man, there was a three-pound trout on the upper fly. He had seen it trailing, taken it, and hooked himself without my knowing it. There was nothing to do but repeat the manœuvre, and again my boatman, a good man from the Tadousac country, took not only the second, but the third trout from the hook, by hand, then picked up his net and prepared to net the other as I slowly reeled in.

"How that trout played! I can feel him yet;

feel the thrill that went up my arm as he slashed from side to side, then surged off with strength that was almost irresistible. I could not believe it possible that a trout could make so desperate a play, and slowly, inch by inch, I brought him in, Raphael on the qui vive, net in hand. Suddenly he dropped it and exclaimed, Mon Dieu! Mon Dieu! you have three. I swear I take heem off two.'

"It was a fact, I was playing three trout; the two remaining flies had been seized almost the moment he had taken the fish from the flies. In they came, fighting, dashing this way and that, and again Raphael, a good man as I say from up the Tadousac way, a good Catholic, I happen to know, carefully took the upper and second fish from the flies and dropped them with the others, and again the trout on the end hook made its final rush away, and again I felt the undue strain, the peculiar sag, only twice as fierce, twice as menacing. Slowly, carefully I reeled, checking the rushes with rod and my thumb on the line; playing, giving the butt, keeping reasonably cool, and marvelling at the strength of these Canadian trout. They came in very slowly, but they came in warring among themselves, and when I had them on the quarter, mirabile dictu! there were three trout; the two new ones had taken the extra flies as they raced away after the original trout.