Uncle Dick and Lisa's Old Time Animal Tales

Trout Killed with a Hammer Masked Lake Fishermen.
“I wore a woolen mask when I caught that fish,” said the angler, pointing to a mounted specimen above the sideboard, “and the thermometer registered 12 degrees below zero at the time. It was lake Michigan. On the lakes the summer fishing will aggregate 130,000,000 pounds a season. There is a winter fishing, too, when men in windmasks sit over little holes in the thick ice and, at a polar temperature watch their tieups. They don’t catch much, but what they do catch they get seven or eight cents a pound for, and thus it is possible for the winter fishermen to earn $12 a day. I’d have earned $17 the day I went out if I sold my fish. The little carp over the mantel was caught with a mirror. My line had a mirror behind the bait. When a fish approached his own reflection made him thick that another fish was about to snatch the bait from him, and he bit greedily. The fine trout above the hole in the carpet I caught with a hammer. What? Yes, a hammer. That is the Georgia way. They wade up and down a stream and whack with a stout sledge every big stone they pass. Then they turn over the stone and find as like as not, a stunned trout underneath.”-New Orleans Times-Democrat.