Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: ounce beauty at my side on the bank. "That's the first fish I've seen caught from the bridge," said an admiring native, and it was the only one I ever caught, although my line has dropped there many times before and since. Now I know the trick. I made a stout cord fast to a stump above the bridge, and let my canoe float down under and through the bridge, then I cast my fly, and a boy sitting in the bows slowly pulled me through again up to the stump. The fish seeing no splash, only the passing shadow of the silent canoe, took my fly readily, and in the early morning I was sure of a fairly good catch. If fished for from the bridge, they will lie there, and never move a fin ; the current is weak, and if scared away by a stone or twig, they will return in a second or two, almost to the same spot. I fancy the first one I caught was not a regular " bridge bass," but was one swimming up stream at the edge of the weeds in search of his breakfast. Now if any of my fishing friends think they can catch these bridge bass, I will guarantee to show them (or they can go and see for themselves) from six to a dozen of the beauties lying there at any time. When I do not succeed with them to my satisfaction, I get some one to systematically drop stones and drive them up stream, where, perhaps out of pure unadulterated cussedness, they seem to readily take a fly. A great advantage of this spot up stream is that the baby bass and sun fish give but little trouble. The principal nuisances are thelarge eels. If the line touches the bottom for an instant an eel seems certain to be waiting for it, and I would as readily handle a squid as an eel. My brother, who frequently accompanies me, is not a fisherman and prefers fishing for eels, and by a rule of contrariness the bass bother him quite as mu...