DRYPOINT Page Sixteen The Incomplete angler By cluster m. nilsson Anything can happen in a boat. Movie actors, coal miners, lawyers, railroad men, bankers, stock brokers from New York, political bosses, business execu-tives, mining engineers from the other side of the globe, the prettiest women and the ugliest men they all jerked handlines and struggled with boat rods and told clever stories, were good sports and bad, drank hard liquor and opened their hearts to St. Peter during the two years I was visiting professor of fishing at Fish Lake, Sevier County, Utah. Mrs. Gertie Frey of Nebekers' Resort employed me. It was her idea that a person of high character, such as a college teacher, would be safer to have around than the last rascal she had had for a guide. He blackguarded her to her guests. Moreover, he did other things that were not perfectly innocent. He broke the fish and game laws in several places and demoralized the wardens. After some years of being made ridiculous, they put on dark glasses so that they could not see distinctly what he was doing. The day he left Nebekers', he instructed one of his customers to empty a gallon of phosphorus used illegally for illuminating lures at night up wind from Mrs. Frey's cabins. And the poor dude went and did exactly as directed, even to the last detail, that it should be emptied in a sunny spot among the grass. But when the flames leaped up about him, the tourist began to sense what an ass he had been and called for help. Mrs. Frey felt, secondly, that a college graduate would have the necessary scholastic background to equal the lawbreaker's record of fish-getting. At this, the scamp was phenomenal. Of course, he used every illegal method known: fish entrails for bait, night fishing, trot lines, and nets. Just to make certain, he fished himself. All I had to do was equal his record. Up to that time, I had not caught more than fifty pounds of fish altogether, counting suckers. However, I lugged an old fishing guide by the name of Ole up from the valley and had him give me a postgraduate course in five easy lessons. Fishing had been better in his day, he said. The other fourteen guides on the lake had good ideas, but the only ones they would give away were the bad ones. If Fish Lake guides catch a sizeable trout, they say they caught it on a redhead plug. Sometimes they say they caught it on a minnow. Occasionally the statement is true. My best method at first was to tie an assortment of things onto the tourists' lines and sit back and watch what happened. The professor of logic told me about it. He called it the inductive method and said it never failed. In this way, science showed me that for Fish Lake trolling there is no other lure to compare with devils. On the market they are known as dardevls. But the best ones are homemade and there is art in them. They are cut out of copper, painted to look like a fat steak, and shaped to do the dipsy doodle. When a big trout sees one dancing by in the darkness of early morning, he cancels his order for an American breakfast of ham and eggs, with a side dish of "bucks" and syrup, and does a Jonah on what he thinks is a porterhouse. The adventure turned out surprisingly well, except that the trade that first year, not knowing I was a school teacher, offered me more liquor than I could use. Here is a situation that shows a fishing professor busy at his daily lecture. The incident has some truth in it. II Class members for the day were Sheriff Jeffry Bolano of San Bernardino County, Calif., and a locomotive engineer from Needles. The first difficulty, naturally, was to get the students to come on time. Classes started early exactly at fifteen minutes to four a. m. First instruction began right at the locker. That was what the fifteen minutes were for. And recitations commenced when, a half-mile out in the lake, the devils were placed in the black water and trailed away into the depths. Well, by this time the engineer's dardevl was a hundred and forty feet away and below, winking immorally at rainbow trout. And the sheriff's was out two hundred feet, down scratching the backs of the mackinaw. Up above in the non-capsizable rowboat all seemed well in the frosty glow of four a. m. Sheriff Bolano rose to a point of order and made his contribution. It was a full quart of rusty liquid, unlabelled and unchristened. After a series of deep gargles, his friend the citizen from Needles grudgingly extended the remaining paint-remover. The professor inserted the neck and made swallowing motions. A little got by him. Roman candles sputtered. A pinwheel whizzed. "What is the formula of this solvent?" he enquired, evidently sincerely curious. "The exact elements are secret," answered Bolano, "but in general they're about the same as low grade antifreeze. We brought it along because of the cold sometimes found at this altitude." "Nice morning today though," said the railroad man, and smacked his lips. He was correct. The light was coming on fast now from the direction of Johnson's Reservoir and Seven-Mile. The dead lake surface of half-hour past was gone. Small iron gray chops lapped at the heavy hulk of the rowboat. Pushed by the two-cylinder outboard, she eased through them like the queen of the fleet. "Good mack water," the college man mentioned. "Yes," the railroader agreed, looking pleased. "Would you go for another jigger? There's two fingers left." The educator glanced about as if looking for an exit. He found one. "What can that be nudging your lure, Sheriff?" he remarked evasively. "A strike?" The sheriff settled himself more cozily among the cushions. "It's just chubs, and nibbles at that." "Gentlemen," the professor announced with some dignity and an apprehensive look at the convenient flash, "if you would have fish, watch for two light pulls and a sudden (Continued on page 20) Page Seventeen