Page:Round-about Rambles in Lands of Fact and Fancy, Stockton, 1872.djvu/203

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has one great peculiarity which makes it often vastly more interesting than hunting, gunning, or many other sports of the kind, and that is that you never know exactly what you are going to get.

If we fish in waters known to us, we may be pretty sure of what we will not get, but even in our most familiar creeks and rivers, who can say that the fish which is tugging at our line is certainly a perch, a cat-fish, or an eel? We know that we will not pull up a shad or a salmon, but there is always a chance for some of those great prizes which are to be found, by rare good luck, in every river and good-sized stream; a rock-fish, or striped-bass perhaps, or a pike, or enormous chub.

But there are some fish which would not only gratify but astonish