An Earthly Paradise

Crystal Lake, Benzie Co., Mich. July 10, 1895. (Paradise of Fishermen.) Mr. Editor: A second trip to this beautiful lake, with its dry sandy shores and surrounded by wooded bilis has more than justified the enthusiasm caused by our first visit. The lake is nine or ten miles long, twenty-eight feet higher than Lake Michigan fromjwhich it is separated by a narro w strip of high timbe red land less than a mile in width. So that we have here all the advantages of Lake Michigan- its pure air its cool and refreshing breezei without its treacherous squalls, storms and fogs. Besides the fishing here is incomparably better than in the larger lake. Our party this time consisted of Ex-Gov. Ashley, Col. B. M. Thompson and the writor- a triumvirate of experienced and truthful fishermen, it is unnecessary to say, and so to be logical we say it. We fished on the south side of the lake in about twenty-flve feet of water, and during our flve visits to the spot we "raised" from their watery element over four hundred fine perch, averaging about one fish a minute for the time actually spent fishing. Our lines were each garnished with two hooks and we often brought up two perch at a time, or we could not have made the average of one fish a minute. The fish in Lake Crystal are mostly perch, but to give variety to our operatious a Jarge black bass, weighing probably nine or ten pounds, siezed the bait of Gov. Ashley and as the hook tickled the roof of his mouth, he gave adownward plunge and the steel fishing rod of the Governor snapped like a pipe stem and that bass is now amusing his aqueouscompanions by dragging about four feet of steel fishing rod over the bottom of Lake Crystal. The incident and its consquences reminded us of an anecdote of Lincoln. During a visit to the president, after the business in hand was accomplished, Lincoln remarked: "Ashley, are you an Epscopalian?" "Xo" Ashley replied "I am not an Epscopalian." The President answered with a curious twinkle in those sad eyes, "I thought you must be an Epsicopalian for you swear just like Seward and he is an Epsicopaliau!" The real and substantial joy of fishing ia Lake Crystal is the voracity and rapidity with which the perch seize your bait. My friend John Goltz, tells me tliat he caught a piekerel last Sunday in Island Lake forty inches long, and I am confldent tliat John tells the truth for he shovved me at Iiis store the head of such a piekerel with a mouth like a buil dog and an evo like a tiger, but he said he had been fishing three years for it. Now the aggregate ages of our tri um vírate was 180 years, so we could not afford to wait three years for a single bite ! Wlien }rou strike a school of perch in Crystal Lake they are so thick that in jerking your line you ofien hook them without their swallowing the bait. We caught one by hooking him through the tail about an inch from the end, and you can imagine the emotions of his associates who surrounded him, as with open mouth ond glassy eyes he ascended, tail foremost, from the water, leaving a ripple ikin to laughter, upon its surface as he disappeared "out of sight" in the bottom of the boat ! Plenty as the fish are in the lake to-day they must liaye been thicker in early times. One okl resident upon the north shore told us that years ago the perch would go up the small streams that flow into the lake in such immense numbers that the big fish would crowd the little ones out on the sand on each side and they would flop and die there by the hundreds. It is unfortunate that the unreasonable story told by that earliest missionary - the ancient Jonah - of his mishap in the Mediterranean, how the ''great fish" tired and sick at last of the prayer meeting which Jonah held three successive evenings in his stomach, by one supreme- and lucky for Jonah - effort heaved liim upon the dry land of the shore. Since that day, when an honest and truthful citizen relates his experience fishing nobody believes him. You alvvays liear the discouraging remark, "O that is a fish story." To be frank, we do not expect that our statements about the fishing at Crystal Lake will be believed. But we may hope that sometime in the far away future, when the common place events of to-da)' become dim and ragin in the mist and twilight of an pnteged past, some gentle and unsephisticated soul, moved by an earnest and childlike "faith,"will teil the receptive and wondering audiences the "fish stories" of today and draw from them noble lessons of moral instruction and spiritual edification.