As soon as Wampus got his boat settled, he baited up and put his line over, and we all hustled up and did the same thing. In a minute, almost, Wampus shouted:
“First fish!”
He had it, too. It was a good channel catfish, and when he unhooked it he held it up and shouted:
“Oh, you Jibby! Come on with your fishing!”
Jibby hadn’t rowed out from the shore yet. Now he backed his skiff out carefully and leaned over while he rowed with one oar, and sniffed at the water over the side of the boat. He rowed here and he rowed there, and then, all of a sudden, he backed water and plumped his rock overboard and anchored. He was about twenty-five feet from us.
“Well,” Wampus said, “maybe he didn’t smell fish there, but he picked out a good place. I thought some of fishing there myself.”
Jibby took his time. He shortened up the rope to his rock anchor, and he looked to see that his fishpole and line and hook were just as he wished them to be, and he took out a pocket rule and measured how deep his bobber was set, as if it had to be just right to a part of an inch. Then he put his line over very carefully and—whang!—the bobber went under like a flash.
“Jibby’s got one!” I shouted.
“Shut up!” Wampus said, sort of cross. “We can’t catch anything if you yell all the time.” So we kept quiet and watched Jibby and our own bobbers. He had a perch, and it was a big one, almost three pounds. Wampus opened his eyes some when he saw it, because a three-pound perch is a good-sized fish and might be good for twenty-five points if nobody got a bigger one. Just then Skippy pulled in a mud catfish about as big as his hand, so we all got busy fishing as hard as we knew how.
It was lovely up there in the slough. The big elms and maples hung over and were draped with vines, and some sweet flower was making the air sweet. There were a few mosquitoes, but we did not mind them much; we were used to them. Jibby’s father and Wampus’s Uncle Oscar sat on the bank and smoked and watched.
Well, in an hour or so Wampus was away ahead of Tad and Skippy and me, like he always was at fishing, but he was fishing hard and changing his bobber every few minutes, because Jibby Jones was three fish ahead of him.
“I guess he’s got a real nose for fish,” Wampus whispered to us. “He’s smelled out the best fishing-hole in this whole slough; that’s what he has. I wish I had gone there instead of here. I’m a better fisherman than he is, and I know it and you know it, and if he beats me it will just be his nose that does it.”
“Then I wish I had his kind of nose,” I said, for I was so far behind that I knew I could never catch up unless I caught a whale.
Just then a school of small perch must have come by, for Wampus caught four in succession. That cheered him up, but not for long, because Jibby kept right on catching. Now and then Jibby would pull a paper from his pocket and look at it, and take his pocket rule from his pocket and set his bobber different, and catch another fish.
By three o’clock in the afternoon the sun was pretty hot, and even Wampus said the fish had stopped biting right, but old Jibby kept right on pulling one out now and then. When one side of his boat didn’t give him any fish, he would try the other side, but first he always sniffed to see if the fish were down there. So, after Wampus had not caught any for about half an hour, he tried smelling for fish, too. He leaned over and sniffed at the water.
“Can’t smell a thing,” he said.
The funny thing was that, right along through the heat of the afternoon, when fishing is the worst, Jibby kept on pulling in a fish every now and then. He hadn’t caught so many more than Wampus when the fish were biting easy, but he had kept up with him, and now, that they were not biting for Wampus, Jibby forged right ahead.
“There’s no use talking, fellows,” Wampus said. “I’m convinced. Jibby can smell out the fish. He smelled out the best fishing-hole on this whole slough, and that’s all there is to it. I’ve got a chance yet, but I do wish I had a can of nice fresh lively worms.”
“Yours most all gone?” Skippy asked.
“No,” Wampus told him, “but they’re mighty withered, what I’ve got left. If I was a fish, I’d be ashamed to tackle such sick-looking worms.”
Just about then the fish began biting again, but it looked as if they had got together and decided to help Jibby beat Wampus. Old Jibby just pulled them in as fast as he could take them off his hook, and just before five o’clock he got something on his line that acted like a ton of brick. It was only a carp, but it was a ten-pound one, and Jibby was mighty careful, and got it into the boat.
“Aw, what’s the use!” Wampus said. “He’s got these fish trained.”
Then Uncle Oscar,
