All at once there was a jerk that almost pulled me in, so I jerked too, and a big fish flew over my head and hit the bank behind me with a thump.

Of course by a big fish I don't mean a red horse so long as my arm, like the boys bring from the river; I mean the biggest fish I ever caught with a pin in our creek.

It looked like the whale that swallowed Jonah, as it went over my head.

I laid the pole across the roots, jumped up and turned, and I had to grab the stump to keep from falling in the water and dying.

There lay the fish, the biggest one I ever had seen, but it was flopping wildly, and it wasn't a foot from a hole in the grass where a muskrat had burrowed through.