Henry Thoreau, March 17, 1857
No wonder we feel the spring influences.
There is a motion in the very ground under our feet.
Each rill is peopled with new life rushing up it.
Sandy-bottomed brook
flowing cold from ice and snow —
fins poised over sand!
March 19, 2015
February 23. I have seen signs of the spring. February 23, 1857
February 25. Am surprised to see some little minnows only an inch long in an open place in Well Meadow Brook. February 25, 1856
March 7. I see many tadpoles of medium or full size in deep warm ditches in Hubbard’s meadow. They may probably be seen as soon as the ditches are open, thus earlier than frogs. At his bridge over the brook it must have been a trout I saw glance,—rather dark, as big as my finger. March 7, 1855
March 8. I walk these days along the brooks, looking for tortoises and trout, etc. March 8, 1855
March 9 I detect the trout minnows not an inch long by their quick motions or quirks, soon concealing themselves. March 9, 1854
March 11. Snow and ice together make a curtain twenty-eight inches thick now drawn over the pond. Such is the prospect of the fishes! March 11, 1856
March 15. The trout darts away in the puny brook there so swiftly in a zigzag course that commonly I only see the ripple that he makes, in proportion, in this brook only a foot wide, like that made by a steamer in a canal. Or if I catch a glimpse of him before he buries himself in the mud, it is only a dark film without distinct outline. By his zigzag course he bewilders the eye, and avoids capture perhaps. March 15, 1857
March 16. Saw a flock of sheldrakes a hundred rods off, on the Great Meadows, mostly males with a few females, all intent on fishing . . . It is remarkable that they find their finny prey on the middle of the meadow now, and even on the very inmost side, as I afterward saw, though the water is quite low. Of course, as soon as they are seen on the meadows there are fishes there to be caught. I never see them fish thus in the channel. Perhaps the fishes lie up there for warmth already. March 16, 1860
March 18. Nut Meadow Brook is open for a dozen rods from its mouth, and for a rod into the river . . . I see the ripples made by some fishes, which were in the small opening at its mouth, making haste to hide themselves in the ice-covered river. This square rod and one or two others like it in the town are the only places where I could see this phenomenon now. Thus early they appear, ready to be the prey of the fish hawk. Within the brook I see quite a school of little minnows, an inch long, amid or over the bare dead stems of polygonums, and one or two little water-bugs (apple seeds). The last also in the broad ditch on the Corner road, in Wheeler’s meadow. Notwithstanding the backwardness of the season, all the town still under deep snow and ice, here they are, in the first open and smooth water, governed by the altitude of the sun. March 18, 1856
March 19. See in Mill Brook behind Shannon's three or four shiners (the first), poised over the sand with a distinct longitudinal light-colored line midway along their sides and a darker line below it. This is a noteworthy and characteristic lineament, or cipher, or hieroglyphic, or type, of spring. You look into some clear, sandy-bottomed brook, where it spreads into a deeper bay, yet flowing cold from ice and snow not far off, and see, indistinctly poised over the sand on invisible fins, the outlines of a shiner, scarcely to be distinguished from the sands behind it as if it were transparent, as if the material of which it was builded had all been picked up from them. March 19, 1854
March 19. No sooner is some opening made in the river, a square rod in area, where some brook or rill empties in, than the fishes apparently begin to seek it for light and warmth, and thus early, perchance, may become the prey of the fish hawk. They are seen to ripple the water, darting out as you approach. March 19, 1856
March 19. I observed yesterday a dead shiner by the riverside, and to-day the first sucker. March 19, 1857
March 19. I see in the ditch by the Turnpike bridge a painted tortoise, and, I think, a small shiner or two, also several suckers which swiftly dart out of sight, rippling the water. We rejoice to see the waters inhabited again, for a fish has become almost incredible. March 19, 1860
March 20. The wind blows eastward over the opaque ice in vain till it slides on to the living water surface where it raises a myriad brilliant sparkles on the bare face of the pond, an expression of glee, of youth, of spring, as if it spoke the joy of the fishes within it and of the sands on its shore. March 20, 1853
March 20. [The dead sucker phenomenon] is confined to the very earliest spring or winter. March 20, 1857
March 20.In the sluiceway of Pole Brook, by the road just beyond, I found . . . a dozen (or more) willow sticks, as big one's finger or larger, being set small end down in a circle, in a thin round board which made the bottom, and then smaller osiers interwoven at right angles with them, close and firm. Another funnel-shaped basket was secured within this, extending about half-way down it. . . with an opening hardly two inches wide at the bottom, where only a dozen sharped sticks approached each other. There was a square door in the board bottom, by which the fishes could be taken out. This was set in that sluice way, with the mouth or broad end down-stream, all sunk beneath the surface, the fishes being now evidently running up the brooks from the river and ponds, the ice being mostly gone out of the meadows and brooks. We raised this and found eight or ten small pickerel in it, the biggest a foot long. March 20, 1858
March 20. The fishes are going up the brooks as they open. They are dispersing themselves through the fields and woods, imparting new life into them. They are taking their places under the shelving banks and in the dark swamps. The water running down meets the fishes running up. They hear the latest news. Spring-aroused fishes are running up our veins too. Little fishes are seeking the sources of the brooks, seeking to disseminate their principles. Talk about a revival of religion! and business men's prayer-meetings! with which all the country goes mad now! What if it were as true and wholesome a revival as the little fishes feel which come out of the sluggish waters and run up the brooks toward their sources? All Nature revives at this season. With her it is really a new life, but with these churchgoers it is only a revival of religion or hypocrisy. They go down stream to still muddier waters. It cheers me more to behold the swarms of gnats which have revived in the spring sun. The fish lurks by the mouth of its native brook, watching its opportunity to dart up the stream by the cakes of ic . . . No wonder we feel the spring influences. There is a motion in the very ground under our feet. Each rill is peopled with new life rushing up it.. March 20, 1858
March 22. The phenomena of an average March . . . As for fishes, etc., trout glance in the brooks , brook minnows are seen; see furrows on sandy bottoms, and small shell snails copulate; dead suckers, etc. , are seen floating on meadows; pickerel and perch are running up brooks, and suckers (24th) and pickerel begin to dart in shallows. March 22, 1860
March 27. I saw on the 22d a sucker which apparently had been dead a week or two at least. Therefore they must begin to die late in the winter. March 27,1858
March 28. I can remember now some thirty years — after a fashion — of life in Concord, and every spring there are many dead suckers floating belly upward on the meadows. This phenomenon of dead suckers is as constant as the phenomenon of living ones; nay, as a phenomenon it is far more apparent . . . When I realize that the mortality of suckers in the spring is as old a phenomenon, perchance, as the race of suckers itself, I contemplate it with serenity and joy even, as one of the signs of spring. Thus they have fallen on fate. And so, many a fisherman is not seen on the shore who the last spring did not fail here. March 28, 1857
March 29. The trout glances like a film from side to side and under the bank. March 29, 1853
March 30. It is a little warmer than of late, though still the shallows are skimmed over. The pickerel begin to dart from the shallowest parts not frozen. March 30, 1855
See also
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Pickerel
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Osprey (Fish Hawk)
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Sheldrake (Goosander, Merganser)
and Signs of the Spring:
- A Change in the Air
- A Sunny Nook in Spring
- Alder and Willow Catkins Expanding
- Braided Ripples of Melting Snow Shine in the Ruts
- Bright Blue Water
- Buzzing Flies
- Ducks Afar, Sailing on the Meadow
- Frogs, and Turtles Stirring
- Greening Grasses and Sedges
- Insects and Worms Come Forth and are Active
- Listening for the Bluebird
- March is famous for its Winds
- Mosses Bright Green
- Perla-like Insects Appear
- Red Maple Sap Flows
- Ripples made by Fishes
- Skunks Active
- The Anxious Peep of the Early Robin
- The Crowing of Cocks, the Cawing of crows
- The Days are Sensibly Longer
- The Gobbling of Turkeys
- The Grackle Arrives
- The Hawks of March
- The New Warmth of the Sun
- The Note of the Dark-eyed Junco Going Northward
- The Red-Wing Arrives
- The Skunk Cabbage Blooms
- The Softened Air of these Warm February Days
- The Song Sparrow Sings
- The Spring Note of the Chickadee
- The Spring Note of the Nuthatch
- The Striped Squirrel Comes Out
- The Water Bug (Gyrinus)
- Walking without Gloves
- Woodpeckers Tapping
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring:
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau
"A book, each page written in its own season,
out-of-doors, in its own locality."
~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx © 2009-2024
https://tinyurl.com/HDTfishes
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