Thoreau writes in his journal:
P.M.—Wishing to get one of the little brook (?) pickerel, of Hubbard’s ditches, in the arethusa meadow, I took a line in my pocket, and, baiting with a worm and cutting a pole there, I caught two directly. The biggest was nine inches long and thickly barred transversely with broken dark greenish-brown lines, alternating with golden ones. The back was the dark greenish brown with a pale-brown dorsal line. Both have the vertical dark or black line beneath the eyes and appearing, with the pupil and a mark above, to pass through it . . . Melvin says they get to weigh about two pounds . . .
