Thoreau writes in his journal:
Minott told me this afternoon of his catching a pickerel in the Mill Brook once—before the pond was drawn off, when the brook had four or five times as much water as now,—which weighed four pounds. Says they stayed in it all winter in those days. This was near his land up the brook. He once also caught there, when fishing for pickerel, a trout which weighed three and a half pounds. He fell within two feet of the water, but [he] succeeded in tossing him higher up. When cutting peat thereabouts, he saw a stinkpot turtle in the water eating . . .
