Oil! by Upton Sinclair

Well, they made the trip back to the old field; and Bunny remembered all the adventures of the last ride, the place where they had had lunch, and what the waitress had said, and the place where they had stopped for gas, and what the man had said, and the place where they had run into the speed-cop. It was like fishing -- that is, for real fish, like you catch in water, not in oil wells; you remember where you got the big fish, and you expect another bite there. But the big fish always come at a new place, said Dad, and it was the same with speed-cops. A cop picked them up just outside Beach City, passing a speed-trap at forty-seven miles; and Dad grinned and chaffed the cop, and said he was glad he hadn't been really going fast.

They got to Lobos River that evening; and there was the rig, fishing away -- screwing the stands of pipe together and working down into the hole with some kind of grabbing device on the end, and then hauling up and unscrewing -- stand after stand, fifty or sixty of them, one after another -- until at last you got to the bottom one, only to find that you had missed your "fish!"