276 AMERICAN FISHES. 



varet, and of the little Smelt, wliicli are all members of this same 

 noble family, it needs not to make farther mention. They. all have 

 been occasionally taken with the fly, and will all undoubtedly be often- 

 times again so captured, but the certainty of their rising is by no 

 means sufficient to warrant the fisherman in wasting much time in 

 their pursuit. 



I may here, before finishing this head of my subject, observe that in 

 fact there is scarcely any fish which will not, apparently from some 

 whim or other, take the fly on the surface. I have myself so caught 

 the Striped Bass, the Shad, the Herring and the Northern Pickerel 

 with the Salmon-fly. All the family of the small Cyprinidce, as the 

 Roach, Dace, Bream and Chub, will at times bite freely. In the Black 

 River a species of this family rises very freely, and gives good sport. 

 It is there called the Chub, and is, I believe, identical with another of 

 the same division, known as the Wind-Fish in some of the streams of 

 Duchess County, in the State of New York ; and a thoroughly good 

 fisherman of the city informed me yesterday that he had even caught 

 Suckers with a Trout-fly, a fact, which but for the very great respec- 

 tability of the source whence I derived the information, I should hardly 

 have been inclined to credit. 



None of these unimportant little fish, however, give sport enough,- 

 or are sufficiently good on the table, to make them worthy the pursuit 

 of others than boys, snobs, and the ladies, who must pardon me for 

 the company into which I have introduced them, certainly not accord- 

 ing to their merits, on my estimation of them. 



