154 THE BEAVER 
BEAVER AND FISH 
There seems to be much difference of opinion as to the 
influence of beaver dams and ponds on fish and fishing. 
Johnson, in his investigations in the Adirondack region, 
found great diversity in the ideas of the people in regard to 
this matter. Some claimed that the beaver ponds ruined 
the fishing, others that it improved it. It is possible that 
both opinions were correct, different physical conditions 
accounting for the discrepancies. 
Regarding beaver ponds and fish, Dr. W. Lyman Under- 
wood writes me that he knows of two instances where beaver 
ponds attracted trout. ‘“‘One was in Maine on the head- 
waters of the St. Croix River. Here a small brook fiowed 
through a meadow. A great many years ago there was a 
dam upon this stream and a sawmill beside it. The whole 
thing went into ruins forty or fifty years ago. Several 
years ago the beavers constructed a dam where the old lum- 
ber mill’s dam once stood. ‘There had been no fish in the 
brook in this meadow, but within a short time it became well 
stocked with trout and good fishing could be had there. 
Five or six miles below where the old mill had stood entered 
quite a large headwater stream. Here there had always been 
a goodly number of trout of fair size, but they never seemed 
to go up the small brook where the beavers finally made their 
home. 
“The other instance of beavers being responsible for the 
stocking of ponds occurred in New Brunswick at the head of 
the Nepisguit River, some eighty miles from any habitation. 
Here were a number of beaver ponds where my guides told 
me that years ago, before the beavers had made the dams, 
there were no trout. When I visited them there was excel- 
lent fishing to be had and I frequently caught trout by 
