92 



The American Ansrler 



each side of the stream. They have also 

 boug-ht the comfortable and rather 

 quaint looking " Fishing Box," a draw- 

 ing of which is here given. 



And they have bound themselves by 

 three rules, each of which is imperative 

 if trout fishing- is to be perpetuated in 

 any water, large or small : 



I St. No trout to be creeled that is 

 less than seven inches in length. 



2d. No lure to be used except the 

 artificial fly. 



3d. To stock their stretch of stream 

 with grown or yearling trout, persis- 

 tently and liberally. 



Commendable and necessary as are 

 the two first rules named, anglers will 

 at once note and appreciate the scope 

 and unselfishness of the last one. Own- 

 ing only a limited stretch of a broad 

 stream, many miles in length, these 

 good brothers of the angle will spend 

 their time and money in planting adult 

 trout which, in the most propitious of 

 seasons and under the best of condi- 

 tions, can increase the number of 

 fish in their preserve but slightly in 

 comparison to the general benefit con- 

 ferred on the entire river. Good 

 Samaritans truly, and we are proud to 

 call them, " anglers." 



Put a half dozen clubs of like char- 

 acter on any large trout stream, whose 

 ownership of water is limited to a com- 

 paratively small stretch, and the inter- 

 mediate free waters will team with 

 trout ; but it will be necessary to imbue 

 the club members with the same unsel- 

 fish and liberal spirit and methods pos- 

 sessed by these fly-fishers of Brooklyn, 

 or else the cry of preemption of fishing 

 waters would become a wail and a pro- 

 test that our franchise fearing legis- 

 lators could not resist, and which would 

 not be without an element of justice. 

 As anglers we do not " want the earth," 

 but claim as a right some lien on the 



waters thereof and the preservation o^ 

 their inhabitants for food and the pleas- 

 ureable outings they give us. 



Under no other feasible conditions as 

 outlined above, will the brook beauty 

 of our mountain waters be preserved, 

 and the result rests with the anglers all 

 over the country. Fish laws, stringent 

 though they be, fall flat in execution ; 

 planting of half-inch fry is a failure 

 except when trout streams have been 

 depleted and when there are no big 

 fish to eat the little fellows, to which 

 the term fingerlings is a misnomer — 

 fish atoms would be a more appropriate 

 name. As chairman of the fish com- 

 mittee of a trout club, we have planted 

 during the past eight years over 300,000 

 trout fry of various species, in the small 

 spring brooks of our preserves, all nat- 

 ural trout waters, and the result has 

 been not only disappointing but de- 

 plorable, for we believe that the con- 

 sumption of the fry by the adult trout, 

 would show, if practicable to get at the 

 result, that not five per cent, of these 

 fish atoms ever reached maturity. Our 

 big trout have got bigger and lustier 

 but have not increased in numbers, and 

 this after an experience of profuse 

 planting for nearly a decade of years. 



It is not necessary to dwell at large 

 on the useless expenditure of money by 

 the State in raising and planting of 

 trout fry. Every member of a club's 

 fish committee has seen the futility of 

 putting trout fry in waters containing 

 adult trout, although the utmost care 

 has been taken to put the fingerlings 

 in the small tributary rivulets that they 

 might thrive and be protected from 

 water enemies, the greatest of which are 

 their own big relatives ; but foresight 

 and care can not prevent or retard the 

 spring freshets when the surface water 

 swells these little streamlets into tor- 

 rents and washes these helpless finger- 



