Fish and FisJiinsr in America. 



Fishing for chub has not, as we have 

 before stated, been estimated at its 

 proper value by American anglers. 

 Among those of England this fish holds 

 rank above most of the other so-called 

 coarse fish, and deservedly so, judging 

 from my own experience, for I have 

 found the chub to rise eagerly to an 

 artificial fly, and if of a pound weight 

 or thereabouts, the vigor of its down- 

 ward surge, restrained by a light fly 

 rod, will confuse the angler's judgment 

 during the early part of the fight as to 

 his quarry being a trout or a black bass. 

 This, of course, has reference to the 

 larger chub, fallfish, or wind-fish — Seui- 

 otilis corporalis — described and illus- 

 trated on pages 63 and 65, although the 

 smaller species (see page 66), when it 

 reaches ten to twelve inches, makes a 

 good fight, and is, perhaps, the better 

 table fish. 



Years ago, before the black bass be- 

 came sovereign in the rivers, the chub 

 and the catfish yielded the bulk of fish 

 food to the farmers living along the 

 banks, and both these fish were caught in 

 large numbers on raw meat and worm 

 bait, but since the introduction of the 

 black basses, anglers have found that the 

 chub rises freely to the feathers on both 

 large and small streams, for this fish 

 has been driven by the fierce on- 

 slaughts of the bronze backers to seek 

 the protection of lesser waters, and thus 

 do their share in the sad work of de- 

 pleting our trout streams. As the 

 years pass, the younger anglers of the 

 present generation will live to see the 

 chub prized here as it is in England as 

 a rod fish. Open trout waters will be- 

 come more and more restricted, particu- 

 larly near cities ; the black basses will 

 usurp the larger streams, and the chub 

 will work his way, wherever he escapes 

 the maw of his ravenous enemy, into 

 the lower portions of the trout streams. 



destroying them as such, and the rod 

 and fly fisher must be content with 

 luring what he now imjustly condemns 

 as coarse fishes. They will yield him 

 many pleasurable outings if he ap- 

 proaches their haunts in the proper 

 angling spirit, and with the lightest of 

 rod and water gear. I may be par- 

 doned for reproducing a description of 

 one of my chub outings, printed over, 

 twenty years ago, which I have found 

 in my scrap-book when looking for 

 notes on the chub. It will serve to re- 

 mind anglers that running waters, even 

 in the most unlikel}^ sections, will be 

 apt to be fruitful of pleasure. For a 

 third of a century I have never visited 

 during the fishing season any place, far 

 or near, without taking my tackle with 

 me, and the occasion described was only 

 one of inany where my foresight was 

 rewarded : 



. " The October days afford pleasant 

 disport with light tackle among the 

 chub, a bony but semi-game fish. Their 

 flesh gets harder, and as the fall months 

 grow upon us they become by no means 

 a bad pan fish, especially when caught 

 in the small and narrow brooks that 

 well out from innumerable springs in 

 the meadows and on the hills of the 

 suburban counties to Philadelphia. 

 Hardly a stream of ten feet width but 

 what is full of them, and in water? 

 which they monopolize they reach ten 

 to fifteen inches in length, and may be 

 called sprightly surface feeders. In 

 waters of this character the chub are 

 only to be caught in numbers with the 

 fly, as here they are as wary and scary 

 a creature as ever a fin floated. We are 

 especially alluding to streams where 

 they seem to have shouldered out every 

 other kind of fish but their own ilk. 

 Even the omnipresent "sunny," in 

 waters familiar to us, has been crowded 

 oiit, and where we have found this to 



