
AMONG THE GRAYLING, TROUT AND RAINBOW OF MICHIGAN. 
BY WILLIAM C. HARRIS. 
In June last, through the courtesy of 
Mr. Hershel Whitaker, president of 
the Michigan State Fish Commission, 
and the kind help of Mr. L. D. Alexan- 
der, of Grayling, Mich., we were intro- 
duced to the grayling, the rainbow 
trout, and the red-spotted trout of the 
Au Sable river. I had, in 1885, spent a 
week on the upper Manistee among the 
grayling, and was, naturally, deeply 
interested in observing the habits of the 
fish in their two habitats. Mr. Alex- 
ander has one of the most complete 
camping outfits we have ever used, and 
the comfort of our brief stay on the 
river was not handicapped by an unto- 
ward incident, and the outing was well 
rounded up by: the artist, Mr. J. “L. 
Petrie, who happily succeeded in get- 
ting a portrait, in oil, of the grayling, 
perfect in form and true to nature in 
coloration, a difficult task, as the violet- 
rose bloom on this fish fades or changes 
quicker than the tint of a dying rain- 
bow in a clearing sky. 
The Au Sable grayling has some traits 
not possessed by his Manistee congener, 
and when handled on the rod he is not 
aleaper. Only inone instance did we 
have a fish throw himself entirely out 
of the water when hooked and played, 
and in that case we held hard and 
doubtless forced the fish to an erial 
flight. The Manistee grayling repeat- 
edly leaps, and does so on a slack line. 
The mouth of the Au Sable fish is not as 
tender as that of his ‘brother of the 
more western part of the State, and he 
has not to the same extent the delicate 
rose-violet tint that gives such beauty 
to the Manistee fish. The latter run 
much smaller, as a rule, when taken 
with the feathers, and are not, I think, 
such hard fighters as the grayling of 
the Au Sable, which is much the broader 
fish of the two, being thick at the 
