Ban The Amertcan Angler 
Now as to the distinctive markings by which 
you Can tell the pike fishes from the perches— 
pike-perches or any other species. All of the 
pike family are formed, with one fin only on the 
back, like the drawing here given. All the 
perches have two fins on the back. Surely this 
is sufficient for your use in the identification of 
a pike when you see it. The specific mark- 
ings of each species of the family are given in 
the paper we sent you, hence we do not repeat 
them. But you write that your pike don’t look 
like the drawing we sent you of the true pike. 
Probably not if you are disposed to split hairs 
and figure in decimals as to the fractions of an 
inch difference in thickness of body, length of 
snout, size of head, etc. In the whole white 
variety of the genus homo, you will meet with 
long bodies, short bodies, big heads, small 
heads, big noses and little noses crooked and 
Straight, and if you look closely at ten fish of 
the same species (closing their mouths) you wil] 
find as great a variety of expression as you see 
daily in any ten men you meet on the street, 
To be more plain—your pike has but one fin 
on the back or else it is not a pike, and it may 
be that you are writing about another different 
fish from the pike, and, as is usual, local 
nomenclature makes confusion worse con- 
founded. Send us a pencil drawing of your fish 
and we will try to get at the bottom of this 
muddle. But we beg you to remember that the 
centuries of ichthyological investigation and 
study, and the millions of money spent thereon 
have been so made and expended that a 
knowledge of fishes, particularly as_ food, 
might be given to man, and that this great 
expenditure of time and money would have 
been useless if our fish savants had not told us 
how to distinguish one fish from the other, 
They have done so lucidly, but could only do 
it by ignoring local nomenclature, and classify- 
ing each family, genus or species, by its ana- 
tomical construction, and we wish to impress 
upon you that the drawing of the pike, in the 
paper sent you last week, is recognized by the 
ichthyologists of America and Europe as the 
pike (Lucia perca) of Asian, European and 
American waters. 
Finally, the fish you describe as having bee 
caught by your friend, i/ it was without distinct 
Spots on its body of irregular size and shape, 
was, probably, the small pickerel (Lucius vermic- 
ulatus) of western waters which never grows 
larger than a pound in weight. It is not found 
in waters east of the Alleghany mountains. 
Bluefish and Weakfish on the Fly. 
Will you kindly tell me whether it is ‘“ fool- 
ishness”’ to put flies on your leader when fish- 
ing for weakfish or bluefish with bait on the 
bare hook at the end? In other words, have 
flies on leader above the baited hook ? 
I suppose bluefish would cut things to 
pieces, unless leader and fly snells were made 
of wire, which could easily be done, of course. 
I do not remember reading whether weak or 
bluefish ever take the fly, hence my question. 
New York, July 30. EAB: 
[Bluefish will destroy five out of six artificial 
flies, even if tied on gimp snoods, before a 
single fish is taken. It is waste of time and 
material to fish for them with the ordinary 
feathers. Again, except at (possibly) the Inlet 
of Barnegat Bay, you will find no water, north 
of Florida, sufficiently pellucid to insure suc- 
cess when casting the fly on a light rod in the 
usual way. We have taken weakfish (salt 
water trout), cavalli, pompano, snook, channe 
bass, lady or bony fish and other species in 
the clear waters of the Gulf of Mexico with 
the artificial fly, but lost more tackle in a 
week there than would have served for 
many seasons on a trout or bass water in the 
north.—Eb. | 
Roiling the Water to Catch Fish. 
A correspondent of Zhe Fishing Gazette 
(London) writes: 
It certainly does seem contrary to the gen- 
eral laws, but a little experience of my own 
tends, I think, to show that fish may be caught 
after the water has been disturbed. Myself 
and a friend were fishing a fairly wide stream 
only last Saturday week. We fished one por- 
tion of the water, wading up the centre, and 
casting up in front of us to left and right. We 
did not get a fish ora signof one. Arriving 
at the top of the piece of water, we decided to 
fish down, and I was told off to start first, 
and my friend would fish down directly after 
me. I began, and when I had got a little on 
my way my friend started, and in four con- 
secutive casts got four fish, one a trout of 
¥% l|b., being hooked almost just behind my 
legs. I had not touched a fish. On telling 
this to an old angler afterwards, he made the 
remark that in a case like that he always 
liked to fish after a person rather than before. 
[Years ago, over a third of a century, during 
the first season of our trout fishing, we passed 
day after day on Trout Run, Lycoming county, 
Pa., in company with Inskeep, of Philadelphia, 
that old veteran of 75 years, now gone from 
us. He fished with fly and we used werms. 
Our creel at the end of each outing always 
