148 AMERICAN' GAME BIED SHOOTING. 



also of taking our bearings by the sun, as Smith said lie 

 Avould not have the feelings of being lost again for any 

 amount of money. 



We remained out until five o'clock, and when 'we re- 

 turned we had twelve brace of dusky grouse, two brace 

 of ruffed grouse, a couple of mallards, a Canada goose, and 

 a young swan. The half-breed told us that we could bag 

 hundreds of these latter species of birds on the lake late 

 in October, as it was actually thronged with them, while 

 snipes, plovers, tattlers, cranes, and herons were found 

 in immense flocks along the shore. Besides its excellence 

 as shooting quarters, the lake is also one of the finest 

 fishing grounds on the Continent, as it teems with several 

 varieties of trout, besides chubs, catfish, whitefish, and 

 other species. Some of the salmon trout found there 

 have a length of four or more feet, and a weight ex- 

 ceeding fifteen pounds, while specimens weighing one and 

 two pounds are so common that their name is legion. 

 I do not know of any place on the Pacific Slope that 

 equals it as a trouting ground, except Lake Tahoe, in 

 California, and between the two there is little choice. 

 The fishing is poor, comparatively speaking, from June 

 to October, as the trout seek the cold mountain streams 

 during that period, and remain in them until the ice and 

 the cold weather send them back to the lake again, yet 

 a dozen or more may be caught any fine evening, and I 

 have known two dozen to be hooked in an hour with very 

 coarse tackle, not one of which weighed less than a 

 pound and a half. 



We caught them so rapidly from a rude raft made of 

 logs, that we found very little sport in it, for they seemed 

 to be only too anxious to get hooked. To vary the mo- 

 notony of hooking them we tried spearing tliem at night, 

 and found there was less of pot-hunting about this than 

 in using a fly or a worm, as we gave them some chance 

 for their lives, through our own inaccuracy of aim. By 



