LAKE TROUT FISHING 275 



entrails, which will come away at a touch when he is cooked, under 

 the ashes of a wood fire. 



The greatest Mackinaw Salmon, or Namaycush, and the Masauia- 

 cush, or Arctic Charr, the latter a delicious and very voracious fish, are 

 both taken in the same manner, in very deep water, in the summer, 

 and through holes cut in the ice in the dead of winter. The favorite 

 bait for both these fishes, is the belly of the yellow or gray sucking 

 Carp, or a piece of the raw heart or liver of a deer. 



The Mackinaw fish is, however, a far bolder fish than any of his 

 race, and occasionally follows any shining bait or squid up to the very 

 surface of the water, if it is sunk by means of a weight, and then 

 trolled sharply upward and onward to the surface. A piece of bright 

 tin, with a rag of scarlet cloth attached to it, is, I am informed, found 

 to be very successful and killing in the hands of the Indians. If this 

 be the case, of which I am well assm-ed, there can be little or no doubt 

 that the deadly spoon, as it is called, an implement shaped precisely 

 like the bowl of a table spoon, of bright metal, silver-washed within, 

 and brazed without, attached by a swivel at the lower extremity to a 

 s-tout triple hook, and at the upper to a piece of strong gimp — which is 

 so murderously destructive to the Black Bass of the St. Lawrence and 

 the Mascalonge — would be found no less effective with the great Lake 

 Trout ; nor if any one should think it worth the while, would any hai-m 

 be thought of his applying any invention, however slaughtering and 

 poacher-like, to so base and caitiff a fish as the Lake Salmon. 



Of Back's Grayling it is almost unnecessary here to speak, so far 

 north are his customary haunts, and so very difficult and expensive is 

 it to reach the districts in which only he exists. This is the more to 

 be regretted for that he is one of the finest, if not the very finest, of all 

 the sporting fishes of America. He is the boldest of biters at a fly, 

 taking all those flies which are most preferred by the Brook Trout, 

 leaping many times out of the water in his efforts to extricate himself 

 from the hook, nor ever succumbing to his captor's will without a des- 

 perate resistance and a severe conflict. His flesh is no less delicious, 

 and his excellence at the board in no wise inferior to his spirit, or the 

 beauty of his coloring. 



Of the Attihawmeg or White-Fish of the great lakes, of the Otsego 

 Bass, or as I should desire to have it hereafter called, the Otsego La- 



