BAITS FOR THE LAKE TROUT. 301 



LAKE TROUT FISHING. 



These great, bad, coarse and unsporting fish, of aU the three 

 varieties, are very nearly similar in their habits, lying for the 

 most part in the deepest parts of the great lakes, seeking their 

 food in the depths, and very rarely rising to the surface, either 

 for food or play. Of these the great Mackinaw Salmon is per- 

 haps the liveliest, and the Common Lake Trout {Salnio Confinis, 

 of Dekay), the heaviest and most worthless. 



They will scarce ever rise to a fly, and can rarely be taken 

 even with a spinning minnow ; with a live bait, however^ or a 

 peacock-fly, submerged to a considerable depth, with a bullet at 

 the end of two hundred yards of line, played from a stiff' rod at 

 the stern of a light skiff* or canoe moved rapidly through the 

 water by sails or oars, they can be caught with considerable 

 certainty. When hooked, however, they are but a heavy, torpid 

 fish, bearing down with a sullen dead weight, and off'ering little 

 more than a passive resistance. My friend William T. Porter, 

 who constantly fishes in the waters of Hamilton Countv, 

 informs me that he has been exceedingly and almost invariablv 

 successful with what seems a very strange and unsporting com- 

 bination, a small fish namely, and a large fly on the same line 

 at about a vard's distance asunder. 



