482 FISHING IN AMERICAN WATEKS. 



small fish of the herring family ; it seems to be the connect- 

 ing link between the families of corregonus and clupea. It is 

 found in all the great lakes, and in some of those of the sec- 

 ond class, such as Geneva, or Big Foot Lake, in Wisconsin, 

 where the annual catch of ciscos takes place on the 15th 

 of June. They feed upon the eel, or shad-fly, a species of 

 ephemera which makes its appearance in the lake region 

 about the middle of June in immense swarms, and lasts only 

 two or three days. At Geneva Lake the cisco is only seen 

 when this fly is on the water ; then the whole, ten or twelve 

 miles long, is covered with fish breaking the surface, and 

 all the anglers in the country are there at work. I went 

 there once from Milwaukee, on the 16th of June, and found 

 the fish had appeared with the flies on the 14th, and when 

 I arrived had returned to the depths. 



"I think if you were to pass a summer among the lakes 

 of Wisconsin and Minnesota, and the trout streams about 

 Lake Superior, you would collect material for a capital book. 

 Lake Superior is the great home of the salmons, and would 

 itself occupy the naturalist for months to study its fishes 

 thoroughly. There is a river on the north shore, very little 

 visited, called the Nepegan, which is, I suppose, the best 

 trout stream in America. I have the outline of a brook 

 trout, twenty -one and a half inches long, and five deep, 

 which weighed four pounds when cleaned and smoked. This 

 I received from a party of anglers of St. Louis, on their 

 homeward trip. They had a barrel of these smoked trout, 

 with many as large as the one I outlined, which must have 

 weighed six pounds when caught. They had none less than 

 two pounds, and the average weight of their takes daily was 

 over two pounds each fish, and a fish at every cast on a sin- 

 gle fly. These gentlemen, who were persons of education 

 and general intelligence, assured me that they had found a 

 land-locked salmon on the north shore of Lake Superior, be- 

 sides the Salmo namaycush and Salmo siscowet, and that 

 they twice took the whitefish with the fly on the lake." 



