274 AMERICAN FISHES. 



LAKE TROUT FISHING. 



THESE great, bad, coarse and unsporting fish, of all the three varie- 

 ties, 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 perhaps the liveliest, and the 

 common Lake Trout, Salmo 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 offering little more than a passive resistance*. My friend 

 William T. Porter, who constantly fishes in the waters of Hamilton 

 county, informs me that he has been exceedingly and almost invariably 

 successful with what seems a very strange and unsporting combination, 

 a small fish namely, and a large fly on the same line, at about a yard's 

 distance asunder. 



The commonest way, by far, of angling for the common Lake Trout 

 is with a stout drop-line and a Cod-hook baited with a piece of salt 

 pork, or the belly of a Yellow Pearch or Brook Trout let down into 

 ten or fifteen fathom water. The fish bites, gorges his bait, for which 

 you may allow him a few seconds' time, after which he is hauled in by 

 main force. He is very indifferent eating, but perhaps the best way 

 of preparing him when quite fresh out of water, is to crimp him to the 

 bone after stumming him with a heavy blow on the head, wrap him up 

 in a cover of thick greased paper, and roast him without removing the 



