142 APPENDIX. 



The hero of this anecdote is a gentleman, known by the nnm de guerre 

 of Commodore Limbrick, a character in which he has figured many a 

 day in the columns of the Spirit of the Times, and who is universal:y 

 allowed to be one of the best and most experienced, as well as the oldest 

 fisherman of that city. 



Alter having tished all the morning with various success in the pond, 

 he ascertained, it seems, that in the pool helow the mill there was a fish 

 of extraordinary size, wliich had been observed repeatedly, and fished 

 for constantly, at all hours of the day and evening, with every difierent 

 variety of bait, to no purpose. Hearing this, he betook himself to the 

 miller, and there having verified the information which he had received, 

 and having satisfied himself that neither fly nor minnow, gentle nor red- 

 worm, would attract the great trout, he procured, horreaco referens, a 

 mouse from the miller's trap, and proceeding to troll therewith, took at 

 the first cast of that inordinate dainty, a fish that weighed four pounds 

 and three quarters. 



Another fish or two of the like dimensions have been taken in LifF. 

 Snedecor's and in Carman's streams; and it is on record, that at Fire- 

 place, many years since, a trout was taken of eleven pounds. A rough 

 drawing of this fish is still to be seen on the wall of the tavern bar-room, 

 but it has every appearance of being the sketch of a salmon ; and I am 

 informed by a thorough sportsman, who remembers the time and the 

 occurrence, although he did not see the fish, that no doubt was enter- 

 tained by experienced anglers who did see it, of its being in truth a 

 salmon. 



In the double-pond among the Musconetcong Hills, on the confines of 

 New York and New Jersey, in the Greenwood Lake in the same region, 

 and in some other ponds in Orange County, brook-trout have been occa- 

 sionally taken of the same unusual size — one fish I saw myself on last 

 New Year's Day, which, shameful to tell ! had been caught through the 

 ice, near Newburgh. This fish weighed an ounce or two above five 

 pounds, and was well fed, and apparently in good condition — but, as I 

 said before, all these must be taken as exceptions proving the rule, that 

 trout in American waters rarely exceed two or three pounds in weight, 

 and never compare in size with the fish taken in England, and still less 

 with those of the Scottish and Irish waters, in all of which, the regular, 

 red-spotted, yellow-finned, brook-trout are constantly taken, with the fly, 

 of ten pounds weight and upward; and sometimes, in the lakes of Ire- 

 land and Cumberland, in the Blackwater, Coquet, and Stour rivers, 

 attain to the enormous bulk of twenty-six and thirty pounds. 



With regard to the second point of distinction, I have never heard of 

 a trout being taken at all in the Hudson ; never in the Delaware, even 

 60 far up as Milford, where the tributaries of that river abound in large 

 and well fed fish ; never in the lower waters of the Connecticut, or any 

 Eastern river so far as the Penobscot, although the head waters of all 

 these fine and limpid rivers teem with fish of high color and flavor. In 

 Great Britain, on the contrary, it is to the larger, if not to the largest, 

 rivers that the angler looks altogether for good sport and large fish ; and 

 it is there as rare a thing to take a fish a pound weight in a rivulet or 

 lirook, as it is here to catch a trout at all in a large river. 



