18 WINTER TALKS ON SUMMER PASTIMES. 



nor salmon, are in full flavor if they have been so much as 

 twenty-four hours out of water. Many an honest angler 

 has lost caste with his friends because the promise to the ear 

 has been broken to the palate. His praises were based 

 upon the flavor when freshly caught; their judgment upon 

 the flavor when eaten. The original flavor of salmon re- 

 mains longer than that of either trout or grayling. But 

 even salmon greatly deteriorate in two or three days, how- 

 ever carefully packed. "Whenever I bring any of my sal- 

 mon catch home with me, I see to it that they are kept con- 

 stantly encased in fresh ice and that they are not exposed 

 to anything above a frigid temperature until they are 

 passed over into the hands of the cook. In this way I have 

 sometimes enabled my friends to get a fair if not a perfect 

 idea of the exquisite salmon flavor. 



" Since I first visited the Au Sable it has fallen off in both 

 the number and weight of its fish. But it still affords good 

 sport to those who do not engage in the pastime simply to 

 see how many fish they can kill. 'Catching to count' is a 

 species of vandalism in which no honest angler will engage. 

 Those who do, whatever they may call themselves, have the 

 'low down' spirit of the pot-hunter, although they may not 

 have his dollar-and-cent cupidity. 



"I remember a great many years ago, hearing one of a 

 party of four boasting that they had, in two days, taken 

 twenty -two hundred trout from the waters of 'Stony Clove,' 

 in the Catskills, and I once saw a then famous judge 'scoop- 

 ing up' trout from the same waters with a bed-tick he had 

 either bought, borrowed or stolen from one of the neighbors. 

 ISTo marvel that that once prolific stream is now compara- 

 tively barren. Scores upon scores of other streams have 

 been similarly depleted in this State and elsewhere. But I 

 am happy to know that this unsportsmanlike habit of 'catch- 

 ing to count' is now deemed 'more honored in the breach 

 than in the observance' thanks to the admonitions of the 

 public press and the better education of the present gener- 

 ation of anglers. 



"On my first visit to the Au Sable I took all the fish I 



