310 



AMERICAN GAME. 



Tliis propensity is taken advantage of by the angler, 

 since, when he has once struck upon a well-stocked 

 haunt, while the fish are in the humor to bite, he will be 

 very apt, if patient and skillful, to take the whole shoal 

 without the loss of a single fish. 



The growth of the yellow perch is slow, and appears 

 to be proportioned pretty accurately to the size and 

 character of the waters which he frequents. In small, 

 swift-running brooks, or little spring-ponds or mill-dams, 

 he rarely exceeds a few inches in length and a few 

 ounces in weight, partaking generally of the green and 

 silvery type of the fish. In estuaries and large rivers, in 

 the pellucid tarns and lakelets, which are dotted so 

 beautifully through all the uplands of the eastern and 

 middle states from Maine to Pennsylvania, in the vast 

 expanses of the great northern lakes of Canada,, in the 

 giant rivers of the west, they attain far more rapidly to 

 a great size, three or four pounds being a run by no 

 means unusual, and individuals being not unfrequently 

 taken up to five, six and seven pounds, when they are 

 very firm, fat, and in capital condition for the table. 



They may be caught in all months of the year. Mr. 

 Brown considers that they " may be had in the 

 largest quantities and in the finest condition from May 

 to July ;" but. from my own experience, which has been 

 limited principally to the lakelets of Maine, to Green- 

 wood or Wawayanda lake, in Orange county, ]S~ew York, 

 to Lake Hopatkong, desecrated into Brooklyn pond, in 



