HABITS OF TROUT. 29 



of book-lore on the habits of fish, founded on acquaint- 

 ance with the fish in one or another locality. To say 

 truth, until one has studied the habits of trout in all the 

 waters of the world, it is unsafe for him to venture any 

 general account of those habits. 



Take the simplest illustration. If you are on the lower 

 St. Regis, and seek large trout, rise before the sun, and 

 cast for the half-hour preceding and the hour following 

 sunrise. You will find the fish plenty and voracious, 

 striking with vigor, and evidently on the feed. But go to 

 Profile Lake (that gem of all the world of waters), wherein 

 I have taken many thousand trout, and you will scarcely 

 ever have a rise in the morning. In the one lake the fish 

 are in the habit of feeding at day-dawn. In the other no 

 trout breakfasts till nine o'clock, unless, like the depart- 

 ing guests in the neighboring hotel, business or pleasure 

 lead him to be up for once at an early hour. 



So, too, you may cast on Profile Lake at noon in the 

 sunshine, and, as in most waters, though the trout are 

 abundant, they will not be tempted to rise. But in Echo 

 Lake, only a half-mile- distant, where trout are scarce, I 

 have killed many fish of two and three pounds' weight, 

 and nearly all between eleven and one o'clock in bright 

 sunshiny weather. In fact, when they rise at all on Echo 

 Lake, it is almost invariably at that hour, and very seldom 

 at any other. Men have their hours of eating, settled into 

 what we call habits. The Bostonian dines at one hour, 

 the New-Yorker at another. One should not attempt to 

 describe the eating habits of man in general from either 

 class, or from both. In many respects the habits of fish 

 are formed, as are the habits of men, by the force of cir- 

 cumstances, or by the influence of the imitative propensity. 

 They do some things only because they have seen other 



