80 AMERICAN ANGLER'S BOOK. 



breed, as in their native waters, but if the ponds are not 

 refreshed by an overflow of the river every two or three 

 years, the waters lose the chemical condition necessary to 

 the reproduction of fish, from a continued infusion of de- 

 cayed vegetable matter, and the lakes become barren, until 

 another overflow of the mighty river comes rushing through, 

 clearing them of foal, and filling them with fresh water ; and 

 restocking them at the same time with fish, and most nume- 

 rously with Percoids. 



Below its junction with the Ohio, the Mississippi has made 

 in the course of time, many a " cut off,' 1 ' 1 forcing its way in 

 times of flood, across the neck of a peninsula or a bend, in 

 seeking a more direct course, and leaving considerable bodies 

 of water, of a horse-shoe shape, as the old channel closes. 

 These are fed by the annual or occasional overflow of the 

 river, and their waters refreshed and restocked with fish, as just 

 described. Bruin Lake, opposite Grand Gulf, Mississippi, is 

 a water of this kind, and is said to contain Bass (or as they 

 are there called Trout) of immense size. I have been told 

 by an angler, that he has taken there, in a day's fishing, 

 thirty of these fish, whose aggregate length was sixty feet. 



