202 AMERICAN ANGLER'S BOOK. 



described to him, three or four days before. He supposed 

 the fish to have been at least twelve inches in length, when 

 he lost his dropper. Only last summer a young fly- fisher of 

 my acquaintance caught a Trout with a hook in his mouth, 

 to which was fastened a gut-leader two feet long, and three 

 good-sized shot on it, and yet the fish rose greedily at his 

 red hackle. On returning to the house and showing the 

 leader, it was claimed by a bait-fisherman, who had lost it the 

 day before. 



Brook Trout were once abundant in all the clear, rapid 

 streams on the eastern side of the Alleghanies, from the 

 Arctic regions to the thirty-eighth parallel, and even below 

 it in the mountains of Virginia ; in the upper tributaries of 

 the Ohio, as well as in many of the northern streams flowing 

 into the Mississippi ; also in the smaller rivers which flow 

 into the great chain of lakes from the north, and in many 

 of those coming in from the south. They are taken fre- 

 quently along the shores of Lake Superior, and in the more 

 southern lakes, where creeks and brooks of a lower tem- 

 perature than the lake itself fall in, and in the rapids at the 

 great outlet of Lake Superior, known as Sault Ste. Marie. 

 Most of the beautiful lakelets of New York, Maine, New 

 Hampshire, and the Canadas, abound in Brook Trout of 

 large size. 



They are found also in many of the streams that flow east- 

 ward and southward from the Kocky Mountains ; in the great 

 basin between the latter range of mountains and the Sierra 

 Nevada ; and are numerous in the waters of the whole Pacific 

 coast, as far down as the Bay of San Francisco, though per- 

 haps with some distinction in variety, and, it may be, in 

 species also. 



In the rivers and brooks of the more settled part of the 

 country, Trout have decreased both in numbers and size. 



