278 OTHER FISH AND GAME 



constant exertion and watchfulness will often enable 

 the angler to avoid having his flies made fast to 

 ouitouche. But if he carelessly allows them to sink 

 beneath the surface where these fish abound, or to re- 

 main stationary upon the margin of a rapid, a slow, 

 steady tug will soon tell him that a* ouitouche has 

 hooked himself upon his line. Though he is excluded 

 from Mr. Shields's book of American Game Fishes, yet 

 as soon as he finds himself impaled on the fisherman's 

 hook he commences a thoroughly game fight for free- 

 dom, tugging continuously at the line, and occasion- 

 ally, if a large fish, demanding more of it. His battle 

 is shorter and less exciting than that of a trout, and 

 he seldom breaks water. But in his own way he is a 

 game fish for all that, though he has the misfortune to 

 invite comparisons most unfavorable to him, by thrust- 

 ing himself, unsolicited and unsought, into the society 

 of his betters, and even presuming, when hitching him- 

 self upon the angler's line, to pair himself off in an ill- 

 assorted match with Salmo salvelinus. The English 

 chub (Cyprinus cephalus), a very near connection of 

 the ouitouche, is much esteemed as a game fish, and 

 several treatises have been written upon it. On ac- 

 count of its shyness, Piscator, it will be remembered, 

 speaks of it as " the fearf ulest of fishes," and I well 

 remember how, as a boy, hour after hour was often 

 vainly spent by me upon the banks of the Penk, a 

 tributary of the Trent, endeavoring to seduce the 

 chub from its clear pools with gentles, worms, and 

 paste. In those days it was indeed a prize to catch a 



* Ouitouche is pronounced " we-toosh." 



