148 AMERICAN GAME BIRD SHOOTING. 
also of taking our bearings by the sun, as Smith said he 
would not have the feelings of being lost again for any 
amount of money. 
We remained out until five o’clock, and when we re- 
turned we had twelve brace of dusky grouse, two brace 
of ruffed grouse, a couple of mallards, a Canada goose, and 
a young swan. The half-breed told us that we could bag 
hundreds of these latter species of birds on the lake late 
in October, as it was actually thronged with them, while 
snipes, plovers, tattlers, cranes, and herons were found 
in immense flocks along the shore. Besides its excellence 
as shooting quarters, the lake is also one of the finest 
fishing grounds on the Continent, as it teems with several 
varieties of trout, besides chubs, catfish, whitefish, and 
other species. Some of the salmon trout found there 
have a length of four or more feet, and a weight ex- 
ceeding fifteen pounds, while specimens weighing one and 
two pounds are so common that their name is legion. 
Ido not know of any place on the Pacific Slope that 
equals it as a trouting ground, except Lake Tahoe, in 
California, and between the two there is little choice. 
The fishing is poor, comparatively speaking, from June 
to October, as the trout seek the cold mountain streams 
during that period, and remain in them until the ice and 
the cold weather send them back to the lake again, yet 
a dozen or more may be caught any fine evening, and I 
have known two dozen to be hooked in an hour with very 
coarse tackle, not one of which weighed less than a 
pound and a half. 
We caught them so rapidly from a rude raft made of 
logs, that we found very little sport in it, for they seemed 
to be only too anxious to get hooked. To vary the mo- 
notony of hooking them we tried spearing them at night, 
and found there was less of pot-hunting about this than 
in using a fly or a worm, as we gave them some chance 
for their lives, through our own inaccuracy of aim. By 
