482 Fisainc 1x AMERICAN WATERS. 
small fish of the herring family; it seems to be the connect- 
ing link between the families of corregonus and clupea. Itis 
found in all the great lakes, and in some of those of the sec- 
ond class, such as Geneva, or Big Foot Lake, in Wisconsin, 
where the annual catch of ciscos takes place on the 15th 
of June. They feed upon the eel, or shad-fly, a species of 
ephemera which makes its appearance in the lake region 
about the middle of June in immense swarms, and lasts only 
two or three days. At Geneva Lake the cisco is only seen 
when this fly is on the water; then the whole, ten or twelve 
miles long, is covered with fish breaking the surface, and 
all the anglers in the country are there at work. I went 
there once from Milwaukee, on the 16th of June, and found 
the fish had appeared with the flies on the 14th, and when 
T arrived had returned to the depths. 
“T think if you were to pass a summer among the lakes 
of Wisconsin and Minnesota, and the trout streams about 
Lake Superior, you would collect material for a capital book. 
Lake Superior is the great home of the salmons, and would 
itself occupy the naturalist for months to study its fishes 
thoroughly. There is a river on the north shore, very little 
visited, called the Nepegan, which is, I suppose, the best 
trout stream in America. I have the outline of a brook 
trout, twenty-one and a half inches long, and five deep, 
which weighed four pounds when cleaned and smoked. This 
I received from a party of anglers of St. Louis, on their 
homeward trip. They had a barrel of these smoked trout, 
with many as large as the one I outlined, which must have 
weighed six pounds when caught. They had none less than 
two pounds, and the average weight of their takes daily was 
over two pounds each fish, and a fish at every cast on a sin- 
gle fly. These gentlemen, who were persons of education 
and general intelligence, assured me that they had found a 
Jand-locked salmon on the north shore of Lake Superior, be- 
sides the Salmo namaycush and Salmo siscowet, and that 
they twice took the whitefish with the fly on the lake.” 
