Forest and Stream 



A Weekly Journal of the Rod and Gun. 



NEW YORK, AUGUST 10, 18 8 2. 



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CONTENTS, 





Sea and River Fishing. 



v Much Abused Title. 



A Maskalonge Guller Gulled. 



Loose Moose Morals. 



Tennessee Notes. 



Black Bass. 



Labrador Salmon Fishing. 



Adirondack Survey Notes.— IV. 



Flv vs. Bait. 



.. ■' v , ;. , 



Silk Lines. 





FLi-necL-ri-Rl-. 



Camp Fire in the Great Swamp. 



International Fisheries Exhibi- 



ViTrpiMtT T-pv -anoes. 



The Kennel. 



Se- .- L"l "l v. |.-,i -i. .;', 1 "lYvitv- 



Gordon, Black and Tan Setters. 



ers of White River. 

 Florida Alligators and Croco- 



Ill' tag and Selling Dogs. 

 Color of Bull-Terriers. 



diles. 



! i,e : . eii, ; | ,.;, .;;;,. 



Quail in a City Lot. 



The Prairie Chicken Trials. 





Racket. 





Kennel Notes. 



Mo:.i t ., mi] ,nd Vale. 



BnrLB and Thai Shooting. 



A sen rvof PiMti-ieS.-h, , -. rj-IUys 



TLeElcho Shield Match. 



Western Game Prospects. Plymouth vs. South Abington. 



Ducking at Waubonsifi Lake. 



i'iCHiEo and Canoeing. 



Philadelphia Notes. 



The Old Cloven Hoof Again. 



Tn.-i-.a.ii: ,, tvi^i ei 



:, :-] ii-j If man - Canvas Canoe. 

 Lubbers at the Helm. 



Sea ash P.ivna Fishing. 



Fish in Season in August. 



Nice International. 



Fishing in Pic- Lake. 



t -ar.oeists on a Cruise. 



The Streams OJ West Virginia. 



New York Y. C— Annual Cruise 



A Trip to Trapper's Lake. 



Hull Y. C.-Aug. 5. 

 New Jersey Y. C. 



Light, vs. Heavy Bods. 



Sea Trout. 1 Answers to Correspondents. 



The Forest; and Stebam tins been permanently enlarged 



lo a twenty-eight-pagc paper. 



LOOSE MOOSE MORALS. 

 TXTEtiave it on excellent authority that three "visiting 

 "' sportsmen," namely, Mr. W. B. Harding and Drs. 

 Hunt and Wing, of Worcester, Mass., "after one night's 

 watching, captured and killed a fine three-year old moose." 

 This was in the early part of last July, at a Maine camp, 

 which had the previous year gained unsavory notoriety as 

 Oju scene of a like escapade. The proprietor of the camp 

 appears to think July moose killing a huge good thing. 

 He writes of it in that way, and drops a gentle hint to "let 

 sporting men know" that by coming to his camp the}' can 

 got moose at any time of the year. We do not propose to 

 gratify him by advertising his illicit business of "stecrer" to 

 law breakers. 



If, however, upon the specific information which has been 

 famished to them, the Maine game officials succeed in pun- 

 ishing these July moose killers, and the camp proprietor too, 

 if his complicity in the misdemeanor can lie shown, we shall 

 take great satisfaction in publishing that fact. If these 

 offenders are convicted, we will give our friend every oppor- 

 tunity to "let sporting men know it" to his heart's content. 



This is a fresh illustration of the loos-.: morals of men who 

 think that because away from home and in the woods they 

 are released from the obligaiions of good citizenship. They 

 ignore or defy the rights of others, and, regardless of de- 

 cency, capture and illicitly destroy what does not. belong 

 to them. 



The fundamental principle of all game legislation is this, 

 that in its wild condition game is the property of the State. 



It follows that, as the game belongs to it, the State may 

 gEBCribe when, bow and for what purposes the. game may- 

 be killed. 



When captured in compliance with such expressed con- 

 ditions, and then only, game may become (he property of 

 the individual. Bui, until thus lawfully transferred, it con- 

 tinues to he the property of the State. 



For example, wild moose iu Maine belong to the State of 

 Maine. That State gives public notice that it will retain 



possession of its moose until the first day of October. It 

 agrees that on and after that date, but not previously, the 

 individual may capture a moose, and so make it his own. 



This resolves itself into a simple matter of ownership. 

 Some of the principles involved in moose property are the 

 same as those which obtain in horse property. If A says to 

 B, "Upon certain conditions I will give into your possession, 

 on the first day of October, the horse- now in my stable," 

 then when that date arrives B may acquire lawful possession 

 of the horse. But if, some dark night in July, B sneaks 

 into A's barn and clandestinely carries off the animal, he is 

 a horse thief. The law recognizes his act as a crime. 



In a precisely similar way, if before Oc ober, the time 

 agreed upon by the Stale, which owns the moose, a man 

 sneaks into the woods at night and kills a moose, he is a 

 moose thief, and the law recognizes his act as a crime. In 

 the eyes of the law, horse stealing and m ose stealing are 

 similar offenses. 



There arc two ways in which the game laws are broken, 

 and while each is a violation, one is vastly more reprehen- 

 sible than Ihe oilier. In the one case a person may be hunt- 

 ing for one kind of game that is a legitimate object of pur- 

 suit, and another kind of game, which it is forbidden to 

 shoot, appearing before him, he may, in the excitement of 

 the moment, kill it without much thought. The other case 

 is where a party deliberately and with malice prepense 

 watches for forbidden game and kills it. In other words, 

 there are certain degrees of crime in respect to game, 

 just as the law recognizes such different classes in re- 

 spect to persons. But iu the present instance the of- 

 fence was clearly premeditated. The proprietor of this 

 Maine camp and his guests knew perfectly well that the law 

 on moose would not be up before the first day of October, 

 but the guests went out and killed the game after "one 

 night's watching." They cannot plead any extenuating "ex- 

 citement of the moment." 



We have said that this instance illustrates the loose morals 

 relating to the game laws. But because this looseness of 

 morals prevails, offenses against the game laws are not 

 thereby any the less heinous crimes. Because a lax state of 

 public regard for human life exists on the frontier, murder 

 there is none the less murder. Because certain classes of 

 politicians do not hesitate to plunder the public treasury, 

 stealing the people's money is not thereby rendered any the 

 less stealing. No hocus-pocus reasoning can excuse nor 

 palliate crime by pleading public indifference to it. 



It is high time that offenders against the game laws should 

 stop boasting of their exploits. There is enough game left 

 in this country yet to enable every man to get his share of it 

 honestly. And one had better go without it than to steal it. 



BLACK BASS. 



THERE are no fish in America which are such general 

 favorites, on account of their wide distribution, game- 

 ness and accessibility, as the black bass. The salmon angler 

 must go long distances to a few streams and expend much 

 yme and money to strike his favorite fish, and the brook 

 trout is only to be found in preserved streams, inaccessible 

 to the many, or in the wilderness. But the bass is now 

 found in most of our lakes, and there are few places east of 

 the Mississippi River where the bass angler cannot find sport 

 within a few miles of his residence, and good sport, too, from 

 June to January, if the climate permits Lim to fish so late. 



Except in western New York and a few isolated localities 

 the name covers tbe two species properly known as large 

 and small mouth. In the excepted places the name of black 

 bass is restricted to the latter alone, and the other is, by some 

 strange freak, termed "Oswego bass," as though it was a 

 fish peculiar to the vicinity of that city instead of an indi- 

 genous species ranging from Canada to Florida. 



Other local names hamper these fishes, even that of 

 "trout 1 ' being applied south of Virginia, where they are 

 termed "chub." Much difference, of opinion exists regard- 

 ing the comparative game qualities of the big mouth, many 

 regarding it as greatly the inferior of its congener, and 

 others claiming equal rank for it. Dr. Henshall does not 

 discriminate between them, and we incline to think that the 

 merits of the big brother with the open countenance have 

 been undertated. This is one of those fairly debatable 

 questions, but may be found to be mainly one of locality, 

 and. therefore., hard of solution. Certain it is, if there were 

 only one species, and that one the big mouth, it would be 

 accorded high rank among our game fishes, far exceeding 

 the pike or pickerel, or, in fact, any fish taken in fresh 

 waters, excepting the salmon and trout; and many of our 

 anglers do not except the latter in this comparison. 



We arelcoutmuallyjasked where good blackbass fi hing "can 

 be had. We hardly know of a lake large enough to afford 

 range and breeding grounds between Connecticut and the 

 Mississippi, and Canada and Florida, Which does not fur- 

 nish more or less good black bass fishing, as well as many 

 of the rivers. Even some of the cold lakes of Maine con- 

 tain them. There are lakes on Long Island which might 

 furnish good bass fishing if stocked, for these fish are not 

 natives of the Atlantic water shed, east of the Mississippi, 

 ixcepting the lakes and streams emptying into the great 

 lakes and the St. Lawrence. 



In the early summer they usually take the fly well, and 

 again in September. Then they are found near the shores, 

 around rocks and among the stones, seeking the insects 

 which drop from the trees, minnows, and other food. In 

 midsummer the larger ones retire to deeper water, and are 

 taken with baits of various sorts, as minnows, dobsons or 

 helgrarnites, revolving spoons, etc. In some lakes they are 

 reported as refusing the fly at all times, but it has never 

 been our misfortune to find such water since we learned to 

 take them with the fly. 



We have recently been taking them with both fly and 

 bait in the well-known Greenwood Lake, lying partly in 

 New York and partly in New Jersey, and for the benefit of 

 those who wisli the detail of such fishing we will give our 

 methods, first premising that there are almost as many 

 modes of angling for this fi-h as there are anglers. 



Our practice is to use trout tackle throughout when fish- 

 ing for black bass, whether with fly or bait, unless casting 

 the frog or minnow, which we rarely do. Therefore we do 

 not care for the stiff "black bass rod, Henshall pattern," for 

 the reason that a trout rod and tackle affords more sport. 

 When fly fishing we hav a man to row the boat fifty to a 

 hundred feet frorr. shore and, seated in the stern, we cast 

 about, thirty feet toward the shore and from twenty to fifty 

 feet from it. according as the shore is bold or sloping. On 

 striking a fish the boatman stops and it is landed in a land- 

 ing net. With bait, in midsummet, we anchor in twenty 

 or more feet of water and try to fish on a bar, or ridge, if 

 such a place can be found, and for this some knowledge of 

 localities is necessary and should be possessed by the boat- 

 man. We use no float, but try to keep the bait a foot or 

 more from the bottom, and in easy motion. In skittering a 

 a minnow or frog, the boat is rowed slowly and a stifCer rod 

 is necessary, although we have cast a small frog thiity feet 

 with a stout trout rod, but this is severe work for it, and is 

 hard on a waterproof silk line, chafing it in the rings. 



In July the water in most lakes "blooms," or "purges," 

 that is, vegetable matter rises from the bottom and the water 

 is no longer pure and clean. Then only small bass of a fow 

 inches long will take the fly, usually the small mouth alone, 

 and the larger ones must be sought with bail, the big mouths 

 upon the shallows among the lily-pads and the small mouths 

 in the deeper waters. At Greenwood Lake bait is scarce, es- 

 pecially minnows, which is often the case in good bass lakes, 

 as the bass eat up the suckers, chubs and other soft finned, 

 desirable fishes, and leave only the spinous sunfish, which 

 they care little for. Therefore the angler will do well to carry 

 his bait alive, or to take salt water shrimps ; the latter prove 

 an excellent bait, even if salted, and are almost as good as 

 the helgramite. We hope to offer them the fly again in Sep- 

 tember. 



A MUCH ABUSED TITLE. 



THE well-worn title "true sportsman" is as often mis. 

 used as the opposite one of pot-hunter. What is the 

 true, sportsman but a true man with a fondness for field 

 sports? To bear a fine gun; to own a brace or more of blue- 

 blooded dogs; to be outfitted with all the conveniences, and 

 and inconveniences, with which the latter day shooter is 

 tempted; to wear a shooting dress with fifty pockets and cost- 

 ing as many dollars — these do not make the true sportsman, 

 nor make him the less one. He may carry an old flint lock 

 and charge it from Ms grandfather's powder horn and buck- 

 skin shot pouch; hunt with a cur of low degrew, or with no 

 dog at all; wear hoddin gray with patches of another color; 

 and yet be a true sportsman — or he may not be. Whether 

 much money or little has gone to setting him afield, whether 

 his pedigree and that of his dogs are of many generations, or 

 few, if he is a true man he is a true sportsman. He will kill 

 no game bird nor beast, nor fish in its breeding season, nor by 

 unfair and murderous methods, nor when the law of the land 

 says they shall not he killed. He will not be " a law unto 

 himself, " nor preach the law to the multitude when he him- 

 self breaks it; nor kill for mere blood thirst or desire to kill 

 more than another, nor for lucre only. It matters little 

 whether he will shoot a grouse sitting, or scorns such a thing 



