204 
FOREST AND STREAM." 
Searl’s and several others, all English)—for although they have generally 
an inch more keel than the Rob Roy—their greater displacement pro¬ 
vents the body of the boat going quite so deep. That they are better 
sailing canoes than the Rob Roys is, in my opinion, not owing to weath- 
eriy qualities from greater draft of water, but from a greater sail-cari'y- 
ing ■power. The Nautilus canoe with owner, stores and all essentials 
rarely draws over six inches. K. Newman. 
Washington, D. C., April 12,1874. 
Editor Forest and Stream:— 
Invention seems to have reached its limits in life-saving apparatus, or 
nearly so. Holmes’ life-boat will live at sea when anything will, but 
there are times when no boat can be forced over the breakers against a 
severe gale. The heavy English life-boats will not do for our shelving 
coast and even they sometimes founder. Ships occasionally strand be¬ 
yond the range of a mortar, and then the life car is useless. In fact, 
there occasionally comes a time when no boat can go to sea and no line 
can he thrown to a wreck, and the result is death to all on board. The 
reasons—the breakers and the wind. The line of breakers extends some¬ 
times half a mile seaward, and it is impossible to force a way across them 
from the fact that the top coils over the base and opposes a perpendicu¬ 
lar wall which the boat cannot mount and which also fills her or upsets 
her. The wind alone (save in a cyclone) would not oppose the progress 
of a boat properly constructed and manned; but the wind and the break¬ 
ers occasionally do. Therefore, since we cannot construct better boats 
nor get better crews, it would seem thit we should begin at the other end 
of the skein to unravel the thread. To pour oil upon the troubled waters 
is a mandate as old as the Scriptures. Every sailor knows that pour¬ 
ing oil upon the water prevents it from capping. Now, if breakers could 
in this way be converted into rollers, would not the difficulty be partial¬ 
ly overcome? A boat could easily go over a smooth roller that would 
swamp among the breakers, and there are many ways in which a large 
area of w r ater could be oiled. For instance, let shells filled with oil, so 
constructed as to burst after a given interval of time, be fired from a 
a mortar. A small quantity of oil will spread over a vast surface. Or, 
if the ship be within reach of the mortar, let a suitably prepared vessel 
filled with oil be attached to the shore end of the line, and when the 
crew of the vessel would haul in the line the way would be oiled for the 
passage of the life boat. In fact, the main idea is to oil the water. Any 
ingenious person could arrange the details. It is a plan which can easily 
be tested by a life-boat’s crew in fair weather, and should it prove mod¬ 
erately successful only, it will be of some .benefit. Now let ye yachts¬ 
men speak words of wisdom. Yours truly, D. T. Townsend. 
Bond’s Improved Section Boats. —There is now on 
exhibition at the office of the Forest and Stream one of 
Mr. Bond’s Sectional Boats which has attracted a great deal 
of attention. The sides are made of the best galvanized 
iron, securely joined to a wooden bottom. The boat is 
divided into two sections, with an air-tight compart¬ 
ment, and one portion of the boat fits securely in the 
other, offering great advantages for transportation. 
With a whole weight of from sixty-five to ninety-five 
pounds, on a portage, a party of two or four could easily 
carry the boat when divided into its two parts. All sizes 
are made, from twelve feet long to sixteen feet; the twelve 
feet boats carrying two persons, the sixteen feet four. 
Various models are made by Mr. Bond, either for fresh or 
salt water, as they may be required by the sportsman, the 
trapper, or the explorer. It may be, perhaps, very desi¬ 
rable to have a light boat, but there is no doubt but that 
lightness is very often obtained at the sacrifice of durability. 
It should be recollected, too, that the life of a boat is not 
always a purely aquatic one, but rather of an amphibious 
character. Who has not in hunting, or when voyaging , 
remembered the staunch, tidy boat that took not in one 
drop of water at first, but when she laid in the hot sun a 
day or so, or got bumped and banged on rocks, and then 
had to be hauled over a marsh or so, or through a sedgy 
shallow place, just deep enough to float her, how she 
gapped after a while at every seam and let in water faster 
than it could be bailed out. The models Mr. Bond has 
adopted are pretty to a degree, and there is no doubt but 
that his neat little crafts are both speedy, comfortable, dura¬ 
ble, and above all, safe. Mr. Bond makes canoes on the 
same principle with centre boards, and states to us that in 
the West the canoeists prefer them as to ease of working, 
speed and safety to any others. We have no hesitation 
then in recommending Mr. Bond’s sectional boats, believing 
that they will supply a want either for purposes of pleasure 
or for exploration. Complete in every way, they are quite 
reasonable in price, and we do not see why Mr. W. E. 
Bond’s boats, made in Cleveland, Ohio, should not be 
used quite as much in the East as they are in the West. 
—The New York Athletic Club rowing men are practic¬ 
ing daily on the Harlem River. Al. Curtis will pull stroke- 
in the four, with Rathborne bow, and IT. C. West and 
Charles Cone in the waist. They will be about the lightest 
crew on the river, not averaging more than 150 pounds. 
Mr. Rathborne of this club has been successful in the two 
last contests for the monthly single scull subscription 
medal; if he wins on Saturday next the medal becomes his 
property. 
—The Harlem Rowing Club and the Nassau Boat Club 
have arranged a race to be rowed on the Harlem River, 
Monday May 11th, for the championship of the river and a 
set of colors. This will be the first boat race of the season 
in this vicinity. 
—The Buffalo Rowing Club have agreed to row a three- 
mile race in four oared shells with the Argonauta Rowing 
Associatiou, of Bergen Point, N. J. The race is to take 
place on the Kill Von Kull, June the 10th. The Argo- 
nautas are the champions of the Kills. 
—The Atalanta Club has received three challenges for the 
coming season. The first is from the Yale University Boat 
Club, to row a three-mile race in six-oared shells, in June, 
on Lake Saltonstall. The second is from the Baltimore 
Rowing Club, to row a four-oared race on the Harlem 
River, and the other is from the Argonautas. 
—The Regatta of the Harlem Rowing Association is fixed 
for June 8. A liberal programme will be offered, includ¬ 
ing a four-oar, pair-oar, and single scull races. 
—Ellis Ward of New York challenges William Scharff to 
row a five-mile race for $1,000 a side. 
m and Hf ivtr 
FISH IN SEASON IN MAY. 
Salmon, ’Scdmo Salar. Salmon trout, Salmo conjlnis. 
Trout, Salmo fontinalis Shad, Alosa. 
Land-locked Salmon, Salmo gloveri Michigan Grayling, Thymallus tricolor 
Black Bass, grystes salmoides, grystes nigricans. 
The amended fish law of New Jersey prohibits the taking of biack bass 
within the State before the 1st of June. 
—The first mackerel of the season were sold on Tuesday 
last in Fulton market. They were caught some 100 miles 
{ south of Sandy Hook. They generally make their appear¬ 
ance about the first or second of May. Fishermen say this 
first catch of mackerel is finer and larger than has been seen 
i for many years. If it were possible to use quicksilver and 
| mother-of-pearl as pigments, an artist might paint their 
j beautiful colors. 
I The Art op Fly Making —Second Cast. — Let me imag¬ 
ine, my reader, that you have taken a seat by my side at 
/ the table where I tie my flies. Before us are two paper 
boxes, each about sixteen inches long, four deep, and five 
wide. On removing the top the sides towards us fall by 
little muslin hinges, on the table. The boxes are divided by 
little pasteboard uprights, each into five apartments of 
equal width. In the first apartment of the box on our left 
are bits of feather used for the tails of flies, viz., the tail 
coverts of mallard, teal, shelldrake, and woodduck; fea¬ 
thers from the crest, ruff, back, and breast of the golden 
pheasant; red ibis, parrot, maccaw, and a few dyed fea¬ 
thers. The second, third, and fourth apartments are for 
the feathers for wings, described in my first cast , and the 
fifth contains my hackles. These feathers are neatly folded 
in slips of paper, and placed in large sized envelopes, 
which have the names written at the top of the back. 
They set edgewise in the box, with the inscriptions all fac¬ 
ing the same way, so that by passing my fingers over them 
I can easily find the feathers I am about to use. The box 
to my right contains, each in its proper apartment, hooks 
in little boxes, the size marked on top and bottom, hand 
vise, spring pliers, picker, wax, a pair of sharp scissors, 
three and a quarter inches long, with blades an inch long 
and one quarter inch wide, a small flat piece of India rub¬ 
ber for straightening gut, wrapping silk of various colors 
and degrees of fineness, floss silk, peacock and ostrich hurl, 
and the different kinds of dubbing as enumerated in my last 
paper. I do not imply by the foregoing that so methodical 
an arrangement is necessary for an amateur, but something 
of the kind would prevent confusion. 
Suppose, first, we tie the simplest hackle, say a ginger on 
a No. 6 hook. If you use the vise, fasten the hook between 
the jaws, then take a piece of wrapping silk of the required 
length, say a foot or fourteen inches, and rolling a mite of 
wax as large as a BB shot between forefinger and thumb, 
draw the silk through twice. With the hook in the posi¬ 
tion shown on the annexed illustration, whether |lield by 
vise or between the thumb and forefinger of the left hand, 
take five or six turns around the shank of the hook, as 
shown in figure 1. Then, laying on the gut, commence 
quite close to the head and wrap down to A, figure 2. Here, 
with three turns of your wrapping silk, fasten in the floss, 
A B, and laying the wrapping silk along the shank, tuck it 
in between the gut and the head of the hook, and throw a 
few loose coils around the gut to keep it out of the way. 
Now wind on your floss as lar as O, figure 3, increasing the 
bulk of the body somewhat as you proceed; then throw the 
loose coils of wrapping silk free from the gut, and 
take three turns over the floss and clip off the 
end. You next take your gjnger hackle, about 
the length figured, and stroking back a few fibres at 
the point and clipping off the end, lay it against the hook 
and fasten in with four or five Jurns and wrapping up to 
within a sixteenth of an inch or so of the head, throw a 
few loose coils around the gut as before. Now wrap on 
your hackle closely, pressing back the fibres as you go to 
avoid over, lapping them. On getting as near the head of 
the hook as shown in the illustration, fasten the hackle with 
two or three turns, clip off the ends and throwing the wrap¬ 
ping into coil D F D, seize it at F and take as many turns 
as will come to the very end of the shank. Now reversing 
the turns, with the gut through the coil, you draw on the 
end D until the wrapping forming the coil is drawn tight. 
Your fly now after clipping off the surplus' wrapping is 
complete, needing only a touch of copal varnish, with a 
small camels hair brush at the head to make it secure. 
“Let me tell you, scholar,” as Father Izaac so frequently 
remarked to his pupil Venator, the tying of this simple 
hackle is the all-important rudiment of the art. If you 
learn to make it neatly all else will become “just as natural 
as falling off a log.” But let us tie another hackle and beau¬ 
tify the lower part of the body with a little tinsel. So iy 
go back to figure 2 and suppose A B a strip of fl a t 
gold tinsel which we have fastened in with three turns of 
the wrapping and thrown the latter in a few loose coik 
around the gut. We take three turns of the tinsel ner 
haps four, or even five if the hook is large, down th" 
shank closely, so as to hide the hook, and then as roan 6 
turns back, and after fastening with two or thrre turns f 
the wrapping cut off the end of the tinsel. We will vv 
the body of this hackle by having it of peacock’s kurf 
We accordingly take four or five hurls between the thuml 
and finger of the left hand and clipping them off evenlv 
lay them on where you have just clipped off the tinsel aiirl 
take two or three turns over the ends which project towa 1 
the head of the hook. Now laying your wrapping silk 
along the hurls you twist both hurls and wrapping: silk 
slightly, winding in the meanwhile as far up the shank 
of the hook as you intend the body to extend, then fasten 
ing in your hackle you proceed as already described 
Fur, mohair, pig’s wool and seal’s wool are spun oninthe 
same w 7 ay. A ravelling of any fabric, for instance moreen 
may be fastened and wound on as floss silk. In making a 
very large body to a fly it is a matter of economy when 
using floss silk, to wrap first with daring cotton, or similar 
material. It matters but little as to the color, as the 
jfloss covers it. 
To make a palmer hackle proceed as instructed as far as 
A figure 2; and after putting on the tinsel, if it i s required 
fasten in the tip end of the hackle, then the material of 
which the body is composed. Now you have tinsel, hackle 
and dubbing tied in, and the rule is that the material 
fastened in last is wound on first, so you wind on your 
dubbing, fasten it a little below the’ head of the hook and 
then taking three, four or five turns of the tinsel in the 
same direction you fasten it also. Now you wind on your 
hackle just behind and close to the tinsel, and as you get 
near the head of the hook disregard the tinsel and"take a 
few close turns of the hackle, fastening it, clipping it 0 ff 
and finishing as already directed. In a palmer the fibres 
of the hackle should stand out much thicker at the shoul 
ders and head of the fly than along the body. 
I hope the reader, who has patience "enough to read 
and experiment a little, will understand the directions I 
have given for tying hackles and palmers, for they are 
pertinent, as far as they go, to making winged flies, which 
I will treat of in my next lesson or “cast/’ as our editor 
suggests I should call it. Those who are interested in the 
matter will, of course, keep the back numbers of Forest 
and Stream, as I shall likely have occasion to refer to the 
illustrations again. 
The most celebrated fly makers use only their fingers 
but a small hand, or as some call it a pin vise, is exceedingly 
convenient when one wishes to lay down his work for a 
while. By twirling it with the left hand and holding 
the material with the right you can wind on the most deli¬ 
cate floss without soiling it with wax, which it is almost 
impossible to have your fingers entirely free from. In fact 
it is necessary sometimes to dissolve whatever of it adheres 
to the fingers w 7 itli a little oil and then wash your hands 
with soap and water to get rid of the oil. 
. Thaddees Norris. 
—The Greenport Watchman gives us some idea of what 
the trout fishing on Long Island used to be forty years ago. 
It says that “in the spring of 1834 Thomas Floyd Jones 
and Dr. Kortriglit, of South Oyster Bay, visited Yaphank 
for a day’s trout fishing, and in a few hours took from the 
mill pond seventeen trout, weighing thirty-four pounds, fif¬ 
teen of which weighed thirty-two pounds! These were not 
nursery trout, but magnificent and untamed natives of the 
brook. The Yaphank mill pond was then noted for the great 
size of its trout—individuals of which, weighing two 
pounds and over, being common. A few years subsequent 
to the above date, the late Henry Osborn of Bellport, and 
Mr. Cox of New York, caught in the same pond after about 
an hour’s fishing, seven trout w T eighing ten pounds, one of 
which weighed nearly three pounds. The opportunity of 
such fishing here will probably never recur. The race of 
trout in the mill pond here is nearly or quite extinct.” 
—Anglers in the Umbagog district who have been enter¬ 
tained in past seasons by mine host, E. W. Gregg, at An¬ 
dover, Maine, will be pained to hear of his death, which 
took place some weeks agcf. His house will, however, be 
carried on this summer by Charles Cushman, his nephew, 
better known perhaps, as one of the best guides in An¬ 
dover. 
^—W. C. Egan, Esq., of Chicago, tells us of a monster 
mascalonge that was taken at Alexandria Bay, August 15th 
1872, by Geo. H. Marvin, of Brooklyn, with an eight ounce 
fly rod and No. 7 Limerick hood. It weighed thirty-two 
pounds and measured four feet and one inch in length. A 
full account of his capture was printed in the Brooklyn 
Eagle at the time. After playing the fish a couple of hours 
without much diminishing his vigor, he was brought to 
gaff by shooting him through the head. There were two 
others in the party besides those mentioned that witnessed 
the capture, which was certainly a most remarkable feat. 
They were A. E. Masters, of Brooklyn, and H. G. Van 
Wyck, of New York. 
—The Murdock Lake Fishing Club have given up their 
former lake in Illinois, and under a charter from the. State 
of Missouri have organized a new club, leasing for its use 
Kings Lake in Pike county, Missouri. The club house, a 
substantial and comfortable building will be finished by 
June. Kings Lake has an inflow and outflow from the 
Mississippi River, consequently is renovated every spring, 
with fresh fish and water. 
—The question as to who discovered the first grayling ir j 
Michigan, who took the first with fly, and who identifie 
the fish, is becoming somewhat complicated. We begin 
to think it time to call the “honors easy,” and take the gams 
as we find it. We append the following note from our 
regular correspondent: “As I supposed, my friend B- • 
Fitzhugli, Jr., wolud disclaim being the first angler to b llD & 
