108 



FOREST AND STREAM. 



[Maech 6, 1884. 



Our lake abounds iu small and big-mouthed black bass, 

 wall-e\ed pike, perch, pickerel, swamp pickerel, bullheads, 

 rock bass, salmon trout, California salmon, eels, suckers and 

 herring* Black bass have been caught at the head of the 

 lake-weighing six pounds and a quart er by E. C. Van Kirk 

 and a Mr. Grayer with minnows. Dr. Fowler caught one 

 bass on a fly, that weighed four and three-quarter pounds. 

 The writer has frequently taken on a fly and witn bait 

 twenty to thirty pounds in a forenoon or a part of the after- 

 noon. 



Several years ago I caught five salmon trout before 10 

 o'clock A. M. I with my oarsman got on the water about 

 6 A. M., aud before we had gone one hundred, rods below 

 McKinney's 1 hooked a beauty; going once over the water 

 from this point to Bloom's bar, and through Burdick's Bay, 

 the five beauties were secured.. They all tooK a Canandaigua 

 spoon, leaf shape. A friend came from Bradford, Pa., 

 and went out with me. 1 rowed the boat for him to fish, 

 which I have no love for, and after an hour of faithful troll- 

 ing he gave up in despair and handed the line to me. We 

 had not proceeded far in Burdick's Bay before I struck 

 something so solid that I called to my friend to stop the 

 boat, as I had fear of losing my line, thinking L had caught 

 a slab, As soon as the boat .slacked I lelt the object tugging 

 at my hook. 1 remarked that whatever had bold must be 

 alive, as the movements were really like a monster fish. I 

 cautiously took up the line, keepiug it taut, and after some 

 anxiety and trepidation, saw fifty feet away in the clear 

 water a sight that sent a thrill through every nerve. "A 

 ten-pound trout," I cried, "Oh, he's a bouncer, Mr. Welles; 

 hold the boat steady now; keep an eye on the fish when he 

 comes near the boat ana turn the stern away sufficiently to 

 allow me to lift him in without touching the gunwale." ' He 

 did so in a masterly style, and to our great joy we secured a 

 salmon treut that weighed eight and one-fourth pounds. 

 After our knees had got over trembling, and our palpitating 

 hearts steadied down a little, we went over the same wafer 

 and took another that weighed five and three-fourths 

 pounds. We went home the happiest of men; envied by 

 all. 



The late Dr. Bristol, of Syracuse, went with me on another 

 occasion and we captured five salmon trout and one wall- 

 eyed pike. Their weight we did not take, but such a fine 

 basket of fish is seldom taken from any inland waters. The 

 beautiful cottages that dot the shores of Cayuga in the sum- 

 mer time are most charming to view from the decks of the 

 passing steamers, steam and "sailing yachts. If any one who 

 reads this article Wishes to spend a few of the hottest months 

 in the year profitably and pleasantly, come. 



Onondaga Lake is a clear, deep body of water, near the city 

 of Syracuse; is well stocked with small and big-mouthed 

 black bass, glass-eyed pike, wall-eyed pike, pickerel, perch, 

 bullheads, catfish, eels, and the finest whitefish in the State. 

 The writer has caught many a fine creel of the fish of this 

 lake with fly, bait and spoon. 



The most killing flies for Onondaga Lake are the R. W., 

 John Mann (resembling the bee), Ferguson, Lottie, black, 

 Montreal and a black body with white tip wings and tail — 

 the name 1 have forgotten.* I have had good success now 

 and then with a red wing and green bodied fly, gold tinsel — 

 never knew the name. f The last pleasant time casting the 

 fly on this lake was in company with Reuben Wood, of 

 Svracuse, who died a few days since. Mr. Wood was one 

 of the most accomplished fly-casters I ever saw handle a rod. 

 He was. as the wide world knows, an expert. He needs no 

 eulogy from me, for his name stands among the highest as a 

 successful fisherman, and what is still grander than all, as a 

 man; he excelled in gentleness, generosity ami integrity. All 

 who ever met him on the banks of a trout stream, or 

 wherever a fish could be lured to a fly, must have been im- 

 pressed with his true manhood and genial disposition. 



Lake Oneida is one of the most natural waters for fishcul- 

 ture in any State. The water is not so clear as that in Onon- 

 daga, Cayuga, or.Senaca lakes. Thousands of acres of hot 

 torn, covered with weeds, exist at both ends of the lake, and 

 along either shore the water is but a few feet in depth in 

 many places, and the grasses, or water weeds, are often 

 above the surface. There are several small bays in which 

 the fishermen have grand good luck in capturing big-mouthed 

 bass, pike /glass-eyed;, and pickerel. I caugh 1 75 pounds 

 of bass, pike aud pickerel, including a 12-pound catfish, in 

 little more than half a day last summer, with trolling spoon. 

 Charles Preston, of Syracuse, and the writer, caught 68 

 pounds of big-mouthed bass, pike and pickerel, over 30 

 pounds of bass, there last summer, in a few hours. The bass 

 would average over two pounds and one-half each. The best 

 time to goto Oneida Lake for trolling is in the mouth of 

 June and the early part of July. About the loth of July 

 the eel tii'es cover the water and the fishing is not good until 

 past the middle of August. Small-mouthed bass can be 

 taken with a fly iu Juue at the eastern end of the lake, and 

 at West Porte. 



On the Susquehanna River, last summer in the early part 

 of July, a pari y of gentlemen from Elmiraand one' from 

 Ithaca and myself took passage in Hat-bottom boats, leaving 

 Elunraat the early hour of 3A.M. With lamps and lan- 

 terns in our several crafts we passed dow r n the crooked Che- 

 mung, looking much like a fleet of Indian cauoes bound for 

 spine distant point to make an attack upon some hated foe. 

 The breezes that caused our lamps to sputter filled our sleepy 

 eye- with pungent smoke, and when daylight appeared we 

 aU mii'ht have been taken for boys who had just returned 

 from a fishing tour instead of a nappy lot who were just 

 leaving home "for a grand time and a glorious summer vaca- 

 tion The water was muddy, the river swollen and the 

 current rapid, so we traveled at a great speed. 



A>- the sun rose bright and lovely over the eastern hill- 

 tops, a view grand iu the extreme presented itself to us in 

 one continuous panorama as we floated on. Like a kaleid- 

 oscope the changing scenes came and went hour after hour, 

 till we lauded at Tioga Point, below Athens, where we met 

 a party made up of gentlemen from Waveily and the neigh- 

 boring towns, with a large flatboat. We all pulled out 

 together and floated and fished till we arrived at Towanda, 

 Pa., about 4 P.M. 



The islands in the Susquehanna, between Tioga Point and 

 Towanda, presented a beautiful aspect, almost tropical iu 

 appearance. The wide spreading branches, covered with 

 vines and flowers, lent a perfect charm. ''Oh, how beauti- 

 ful!" was upon every one's lips. Those who had been shut 

 up in the dust aud peculiar smell of the cities were trans- 

 ported with ecstacy. Who has not. been charmed as we 

 were, on many aii occasion, with nature's beauty — the 

 smell of new-mown hay: the eyes fea&ting upon the harvest, 

 all nearlf ripe for the reapers; the vine-clad rooks aud 



♦Magpie. tHooker. 



blossoming islands; the songs of wild birds— all glorious lv 

 lighted with vertical sunbeams aud a cloudless sky? The 

 eharm was as complete as complete could be. 



Arriving at the hotel in Towanda, we startled the denizens 

 with the fine display of bass and wall-eyed pike on our 

 string. I took one of the latter of seven and one-half pounds 

 with a perfect revolving spoon. One eight and one-half pounds 

 was killed by a man accidentally while crossing the river. 

 He put down his pike pole and thrust it clean through the 

 fish while pushing the boat. Pike, or yellow bass as they 

 are termed in Bradford county, are very numerous in the 

 Susquehanna. . 



The following day we sailed for Wyalusing, where we 

 ended our journey and stayed for a few days enjoying our- 

 selves to the fullest extent, The hotel there has' the best of 

 accommodations, and boats and fishing tackle in abundance. 

 For three miles above and below this place one can catch all 

 the black bass he desires. From thirty to fifty a day is an 

 average catch, with flies in June, and bait in July, August 

 and September. 



There are numerous small trout streams near Wyalusing, 

 and one can enjoy this kind of sport if he chooses' to do so 

 after a surfeit of bass fishing. 



The helgrarnite, clipper or dobson, a uame given to a little 

 black, many-legged worm that is found in the river under 

 stones, is one of the killing baits used there. The best and 

 surest, however, is the little minnow bullhead, also found 

 under the stones in the bed of the stream. Boys keep 

 these baits constantly on hand near the hotel. One'visit to 

 this locality will be sure to make a convert of you. 



I have done. If your readers take as much pleasure and 

 profit reading this tale as I have in writing it, and dwelling 

 upon the by-gones, some little good will have come to us 

 through the element of our natures, begetting a love for the 

 pastime upon the stream, and beside the rippling brook. 



M. M. Shows, M.D. 



Ithaca, N. Y., Feb. 26. 



TROUT1NG ON THE BIGOSH, 



A D1GKESSIOX. 



OWING to the temporary absence of the writer of these 

 articles, and the fact that he had not revised more of 

 his manuscript, we publish a few extracts from letters re- 

 ceived, which show a variety of opinions on the different sub- 

 jects treated of in the papers. 



A w r riter from Ohio says: "It is neither right nor fair to 

 write of such good fishing grounds and not give their loca- 

 tion. After getting interested in the narrative, I wanted to 

 find out where the 'Bigosh' was situated, but, on looking 

 back to the first chapter, 1 find that this point is carefully 

 concealed. 1 protest that this is not fair." [We advise our 

 friend to wait, perhaps the secret may be told at some future 

 time]. 



Another Ohio man writes; 'T know where the 'Bigosh' is, 

 and have fished it long before Mr. Mather ever saw it, It is 

 a good-sized stream and mill pond, about twenty-five miles 

 north of Port Colborne, on the north shore of Lake Ontario. 

 I met Mr. M. near there in 1870, as he was returning from a 

 fishing trip. He has exaggerated the size of the trout found 

 there, for I never took one above a pound weight." [Wrong, 

 guess again], 



Mr. N. R. Pierce is of the opinion that the river "is either 

 Thunder Bay River or one of the streams flowing into Che- 

 boygan Lake in Michigan. The size of the trout is over- 

 stated, but all indications point to this. 'Uncle Ben' is a 

 nom de plume to hide a well-known settler, who is now a 

 guide, whose favorite expletive has been used to conceal the 

 identity of the locality." [Also wrong, the fishing there is 

 not as good as is represented on the "Bigosh," the narrative 

 of adventures upon which has been called by the writer of 

 them a "truttaceous history"]. 



Mr. R. B. Marston, of the London Fixlting Gazette, says: 

 'T have been much interested and amused at the 'Trouting 

 on the Bigosh' and the adventures and mishaps of 'Uncle 

 Ben.' The catching of that 'anker' was, indeed, a surprise." 

 Mr. A. N. Cheney remarks: "I hope the story will be 

 continued; it is a most excellent plan for combining instruc- 

 tion and amusement, and many will profit by it wbo would 

 find plain directions very dry. The 'Bigosh' papers deserve 

 to be gathered into a book when finished, and I hope they 

 will be so published. " 



Dr. J. A. Henshall in a private letter to the writer of the 

 articles in question says: "I wish to thank you personally 

 for your 'Bigosh papers,' which have pleased me very much. 

 They are wwtiiim iuparco, and will impart much valuable 

 information in a very pleasant way, to anglers generally and 

 to the novice particularly.'' 



"A Subscriber" writes: "Ifa man is going to write about 

 good fishing why does he not tell where the place is? 1 want 

 to go to a good plaee next summer, and 1 want to find one 

 that is not overrun with tourists and anglers. It is very ex- 

 asperating to read of such places and not know where they 

 are. I would prefer not to read of tnem, for I don't care a 

 cent about the good time3 they had nor how they fished, how 

 a fly should be cast or a stream waded. What I want is to 

 know where to go and if the 'Bigosh papers' does not tell 

 then I will soon lose interest in them. If the writer of 

 them declines to inform us where these happy fishing 

 grounds lie, then if is the duty of Fobest and Stheam to do 

 so." ["Subscriber" will have to wait the pleasure of the 

 author of the papers. Fokest akd Stuhasi has not asked 

 his secret and does not possess it, We have heard him say 

 that some day in the near future he would give this informa- 

 tion to the public, but how long or short a time may elapse 

 before lie does it we cannot say.'] 



Von IV." writes: "I have a point of difference to jnake 

 ith mv old friend M« 

 F 



pike and muscalong 

 me now, for I lent it some half dozen years since, and it 

 has never come back again, but I remember very clearly the 

 difference between the two heads in the book. The pike 

 toothed to the extreme point of the jaw, and th» musealonge 

 with his great tusk about half way to the front, and a long 

 bony projection forming the extremity of the jaw, together 

 with the entirely reversed markings of the two fish, the 

 musealonge having dark reticulations on an olive ground; 

 the pike light oblong blotches, and think that Frank Forester 

 noted and understood these differences, although he was all 

 at sea on the varieties of the genus Scumo, and that is not much 

 to be wondered at, as the researches of thirty years, since 

 Herbert's day, have not defined them dearly as yet. Although 

 ijalmo namaj/cuah, amdhydm, mnfinls, tenia, etc., etc, are 

 generally how relegated to one species, while Prof. Jordan 

 is gradually crystallizing the various species of the Rocky 

 Mountain region and Pacific Slope." 



A DOMESTIC TROUT POND. 



I AM often asked by acquaintances, who are fond of trout 

 and trout fishing, whether, under given circumstances, 

 an artificially made pond will pay in either a sporting or 

 pecuniary sense; and how such can best be constructed with 

 a due regard to economy and success? Not being an 

 ichthyologist, nor at all skilled in pisciculture, I always an- 

 swer such questious by simply relating my own experience 

 in this matter ; leaving the inquirer to make the application 

 to bis particular case as best he may. The subject is one of 

 such great and general interest, and of so much real economic 

 importance, that I am sure many hundreds of your readers 

 will be glad to hear a short and plaia account of my experi- 

 ment, andils results. I will enter into details no further than 

 is necessary to make myself understood, and to enable the 

 reader to judge how far my mode of procedure may be ap- 

 plicable to his own locality and circumstances. 



On a certain part of a large farm, which I once owned aud 

 occupied, there was, and is, a beautiful and never failing 

 spring, which, issuing from the base of a high range of hills, 

 discharges its waters after a course of a few hundred yards, 

 through a gravelly clay soil, into an adjacent trout brook", of 

 which it is one of the numerous feeders. At the time I 

 write of, there was never any perceptible difference between 

 the winter and summer flow of this spring. Its trickling 

 stream ahvays furnished, I should think, about two hundred 

 gallous per hour of the purest and most delicious water; 

 which was of almost icy coldness on first emerging from its 

 mysterious birthplace — the dark recesses of the hills. The 

 ground which lay between the spring and the creek presented 

 a gentle slope, being about five feet lower at the bank's edge 

 of the latter than it was at the spring's outlet, the distance 

 between the two being less than a quarter of a mile. The 

 bank which overlooked the brook, was here about thirty 

 feet high, but had been cut into a deep and jagged gully or 

 ravine, by the overflow from the spring, which at first prob- 

 ably had marked out a course, but at length, aided through 

 successive ages by the drainage from the contiguous up- 

 lands, had widened and deepened the ravine until the 

 bottom at its mouth was on a level with the bed of the creek; 

 while close to the spring it was not much larger than a 

 ploughed furrow. 



Of course, as through process of time and constant erosion 

 of the running water this ravine had gradually become 

 deeper, clay and gravel from its sides would fail into the 

 abyss; the' soluble parts being washed away, while the 

 boulders and small stones remained in its bed. Thus, by 

 the time it had reached hard pan it was some sixty feet wid'e 

 at the surface of its lower part and thirty feet deep, and 

 thence tapered off to almost nothing at its highest p. at near 

 the spring. 



One day a friend from England, who was an enthusiastic 

 angler, had been fishing with me in the creek. The trout, 

 were becoming rather scarce, and those still remaining were 

 of small size. Consequently our luck had not been very 

 great, but we had taken a few tolerably good fish at the 

 mouth of the ravine, which was their favorite resort, owing 

 to the discharge of cold water from the spring. Upon seeing 

 this great gully my friend said: "Why iu the world do you 

 not make a trout pond here? The work is already done to 

 your hand. All you have to do more is to build a dam." 

 Some further conversation followed, during which my visi- 

 tor gave me some facts and figures as to the productive ness 

 aud consequent value of a properly managed pond of this 

 kind. The upshot was that 1 determined to try the experi- 

 ment. It was now the beginning of June, our spring seed- 

 ing was all done, and we could devote a few oays to this 

 work without damage to other interests. I will briefly state 

 exactly what we did, how we did it, its estimated cost, and 

 the result in the way of returns for time and labor expended. 

 It must be borne in mind that the gulch which was to 

 become the channel of our proposed pond was already exca- 

 vated in the form of the letter V, being quite wide at the 

 surface of the ground, and almost sharp at the bottom, Us 

 width and depth, of course, increasing from the upper to 

 the lower end. 



We commenced our dam by procuring fifteen strong cedar 

 posts varying in length from six to thirty-four feet, These 

 were charred atone end and firmly set in a row across the 

 mouth of the ravine, at distances of four feer apart and to 

 about the same depth in the ground. As each post was 

 planted, it was thoroughly puddhd around with stiff clay, 

 and the three center ones were strengthened by long trans- 

 verse braces notched into their tops and also into a haul bed 

 of concrete on the lower side of the dam. where they were 

 further secured by large boulders. Then we split a number 

 of cedar logs into'rough four-inch slabs, and spiked them to 

 the up-stream face of the posts, the ends of the slabs being 

 let into the clay banks on either side, ami well puddled. 

 Now we took the green brush of the cedar tops and two or 

 three loads of spruce and hemlock spray, and ananged all 

 carefully at the bottom of the gully against our wall of slabs. 

 Then, with u pair of horses, a plough and a commou road 

 scraper, we turned up and drew in the heavy earth from the 

 heights on each side, ramming it down firmly as we went 

 along, until we had made a sloping embankment of perhaps 

 fifty feet wide at the bottom of the ravine and ten feet at the 

 top. This we covered over from end to end with coarse 

 gravel and upon this a layer of as large boulders as we could 

 handle; except just in the center, where we arranged a rude- 

 grated sluiceway which would allow the passage of super- 

 fluous water and vet prevent the escape of fish. Our dam 

 was now finished and was evidently water-tight, as quite a 

 little pond had already formed at its base although Ave had 

 only been two days engaged in its construction. 



Next, with a view of providing shade, shelter and hiding 

 places for our trout, we placed eight very large cedar logs, 

 at distances of twenty feet apart, across the ravine, aud two 

 feet from its bottom. The ends of these logs were lei into 

 the banks and weighted by boulders. At about one-third of 

 the distance from the spring to the dam, where we judged 

 the water would be when the pond was full, two or three 

 feet deep, we stretched a screen of common fauuing-mill 

 wire netting, with half -inch meshes. This was to furnish a 

 safe retreat "for the small fry when pressed by their cannibal- 

 istic relatives, and most admirably it answered its purpose. 

 in twelve days from the time the dam was finished the reser- 



Rod vs. Hand Line.— Last summer Mr. Charles F. Pan 

 coast, of Oermantown, trolled for bluefish with a twelve-ounce 

 rod and succeeded iu killing: several weighing as high as ten 

 pounds each, and many of smaller size. Mr. P. represents 

 the, sport as being very fine and a decided improvement ov«- 

 the common method 6f taking bluefish with a hand line, a 

 style ot fishing which requires no dexterity. 



