June 12, 1884,] 



FOREST AND STREAM. 



387 



features as seen from where we stood and as afterward 

 learned in different excursions from camp. 



Sweeping around to the left the eye followed the shore 

 northward 'to a point where the hike narrowed to about 

 three and a half miles wide, from whence it trended off 

 northwest and down to the outlet, holding a width of three 

 to four miles. Around this point and well down to the head 

 of Big Black River, the outflow, is a narrow strip of water 

 running back into the woods, a matter of an eighth of a 

 mile, rush fringed and shallow, that is dignified by the name 

 lirgeon Bay, and just at the mouth of this little bay 

 flows in Little Black River, the name suggested no doubt by 

 the very dark color of its waters. Up lake to the right of 

 carop the shove swept around in a graceful curve almost to 

 the extreme head of the lake, the dark green background 

 broker, only in one place by a rugged ledge of rocks a hun- 

 dred yards or so in width, cropping out of the hill nearly 

 flush with the water's edge a short distance above the road 

 coming in from Merrill's place This ledge, Merrill said, 

 extended down the lake near the center iu a straight line 

 nearly to the point where it narrowed, under water from 

 where ir. cropped off at "the rocks," a depth of fifteen to 

 thirty feet, but readily traced in a boat when the water is 

 quiet. On either side the water dropped off deep, and along 

 this sunken ledge he said was to be had some extraordinary 

 bass fishing later in the season. He forgot, however, to 

 apprise us of the existence of this bass ground until the day 

 before we broke camp, but as it is not in the nature of the 

 "Kingfishers" to nurse a grudge, we have forgiven him long 

 since, and even at this late day beg to tender him our thanks 

 for the information so tardily given, as some of us will no 

 doubt take a notion to pay Black Lake another visit. 



Nearly the whole of the southwestern shore line is fringed 

 with a scattering belt of bulrushes that grow out into the 

 lake from a few" feet to a hundred yards, and out frt m the 

 margin of this belt from 50 to 200 feet runs a bank, not 

 rocky, however, which in places is ten to fifteen yards wide, 

 in others only a few feet, and under water from one to three 

 fathoms. This bank, or reef it might be termed, may be 

 traced when the lake is quiet, nearly its whole length by the 

 "musrat grass"— as Merrill called it— and aquatic plants 

 that reach up in many places an inch or two above the water. 

 Along this streak of 'submerged grasses and water weeds is 

 the abiding place of that long snouted cannibal, the pickerel, 

 and here, too, may be occasionally found the despotic king 

 of all these northern waters, the mighty muskalonge, from 

 whose path within the bounds of his chosen territory all fish 

 must stand aside. 



Just out in front of the camp, Merrill pointed out the spot 

 where the year before our friend Hughes had smashed his 

 rod on one of these monstrous fellows without as much as 

 the fish finding out that Hughes was there. 



"Yes, sir," he went o'i, "Mr. flushes and another gentle- 

 man of their party — and I tell you boys that man Hughes is 

 a gentleman — Hughes and the other gentleman — 1 forgit his 

 name — was a fishin' that day an" 1 was a rowin* for 'em. 

 Right out there 'iongside o' that grass, Hughes hung a pick- 

 erel, mobbe a lour or five-pounder, an' was bavin' a mighty 

 sight o J fun with him, an' jest as he got hirn wound up 

 where we could see him, another fish that looked nearly as 

 long as I am made a rush an' grabbed him, an' that's the last 

 we seen o' that pickerel an' some o' Hughes's line. He jest 

 made the water bile as he turned 'round an' started off, an' 

 that pole o' Hughes's wasn't no more 'na bulrush to that fish. 

 No, sir, he jest broke it up like he would a bulrush, an' 

 Hughes all the time a tryin' to hold him. That's jest where 

 he missed it, an' he felt mighty cut up about breakin' his 

 pole, but I tell you, boys, them little minny poles is no 'count 

 fur them big muskylunge, an' the hull trouble was Hughes 

 didn't know it. There's some mighty big ones in this lake 

 an' you'll see some of 'em 'fore you git through, mind what I 

 tell you." 



This smacked of a very sizable fish story, but as we had 

 begun to find out neighbor M.'s capabilities for constructing 

 big yarns out of a mere handful of material, we left a wide 

 margin on this one for shrinkage, and remembering the 

 string sent us, were prepared to entertain others that might 

 follow, with a due allowance for the old mossback's fertile 

 resources in presenting the points and avoiding the rough 

 places in a good fish or bear story. However, what we 

 afterward saw with our own eyes convinced us that there 

 were "some mighty big ones in this lake," and the tale, 

 shorn of its embellishments, of Bro. Hughes's disastrous 

 encounter with one of these great fish was duly credited to 

 our neighbor as a stray case or truth. 



In Merrill's pet boat, a beautiful little double-ender — "one 

 o' them weather-boarded boats," as Ben expressed it — Dick 

 and I took our way down shore, intending to make the cir- 

 cuit of the lake by nightfall if possible, and study the water 

 carefully as we went around. 



The other boats headed for the Rocks, where Merrill said 

 "they could ketch jest as many bass as they wanted." 



Clear down to the poiut where the shore took a turn to 

 the northwest Dick and I fished slowly and diligently and 

 carefully, without a solitary nibble to disturb the evenness 

 of our' pulse. This was not encouraging. 



Here we concluded to let the lower end of the lake go over 

 for another day, and heading across, a pull of nearly four 

 miles brought us into the shoal water near the further shore. 

 1 was at the oars pulliug leisurely in toward a clump of 

 bulrushes where we thought perhaps we might find a bass 

 hunting around for a morning meal, when Dick, who was 

 facing the shore, whispered excitedly, "Look! Look yon- 

 der, quick, at them deer." I turned quickly, in time to see 

 two graceful does leap lightly over a fallen tree near the 

 edge of the water and disappear at a couple of bounds into 

 the woods. Dick said there was a buck with them, but I 

 was too late in turning to get a sight of him. They had 

 come down to the water for their morning drink from the 

 plains just back of the belt of woods bordering the lake, and 

 were standing in the water when Diek first saw them. 



The rifle was lying alongside of me on the thwart but I 

 never once thought of it till Dick said, "What did you 

 bring that rifle out for, to shoot pickerel'?" I really had 

 brought the gun along to try a shot at a loon, three or four 

 of which had been laughing at us from a safe distance all 

 the morning, but I am afraid that had. I got sight of the 

 deer iu time, and thought of the rifle, the blood of my an- 

 cestors would have asserted itself and one of those innocent 

 creatm-es might have come in violent contact with a .44- 

 caliber bullet, in which case 1 would have been liable to a 

 fine for infracting the game law of the great State of Michi- 

 gan, besides feeling "meaner 'o a yaller stray dog" over it 

 for the rest, of the trip, for no sportsman likes to have the 

 fact Blaring hira in the lace that he has broken a law of the 

 land. Still, when opportunity offers for a shot at a deer, the 

 temptation is great to shoot, so great that few of ns can com- 



mand perfect control over the trigger finger even though it 

 be the middle of July and the timid creatures in the red coat. 

 Who of us all that claim kinship in the brotherhood of sports- 

 men and anglers will gainsay it? 



We pulled ashore to stretch our legs a few minutes and— I 

 may as well confess it— with a sneaking desire possessing us 

 to get another sight of the deer, although they were by this 

 time probably a half mile away back on the plains snorting 

 a wondering protest at being frightened from their morning 

 drinking place. 



We shoved out after a short rest and headed up the lake, 

 Diek saying naively as he took his seat at the stern, "Well, 

 those were the first deer I ever saw in their native element!" 

 his Scotch ire flaming up in the same breath with, "What 

 the divil arc you laughing at now? you 'pear to be troubled 

 with a protuberance of spirits this morning; better soak yer 

 head in the lake awhile, it might take some o' the hilarity out 

 of you." This caused the hilarity to break out afresh, but 

 Dick's habitual good humor soon asserting itself he "jined 

 iu" with his high tenor and foT five minutes the neighboring 

 woods rang with a first class laughing duett. Harmony was 

 restored and quiet settled on the waters when he lit a fresU 



ng there in a feeling 

 mood we pursued our way, keeping a shoreward eye for 

 another deer, but all within miles of us had, no doubt, taken 

 the alarm and "struck for tall timber," as we saw no more 

 that day. 



Along this shore we found shallow water extending out 

 from twenty yards to nearly half a mile in places, the bottom 

 hard sand and pebbles, and nearly free from grass or bul- 

 rushes until well up to the head of the lake. 



The water gradually deepens from the shore to the outer 

 edge of this sandy bar, varying in depth along this line from 

 10 to 20 feet. Here the bar pitches suddenly off to an un- 

 known depth, the line being plainly marked by the difference 

 in the color of the water, that outside having "an almost inky 

 black appearance, and all that shoreward a much lighter, but 

 yet very dark hue. This body of water is rightly named 

 Black Lake, for verily it is the "lake of the dark waters." 



Along the break of this bar, straight across from our camp, 

 the Hughes party had found their best bass fishing the year 

 before, "taking a' great many of large size, but now the fish 

 seemed to have "hied themselves," as Ben would have said, 

 to parts remote; for here were Dick and I, two old fellows 

 that thought ourselves "purty middlin' smart bass fishers," 

 fishing with the loveliest of speckled frogs, toothsome to bass 

 and pickerel alike, and not a solitary tug at the lines t~> 

 gladden our hearts the livelong morning. We tried a Hill 

 trailer, a Chapman [roller and a Buel spoon, but they were 

 not spoony enough to be tooled by any such glittering 

 shams. 



Dick finally said, "I don't believe there's a dnrned fish 

 in four mile of us, an' if there is, they're like some o' my cus- 

 tomers" (Dick is a famous caterer to the public stomach in 

 the matter of pies and things), "a little too facetious in their 

 appetites to know when good things are offered to 'em." 

 Dick had hooked on to the wrong word again, and I was forced 

 to nip an incipient snicker in the bud by seizing the frog 

 bucket and bending over the side of the boat under pretense 

 of refreshing the croakers by sousing them in the lake, and 

 it was only by a mighty effort that I smothered a rising snort 

 and prevented another temporary coolness. 

 [to be continued.] 



THE COLOR OF LEADERS. 



BY DR. JAMES A. HENSHALL. 



I HAVE been much interested in the various articles by prac- 

 tical anglers on leaders, rod-joints, reel-seats, etc., that 

 have appeared during the past lew months in Forest and 

 Stream, and as the subject seems to languish, lately, I wish 

 to add my mite. 



As to leaders and snells, 1 do not think it makes any dif- 

 ference, practically, as to their color. The greatest desider- 

 atum, it seems to me, is to have them as fine as possible, con- 

 sistent with the strength required, and this is not much with 

 a flexible rod. A snell, or leader that will sustain a dead 

 weight (out of water) of a pound, or even a half pound, is 

 sufficient for black bassor trout fishing with a suitable rod; 

 for the amount of strain exerted by a fish on the rod and 

 tackle is very much less than is popularly supposed. 



The praise w or thy experiments to determine the color of 

 leaders least visible to the fish as described by some of your 

 correspondents, however commendable, are sure to end in dis- 

 appointment ; such, at least, has been my experience. Experi- 

 ments to this end have been made by practical anglers for 

 many years with no other result than to show that the finer 

 the gut the better, without reference to color. My own ex- 

 periments in this direction have not been few, and I have 

 demonstrated, to my own satisfaction at least, that any color 

 of leader or snell will answer equally well, from hyaline to 

 black, though 1 confess that I am partial to a slight bluish 

 stain, or mist color, and perhaps without any well-defined 

 reason, except that it ought to be least visible to the fish. 



But when we enter the province of speculation and con- 

 jecture, and try to see for the fish, or in other words, to 

 measure their visual capacity by our own, we are doomed to 

 disappointment, though we bring to our aid all the known 

 resources of the science of optics. I lately read, somewhere, 

 that an English angler declared that the salmon took the 

 fly under the delusion that it was a shrimp, because while 

 said angler was beneath the surface of the water, the arti- 

 ficial flies on the surface appeared to him like shrimps. To 

 have made some show of proving his statement he should 

 have first demonstrated that salmon could be taken with 

 shrimp bait as successfully, and in the same situations, as 

 with the fly. The only way to experiment with profit, in 

 this direction, is to experiment with the fish themselves, 

 otherwise our efforts will be like the play of Hamlet with 

 the melancholy Dane left out. The sense of sight in fishes 

 is but little understood, as is, indeed, the anatomy of their 

 visual organs, which fact precludes all aualagous reasoning 

 from our own standpoint, alone. I have satisfied myself, 

 however, that they see as well in their own element, perhaps 

 better, than we in ours. 



That the color of the leader is not important is very evi- 

 dent when we reflect that the boy with line of wrapping 

 cord, red. white or blue, or the angler with line of twisted 

 strands of black sewing-silk, to which the hook is affixed 

 with leader or snell, is as successful in taking trout or black 

 bass with bait, as others with lines of the most approved 

 colors. And one of your correspondents affirmed that he 

 was successful with a leader stained black, which, likewise, 

 accords with my own experience in fly-fishing. Sharks do 

 not hesitate to take the bait even with* the huge hook and 



chain and swivel accompaniment, nor do codfish, and other 

 marine fishes, refuse the bait because of the large hooks, 

 wire snells, or coarse white lines; yet it is to be presumed 

 that their discernment is as acute as that of a brook trout. 



Still, though any color may answer, I prefer lines and 

 leaders of neutral tints as being more in accordance with the 

 eternal fitness of things, than for any other good reason. I 

 have used, with success, snells and leaders of the finest silver 

 suture wire, for trout and black bass, but, practically, they 

 are not pliable enough, and are too heavy. 



On the whole, then, I think we shall have to be content 

 with our leaders and snells as we find them to-day, simply 

 selecting those that are the finest, roundest, and most perfect, 

 remembering, meanwhile, that a siaht of the angler himself, 

 is more fatal to successful fishing _ than a display of the 

 coarsest leader, or of the most outre in color. 



Cynthiana, Ky., June 6, 1884. 



NEW JERSEY PIKE FISHING.* 



NEVER caught a pike! Well, unless lam much disap- 

 pointed there will be a dozen in this boat in two hours, 

 and not of my catching either. We can't help getting them. 

 Everything is just right. The pond is not, fished much. It 

 is large euough to give room for all sizes of fish and for their 

 food, but not so large that the fish can get into out of the 

 way places where one may not find them. There are deep 

 waters for the big fish, flats three or four feet deep for the 

 medium-sized ones, and broad, weedy shallows for the small 

 fry. 



The day is all we could ask. The gentle south wind Just 

 ruffles the water, making a screen between us and the hsh, 

 The thin clouds keep off the glare of the sun, without being 

 threatening or gloomy. It is seldom good fishing in a bright 

 sun. It makes the fisherman show too plainly, and throws 

 strong shadows of him and his pole over the water. 



Keep a sharp lookout for the path which the miller said 

 would lead to the cove where the boat lies. I spent half an 

 hour trying to find the place when 1 came here the first time. 

 But I caught my share of sixty-five fish in spite of the lost 

 time. 



The boats on these ponds in Southern New Jersey are 

 mostly very simple affairs, mere shallow boxes, and their 

 oars are made from slabs by trimming with an axe. 



Ah! there is the cove, and the boat is as I said, though 

 the oar is better than is generally found. The boat is full of 

 water, as usual. I never have found a boat in New Jersey 

 that did not have to be bailed out before it could be used. 



Fix up the tackle now, while I ply this tomato can. This 

 bailing of a boat is a curious process. You dip and dip, 

 and seem to make no impression, then, just as you think you 

 will never get through, you fiud that the water is almost 

 gone. 



What hook would I use? Why, that medium sized one, 

 as big round as the end of one's thumb, with a ring on the 

 shank, and six inches of iron wire fastened to the ring. That 

 hook has caught nearly one hundred fish. Some people like 

 two hooks, one a little above the other, but I have found a 

 simpler rig to be the surest. Never fasten the hook right to 

 the line. A bic fish may bite it off in two seconds. The 

 only time I have tried it in ten years 1 lost hook and fish on 

 the second bite. 



Now for the bait: Cut a piece out of this white perch; 

 make it like a thin, slender isosceles triangle, two and a half 

 inches long with half an inch base, and stick the hook 

 through quite near the. large end. When it is trailed through 

 the water it will look quite like a little fish. When we get 

 a small pike, a piece ot his white underneath part will make 

 the best possible bait. This is what the poet, Holmes, says 

 of it: 



"There's a slice near the pickerel's pectoral fins, 

 Where the thorax leaves off and tlie venter begins, 

 Which his bro her survivor of fishhooks and lines, 

 Though fond of his family, never declines. 



" He loves his relations, he feels they'll be missed, 

 But that one little tid bit he cannot resist; 

 So your bait may be swallowed, no matter how fast. 

 For you catch yum* next fish with a piece of the last." 



Now we are all ready to get aboard. Take a seat in the 

 bow, I'll take the stern and scull. Throw in as soon as the 

 water is two feet deep; keep the line a little shorter than the 

 pole, and let the bait drag through the water as a nsh would 

 swim ; keep it six or eight feet off from the boat. The fish 

 won't mind us; if we go over a pike he will only sail out to 

 the bait. Shake the pole a little, or alternately raise and 

 lower the tip. This makes the bait wriggle and run in a 

 taking way. Except in very deep water don't get deeper 

 than a foot or two, and if the weeds are thick keep very 

 near or on the surface. That heavy sinker near the end of 

 the line keeps the bait down and cnab'es one to have better 

 and quicker control of it. Steer the bait through any open- 

 ings in the lily vines, the pike are apt to lie there. 



Watch the bait, or the place in the water where it is; if a 

 fish takes it he almost always make a swirl. If anything stops 

 the bait it may be a lily stem, or it may he a pike. A little 

 experience will tell what is the cause." Bait stopped? That 

 is only a weed; pull steady; now it is free. Hal that was no 

 weed. Drop the pole a little. What a pretty swirl he made. 

 Now tighten the line gently on him. Feel him there? He 

 thinks the little pull of the line is the struggle of his prey. 

 Give him about half a minute to get the bait well into his 

 mouth. When he moves off jerk sharply against the way 

 he is going. Now! Lift him quickly. Ah! he's gone over 

 the other side ot the boat. Never mind, he was rather small 

 and there are plenty more. In hooking a fish, strike sharply, 

 but afterward lift steadily, though rapidly, so that the fish 

 will just swing into the boat or into your hands. Don't 

 seize the fish, but the line near—, another bite — Oh! don't 

 jerk the bait right out of his mouth. Slack the line instantly, 

 then geutly tighten it and wait — there, he has it again. 

 That's right, give him time. If he moves directly away, 

 jerk straight up. Try to draw the hook back in the corners 

 of his mouth. Now pull. Well landed for No. 1. ' 



Now we will have a good bait trom him. Several in fact. 

 It don't spoil him any. It just takes away a little of the 

 thin part. 



Throw out there and draw past that old stump. See that 

 swirl where a fish jumped at the bait as it left the water. 

 Always draw out carefully in a good place. A fish may be 

 following the bait, deliberating about it, and finding finally 

 that "Blessings brighten as they take their flight, " may jump 

 just as it begins to move rapidly away. However, try for 

 him again. Ripple the bait along the surface and look out 

 for a big flounce. There ! My 1 how he made the water fly. 



* The pike of Pennsylvania and New Jersey is the same as the pick- 

 erel of New York and New England. 



