AvGt. 8, 1885. 



FOREST AND STREAM. 



29 



when canted backward or forward to its fullest extent, la 

 a very narrow or cranky boat it might he desirabk^ to substi- 

 tute some lighter material for the oilcloth, the latter, how- 

 ever, possesses the advantage of being waterproof. The ad- 

 advantages of this style of awning maybe summed up as 

 follows:" The pockets take up no room' in the boat, being 

 flush with the inwale, They are inexpensive and any one 

 can make them. The awning can be put up while under- 

 way, in one minute, by the oarsman, without leaving his 

 seat. For lightness, strength, adjustability and simplicity, 

 it is probably unexcelled. 



The posts are riveted to the bars on opposite sides so as 

 not to interfere with each other when folded up; the front 

 posts folding outside, and the rear posts inside the bars. 



NOBRISTOWN, Pa., July 80. E. A, LEOPOLD. 



THE YOUGHIOGHENY. 



YEARS ago the Toughiogheny River was filled with sun- 

 fish, chubs, catfish, suckers, etc. Somebody stocked 

 it with black bass. All the former denizens of the stream 

 have disappeared. Then several years ago some one took it 

 into his head to stock an influent of the "Tough. " with what 

 were called salmon trout." Some one knows what they are 

 I presume, but I've never found a man who does, a big- 

 headed, black, ugly creature, scaleless, and whose flesh is 

 rotten within an hour after you happen to catch him. I 

 have caught them weighing two and a half pounds, they are 

 not gamy, though said to be when planted. The.y are dis- 

 appearing, eaten by the all devouring bass, Now "what will 

 become of the bass when this second supply of fish food is 

 exhausted? Will they make a "Kilkenny cat fight" out of 

 their present quarters, and leave the "Yough." destitute of 

 fish? I presume so. 



I heard a couple of young gentlemen, who were going 

 trouting, a few days since, inquiring for a certain fish poison 

 at a drug store. They got it, too. -Now, did those young 

 men intend trying to intoxicate the trout with this stuff? Or 

 were they going to use it, as they told me, in the composition 

 of what they deemed some "killing bait?" What is your 

 opinion? For one I should not hesitate at all to prosecute 

 any one detected in the unlawful taking of fish or game. If 

 we have laws let us observe and enforce them. 

 Somerset, Pa., July, 1885. AmaTEUK.. 



FLY-FISHiNG FOR PIKE-PERCH. 



Editor Forest and Stream: 



Last year I gave a description of a fly made by myself, 

 consisting of orange body, with band of gold tinsel, scarlet 

 ibis tail and wings of the yellow hair from the flank of the 

 deer, with which I had been most successful in taking bass 

 (smalUmouths) in our Susquehanna, with an occasional pike- 

 pel-ch thrown iu. 



Mr. M. M. Backus, of I'QB Broadway, when about to start 

 on his annual trip last year to Lake Champlain, wrote me 

 regarding the fly, and 1 sent him a sample from which he 

 had some tied, but using the longer and mouse-colored hair 

 instead of the deer's flank, which I have preferred. I did 

 not get from him the promised report of its trial, and do not 

 know if it proved successful in those waters. 



What I wish to say to your readers now is, that I have 

 recently had great sport with this fly with the pike-perch. 

 In all 1 have taken 33 as follows: On .July 30, 4; 22, 9; 34, 

 8, and 28, 12. These fish were all taken by moonlight, and 

 just after the shades of evening had fallen. A fly thrown 

 on the same water half an hour earlier failed to elicit a rise, 

 and they were all taken in swift, shallow water, not over a 

 foot in depth and just at the discharge of the waste water 

 overflows from the canal feeder at the lock into the river, in 

 a narrow channel not more than six feet wide. They were 

 evidently cornered there in attempting to make a run up 

 stream. In size they were small, ranging from one-quarter 

 to one pound in weight; biit the experience was peculiar and 

 I give it to my brother chips in order, if any may be simi- 

 larly situated, they may perhaps be rewarded on trial with 

 like success. 



The pike perch do not fight as gamely and give up sooner 

 than the large or small-mouths. My experience with the 

 two basses is like that of Mather and "Cyrlonyx," that 

 larger fish of the open countenance will rise more readily to 

 the cast fly, but I must give the palm for fight to the srnall- 

 mouths. I have yet to see the former come out of the water 

 as frequently on the same provocation and give the dog-like 

 shake of the latter. A. F. Olapp, 



SUNBUBY, Pa. , Aug. 3. 



IN KNOXVILLE WOODS. 



[New You^.— Editor Forest and Stream: The inclosed extract 

 from a private letter, received fiom a Kentucky correspondent, ex- 

 hibits plainly the magnetic effect produced upon an ordinai'ily staid 

 and serious 'Methodist Episcopal dominie by a contest with the black 

 bass. Should it be coDsidered suitable for your columns, you are 

 permitted to use it.— Geo. Shepard Page.] 



THE lSth of April, 1885, a good Nimrod and Ike Walton- 

 friend, with the writer, might have been seen boarding 

 the Knoxville express at Danville for objective point, Knox- 

 ville Woods, eighty miles deep in the mountains of South- 

 eastern Kentucky, to the fishing headwaters of the Cumber- 

 land. Here, amid the splashing rapids of cool, clear water, 

 we were to find where the game black bass jump beneath 

 the overhanging hoary mountain cliffs, and liear the reel sing 

 soft music and hghtning trills as the bronze beauties spring 

 to the spur of the steel, and lie at last softly rippling the 

 water in the cool recesses of the fish box. 



I only paint one among many scenes. A rocky promon- 

 tory, an overhanging mountain cliff, broad shadows from 

 leafy sentinels flung over a twirling eddy of water, singing 

 lullaby at the base of a rushing rapid. After a 4 o'clock 

 coffee at our camp om* boat has glided softly three miles and 

 as softly now swings to rope in anchorage in the eddy. 

 Signs good— hist! there is a royal break from' the pool; there 

 goes the silk braid flying from the end of the bamboo, until 

 the steel sproat strikes in the midst of the heaving ripple. 

 Hark to ye! There is a gentle quiver to lax line as it steadily 

 straightens into the whirling current. CUck! comes the first 

 overture from the reel. Sure as you live— the fun's up! 

 Coming! Look ye! Out and out! Sing— whiz! Got it he 

 has, and a-going! Strike? Not yet ; not yet ! And still he 

 goes! Reel is now dancing. '"O, Jemima, whar did ye 

 come from?" Forty feet of iino gone, and the time is Maud 

 S. still! He is making for that huge boulder-lair in mid- 

 stream, fifty yards wide "Getting time to milk tne cows" — 

 sure. Gently the "brake." Hurrah, what a tether! Steady, 

 my steel! Whack! we take him. Do your duty, bamboo! 

 Hold fast, my sproat, for springing three feet Into midair 

 comes the five-pounder 1 Foam and splash! Double up, 

 bamboo! Steady, my thumb! Whoop— did, did you see 



that? If he didn't make a jump to come down on the slack 

 to break the hold! Nay, verily! Come home, ol<l chap! 

 And with dulcet strains of "Mary bad a little lamb" a land- 

 ing net is thrust out beneath the quivering side of the moun- 

 tain brave, and the cnrtaiu fulls to roaring muHic, And so 

 our three or four days go, and when the soggy basket of 

 beauties is chucked down on the veranda of Tucky Hoe 

 the fish are still kicking beneath the lump of ice in the 

 basket, and a first-class soiree from the waiting welcome of 

 boys is now in order. "Sin.g low," Rangeley, and come 

 down and strike hands with thy sister Cumberland, for 

 "Columbia's the Gem of the Ocean!" 



A SUMMER IDYL. 



(Exhumed near the spot where, according to the "oldest inhabit- 

 ant," a picnic of high solemnity was held in the year 1785). 



r\ f WHAT is the arc that is traced above, 

 ^ • Approaching the stars and things? 

 ■■Tis the fugitive flight of the festive frog. 



Which a muscular maiden swings. 

 And what is yon opalescent gleam, 



That steals o'er the sunflsh nest? 

 'Tis a gobbet o£ pork on a cotton line 



That slowly sinketh to rest. 



^^^3ish— splash— 

 The fisher hath cast his line; 



But his eye avoideth the float. 

 Because of the ribbons and calico gown 



Of the girl that's in the boat. 

 Yank— cuss— 

 And the catty is in a tree, 



An ill-condif ioned and snaggy eprout 

 As ever you'd wish to see. 



But it holdeth the catty and eke the line, 

 Forever, eternallee. 



And the chowder flend is abroad in the land, 

 And a potent sprite is he. 



With pan and kettle he taketh his stand 

 Undei" the gi-eenwood tree. 



Rip -scrape- 

 He cleaneth the perch and dace. 

 Though his cuticle dreadeth the goading spines, 



And the scales fly up in his face; 

 For he feareth the rush of the ravening crew 



Which Cometh to dlue apace. 

 Wink— smile— 

 'Tis the bass in a shady hole. 



And the politic pike with the open face. 

 At the flash of the whirling troll. 



They watch the doodle-bug's steely tail 

 Catch fast m the mossy sticks, 



And well remember the sort of folks 

 That commonly pic at nics. 



Hum— buzz— 



The 'skeeter is on the wing. 

 He watch eth a chance to light. 



And ever he whetteth his vengeful sting 

 And seeketh a place to bite. 



Yet playfully paddles the picnic crew. 

 Though the bass in his shadowy hole 



Contemptuous winks at the skittering frog, 

 And the spin of the lively troll. K. 

 July 23, 188S. 



SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA SEA FISHING. 



ALTHOUGH I have been a reader of Foeest and 

 Stream for a number of years, I have never yet 

 noticed anything in its columns concerning our sea fishing 

 on the southarn coast of oiu" favored State; and, for fear 

 Eastern readers will arrive at the conclusion that Ave have 

 little or no fishing here. I venture to write this short note, 

 hoping it may prove of interest to the readers of my favorite 

 journal. 



I believe that we have the finest deep-sea fishing in 

 America, and 1 think 1 will be borne out in this by every 

 reader of this who has ever trolled for barracouda, Spanish 

 mackerel, or yellow -tails off the Heads outside the Bay of 

 San Diego. As one of the guests of the Florence Hotel said 

 the other day when invited to join a glass ball shoot (and he 

 is a man who has fished from Florida to the Banks), "I can 

 shoot glass balls any day, but I can't catch a barracouda 

 every day, and I'm botmd for the Coronadas in the Restless 

 if I can't hold a line," and one look at his fingers would be 

 enougli to convince any one that, however much sport there 

 might be in trolling for barracouda, there is plentj'^ of hard 

 work in it too; for each of the Judge's forefingers were 

 wrapped in linen from the nail to the second joint, and an 

 inquiry as to the reason would have elicited the reply that 

 pulling from five to thirty pounds of a fish twenty yards 

 against the momentum of a boat traveling at the rate of ten 

 knots an hour was no joke. 



It is no uncommon occurrence for a party to return with 

 300 fish at the end of a day's sport, and in the best of the 

 season over 400 have been taken by three persons. The troll 

 for catching barracouda consists of a large four-inch Kirby 

 hook with a piece of bone or white rag attached to the shank, 

 the line being about sixty feet long ; from five to a dozen 

 lines are cast adrift from the stern of the yacht as soon as 

 the outside of the Kelp off Point Loma is reached. 



The instant a school of barracouda or Spanish (or horse) 

 mackerel is reached the fact is made apparent Oy the tight- 

 ening of line after line as the fish take the troll, and the fun 

 waxes fast and furious as fish after fish comes whirling over 

 the gunwale of the boat; and sometimes for a steady hour 

 the fish follow the boat, attracted by the bits of shiny bone 

 flung to them by the anxious fishers, only to be hooked and 

 flung iTithlessly down into the bottom of the boat, among 

 dozens of companions. Once in a while, twang will go a 

 line, and glancing astern one can see a white object glancing 

 through the water like a flash, and the taut line shows that 

 the fish is "making to windward." "Yellowtail" laconically 

 says the skipper, and you grab the line frantically and haul 

 in a few yards until Sir Yellowtail chooses to turn back, and 

 you wonder how in thunder he can pull so hard. After a 

 hard fight of perhaps ten minutes you lift a noble looking 

 fish into the boat, and stoop over to examine him. You will 

 see a fish weighing perhaps thirty pounds, and looking so 

 nearly like a salmon that one will involuntarily exclaim, 

 "It's a sea salmon," and a great many give it that name. 



The barracouda season lasts from about March 15 to June 

 or July of each year. Thousands are caught here and dried 

 and shipped to 'Frisco annually, although there is no regular 

 fishery established here. 



Besides the trolling outside, one can tie up to a "bull kelp," 

 and lowering his line to bottom, about six fathoms, can catch 



a hundred pounds of sea base, redflsh, groupers, rock cod, 

 kelp fish, and a half dozen more varieties of deep-water fish, 

 in a couple of hours; or, not liking to go so far, particularly 

 if one's digestive organs can't stand "old father ocean," he 

 can adjourn to the steamship wharf in the bay, and, seated 

 pleasantly in the shade with a light rod and proper tackle, 

 he can land in an houi's time, twenty or thirty tine gamy 

 mackerel, ranging from nine to fifteen incbes in length, or 

 going to bottom, with a species of crawfish for bait, he can 

 catch the same number of "croakers," sea bass or rock cod. 



If he is a "thoroughbred" and a "fslayer,"' let him provide a 

 good joint rod, about fifty yards of hand braided line (large 

 size), a good reel, some Al Limerick hooks; get everything 

 properly "fi-ced," attach a live smelt about live inches long 

 on his hook by running the barb of the hook through the 

 skin on the back of the fish, luake a cast with the tide, and 

 walk slowly bactc and forth along the wharf. The wharf 

 runs southwest and the tide coming in or going out runs 

 northeast or southwest. This plays his line out about thirty 

 feet. If the day is propitious he will land from three to six 

 halibut in the course of an afternoon, averaging about ten 

 pounds in weight. I saw one caught on the wharf one day 

 last summer by a boy and landed with agalT, which weighed 

 thirty -five pounds, and which was sold for on the spot. 



By changing the size of the hook to a lesser number, one 

 can have glorious sport trolling for blucfish from the wharf, 

 and I have counted sixty-three lines trolling in a space of a 

 hundred yards. By easting a large line and hook out from 

 the end of the wharf with a dead fish for bait, one can catch 

 sharks ranging from three to six feet in length, and which 

 will furnish a man all the futr he wants. 



We have two seaside resorts, one the Mussel Beds, distant 

 eight miles by land, and La Jolla (pronouncee La Hoya) 

 twelve miles distant, both popular drives where visitors can 

 gather unlimited quantities of beauti/ul mosses or sea shells, 

 or the far-famed Abalone shells, from which so much jewelry 

 is made, and where thousands are gathered annually, the 

 meat dried by Chinamen, shipped to San Francisco, and 

 there sold to restaurants and hotels to furnish clam chowder 

 for thousands. The shells are grotmd down, polished and 

 sold as curios, or cut up and made into jewelry, etc. Prob- 

 ably no shell in the world has a.s many uses or is as much 

 admired as the Abalone. 



The fishing at both Mussel Beds and La Jolla is fine. 

 Seated on the rocks, which are perpendicidar in some places 

 for twenty feet to the water, with a good braided line, large 

 clams for bait, one can catch on a flood tide a dozen fine rock 

 bass or rock cod, redfish or sea bass, averaging from five to 

 seven pounds in weight, and do it witliout wetting his feet 

 or clothe?, or should he d&sire larger game, let hira bring a 

 hundred yards of heavy line, a six-inch hook, and baiting it 

 with a piece of beef cast from the rocks out into deep Avater. 

 the chances are good that before an hour passes either he is 

 "out" a line or he is "in" a shark. Some monsters have 

 been seen here, and bathers are very careful not to go too 

 far out, although no one has as yet been injured by them. 



If any reader of this comes out this way, let him call on 

 the writer, and I will endeavor to show him some of the 

 finest sport in the world on this bay and in its vicinity in 

 that line. As the hunting season is now over, and we are 

 compelled to lay down our guits until the first of October, 

 we make up for "it by handling rod and reel on every occasion 

 we can, and some royal times we've had in the last month 

 outside the heads, at Mussel beds and at La Jolla. 

 San DnsGo, Cal. Al). B. Pe.\RSON. 



THE BIG TROUT SECRET. 



^pWENTY-EIGHT years ago, some fishermen living on 

 X the south .shore of Lake Ontario, in the State of New 

 York, set some trap nets in Salmon River, and in one of 

 them caught a salmon which weighed just sixty pounds. My 

 wife cleaned, stutt'cd and baked it in an old-fashioned brick 

 oven, and a party of twenty men and women sat down to 

 the feast. I don't know how much a salmon ought to weigh, 

 but it .seems to me that it must have been a big one at all 

 events. 



Reading in your paper about bait-fishing for speckled 

 trout, recalls to my mind some exploits in that line of old 

 Phineas T. Goodrich, formerly Prothonotary of Wayne 

 county. Pa., and his crony, Lysander S. Hill, a jeweler and 

 an inveterate fisherman. The pair frequently started out 

 before daylight in the morning on foot, and by break of day 

 would be miles away among the mountain forests, where the 

 brooks tumbled their coldest waters over the rocky bottoms. 

 They usually were absent two or three days, and just where 

 they fished was known to no one but themselves. In vain 

 were all queries on tliat point; the answers were alwaj'-s 

 evasive — that is, nearly always! What caused so much in- 

 quiry on that particular point was the fact that the pair al- 

 ways returned carrying strings of trout phenomenally large 

 — tPe altogether largest speckled trout ever seen, and 

 they were handsome, too, I tell you! No other sports- 

 men could find the stream where such monsters were 

 caught. The brooks, lakes and rivers of Wayne 

 and Pike counties were all ransacked jn vain. Goodrich and 

 Hill remained the champions on big trout. All this was 

 years ago. A few j^ears since I met Mr. Hill in a Western 

 city whither he had removed, and in calling up reminiscences 

 of the past I one day asked him where it was that he and 

 Goodrich used to catch them big trout. He was sandpaper- 

 ing the btitt of a fish pole he was making at the time. He 

 looked at me for a moment with a sly look in his eyes, then 

 laughed. 



"Come, now," said I, "where was it?" 



"Do you really want to know — bad?" said he. 



"Yes; out with it," said I. 



"Well, then, I'll tell if you must know; we caught them in 

 all the good trout streams/' said he. 

 "How?" asked 1. 

 "It was all in the bait," said Hill. 

 "In the bait!" echoed I. 



"Yes; it was a dead secret between us. We used minnows 

 and dropped to the bottom of the still, deep pools ; there's 

 where the big fellows lie, and they would go for that min- 

 now like chain lightning. Christopher! but they were ugly 

 to handle." 



"Shake!" said I, and we shook. 



The secret of years was out. Try it. 



Bah ! I am disgusted. After writing the above, and cal- 

 culating to produce a Waltonian sensation, upon reading the 

 same to my wife to assure her that it was not a letter to the 

 other girl she exclaimed: 



"Pshaw! They always used minnows when fishing for 

 speckled trout up by the Salmon River Falls, and the littler 

 they were the better. I've used 'em no more'n an inch long, 

 and they were the best," 



Such is life. Commoit Sense. 



