Dec. 31, 1885.1 



FOREST AND STREAM. 



481 



is sure to take place when oue has hooked a big one. I tried 

 in vain to stop him, but finding it useless, of couree, do the 

 other thing, and that is go with him. He Htops after a few 

 minutes, which seem hours, and sulks. Then away he goes 

 again trying all manner of devices to get the hook out of his 

 mouth. " In this way he worries himself out and begins to 

 show the signs that foreruns the death of all trout. Now he 

 is almost within reach of my net, now he darts away as 

 though inspired with a new life, but it is only momentary, 

 and at last is in the fatal meshes of the lauding net, a place 

 where all good trout should die. 



That day by me and my friend there were one hundred 

 and some trout killed, forty of which weighed one hundred 

 pounds, and thinking some of my friends in B. would not 

 believe it I sent them to an acquaintance who keeps the 

 largest sporting goods store in that place. When I arrived 

 I went to see him, and he told me that he and his clerks had 

 all they could eat of them and if I had not sent them would 

 hardly have believed I caught such big ones on a six-ounce 

 rod. I will say that any oue understanding trout fishing 

 can do almost as well. The reason T say "almost" is because 

 the natives around there informed me that my fish for that 

 season were surpassed by none. Any one going to Richibucto 

 can get board from $5 a week upward. 



The striped bass fishing is excellent, and snipe and duck 

 shooting fine in season. I have seen but very few wood- 

 cock, but was told there were quite a number. ' Hoping that 

 1 may have the pleasure of meeting some of the correspond- 

 ents of Forest and Stream up there next summer I close. 



w. B. a. 



SrNG SwctjiN. Y:_ 



THE NEW YORK FISH COMMISSION. 



Editor Forest and Stream: 



In my communication in relation to the protest of the 

 Anglers Association of the St. Lawrence River against the 

 further continuance in oflicc of Commissioner Blackford, 

 which appeared in your issue of Dec. 17, a brief reference 

 was made to the several acts creating and continuing the 

 Commission. As it is believed that the Glovernor and his 

 constitutional adviser, the Attorney-C4eneral, are inclined to 

 concur in the view taken by this Association, viz., that the 

 term of office of the Commissioners is five years, and that 

 the Governor has the power to appoint their successors, it 

 may be well to refer to these acts somewhat more critically. 

 The following quotations contain all that has any bearing on 

 the question at issue : 



Laws of 1868, Chapter 285, entitled "An Act to appoint 

 Commissioners of Fisheries for the State of New York " 

 Section 1. A Commission of Fisheries for the State of New 

 York is hereby established. Section 2 prescribes the duties 

 of the Commissioners. Section 3. Horatio Seymour, Seth 

 Green and Robert B. Roosevelt are appointed under this act 

 to hold oflSce for two years. 



Laws of 1870, Chapter 567, amending the above act. 

 Section 2. All vacancies occurring in said Commission shall 

 be filled by the Governor of the State, and the term of office 

 is hereby extended three years. * * * 



Laws of 1873, Chapter 74, entitled "An Act to continue 

 the Fishery Comnussion of the State of New York." Sec- 

 tion 1. The Fishery Commission of the State of New York, 

 created by act passed April 22, 1868, Laws of 1868, Chapter 

 285, is continued with the powers conferred upon them by 



tllG Sflirl 3.ct ^ "3^ 



Laws of 1869, Chapter 809. Section 3. The Governor is 

 authorized to appoint a resident of tlie counties of either 

 Kings, Queens or Suffolk an additional member of the Com- 

 mission of Fisheries of the State of New York, and to sup- 

 ply his place should a vacancy occur therein, as provided in 

 chapter 567, laws of 1870. 



These acts are all grouped together in 8d R. S., 7th ed! , 

 pp. 2,113-5. 



The only acts limiting the tenure of oflice are the first two, 

 passed in 1868 and 1870. 



But if these constituted all there ia on the subject, then 

 there is no Fishery Commission. It expired by limitation at 

 the end of five years.. 



If it did not. Vhy was it necessarv for the Legislature to 

 pass an act in 1873 in order to continue the Commission? 



To get at the exact status of the Commissioners to-day, 

 these acts must all be taken together and then the intention of 

 the Legislature becomes very clear. 



1. It proposed to name the Commissioners, and not leave 

 it to the Governor to do so. 



2. It intended at first to create a Commission for two 

 years only. 



3. In 1870 it intended to continue the Commission till 

 1873, and made provision for filling vacancies, but not for 

 appoinliag successors, for there could be none. The Com- 

 mission was then to terminate. 



4. In 1873 it determined upon an indefinite continuance 

 of the Commission, and so enacted, but again made no pro- 

 vision for appointing succe.ssors, for again there could be 

 none. 



The Commissioners then in office were recognized and in- 

 structed as to their duties. And they were to hold "during 

 the pleasure" of the Legislature, which was the appointing 

 power. ' 'Every office of which the duration is not prescribed 

 by the Constitution, or shall not be declared by law, shall be 

 held during the pleasure of the authority making the ap- 

 pointment." 1 Rev. Statutes, 7th ed., p. 365. § 8. 



5. The only power it conferred upon the Governor was to 

 till vacancies, but a vacancy can only occur dming a term. 

 The statute on that subject is as follows: "Every office shall 

 become vacant on the happening of either of the following 

 events: (1) The death of the incumbent, (2) his resignation, 

 (3) his removal from otflce, (4) the ceasing to be an inhabi- 

 tant of the State, etc., (5) his conviction of crime, (6) his re- 

 fusal or neglect to qualify, etc., (7) a decision declaring his 

 appointment or election void." 1 Rev. Statutes, 7th ed., p. 

 370, § 74. 



If therefore the Commi.ssioners are holding over after the 

 expiration of their term, there is certainly no "vacancy," 

 and that view is fully sustained by the courts. 



It is difficult to see how any other construction than that 

 suggested above can be pat upon the acts in question. That 

 is, the Legislature at first limited the life of the Commis- 

 sioner to two, and then extended it to five years. 



That it afterward continued it indefinitely, i. e., during 

 the life of its members or during its own pleasure, with 

 power to the Governor to keep it {dive by filling vacancies. 

 And this is the view commonly entertained 



The Governor is an accompUshed lawyer, and it is to be 

 hoped that before acting he will personally examine the laws 

 in question, and rely solely upon his own judgment as to 

 the powers they confer upon hiin Angusr, 



A NEW YEAR FISHING TRIP. 



THE first day of January, 1877, found me in what is now 

 Aiken county, Minnesota. At that time Fort Ripley 

 was a well garrisoned frontier fort and Crow Wing, some 

 eight or ten miles above on the Mississippi River, an ad- 

 vanced trading post, the licensed traders being the brothers 

 McDonald, well known frontier characters. I had gone up 

 from Dubuque with a surveyor who had a government con- 

 tract to sub divide a lot of townships in a tract that had 

 just been purchased from the Chip^ewas. As I knew a 

 "lew words of " Ojibwa," picked up in the Bad Ax country 

 the winter before, and none of the rest of the party, six in 

 number, knew one word, 1 had a big "bulge" on them and 

 passed for an "interpreter." But such interpreting! One 

 of the party noticed that ray replies were often "gowin gan- 

 dun" (1 don't know how to spell it but that is the way it 

 sounds) and he finally found out that this meant, "I don't 

 understand," and he'lost faith in the whole business. We 

 had gone up early in October and had worked oil to the 

 eastward from Crow Wing toward the Mille Lacs, found 

 some men stealing Government timber on the Anoka River, 

 who, outnumbering our little party, antedated "Boss" 

 Tweed's inquiry of— what are you going to do about it?" and 

 as this was really no part of our business we did nothing. 

 Lakes were plenty but we did not camp by them long 

 enough to attempt fishing. The tent was usually in a frozen 

 swamp where we had to dig for water, often impregnated 

 with iron so strong as to discolor the camp kettles, or on 

 the edge of a crau'berry marsh where hundreds of acres of 

 fine berries were wai'tiag a harvester. Of fish we saw 

 plenty. Every Indian wigwam had fish drying beside it. 

 These were mainly pickerel, Emv, and lake trout, 8. wmxo.ii' 

 cvsh. I did not see a brook trout in that region, although 

 they might have been plenty, but the Indians cured only the 

 larger fi.sh. These were on a platform of poles laid in 

 crotches about ten feet high, and were dried, or partially so. 



On several occasions I had exchanged "pcquishigau" 

 (bread) for "kenosha" (pike or pickerel) and it was an 

 agreeable change from our staples of beans, pork and corned 

 beef, but McBride, 'our compassman, always spleened 

 against anything that an Indian had handled and wouldn't 

 eat a fish of their curing unless he could wash it for half an 

 hour before it was cooked. Henry Neville and I took 

 turns, week about, one hunting for game and the other keep- 

 ing camp, in a country overrun with hungry Indians who 

 bought moccasins of buffalo skin, very poor they are, be- 

 cause deer were so scarce. I came into camp on the last 

 evening in December with one coon, the result of three days' 

 hunt and two nights' sleeping out. The boys "hefted" it 

 and pronounced it fat and good enough for a New Year din- 

 ner. Crosby asked me if the death of the coon did not 

 weigh on my conscience because it was so long since I had 

 killed anything. Tom Davies suspected that the animal 

 had died of old age. Pierre Gibbs tried to make out that it 

 had been killed with an arrow instead of a bullet, although 

 he knew that every adult redskin in that region used a gun 

 of some kind. The fact of fresh coon outweighed all at- 

 tempts at controversy as to the cause of its death and we 

 sat down to our evening dinner of bean-soup, hot biscuit 

 and boiled pork with the prospect of a feast on the morrow, 

 for the last fresh meat was now only a remembrance, a ven- 

 ison ham, ten days in the background of memory. Be- 

 tween two spoonfuls of hot bean soup McBride said to me, 

 "You are a fisherman but you never get us any fresh fish. 

 You loaf through the woods with a gun and seldom kill any- 

 thing while we are in a country where we find a lake every 

 few miles and all the fi.3h we get is from the hand of some 

 dirty Indian.' That this charge was true I will at this late 

 day confess, but at the time its very truth nettled me. I 

 said; "Let Henry Neville stay in camp with me to-morrow 

 and we will try a small lake some four miles north of the 

 head of tne Anoka find see if we can't get a fiesh fish for 

 dinner. I saw the lake yesterday while following a deer 

 track which led to a deserted yard, and old Yellow foot who 

 has hung about the camp for the last week, told me "Kigee 

 Kenosha* pungee gumee," which means that— there are big 

 pickerel in the little lake." Henry made answer and said: 

 " 1 will go with thee." 



The morning dawned bright and beautiful, the boys ate 

 their breakfast and went out "on the line." Old Yellow- 

 foot lounged into camp as the last axeman left. Henry 

 cleaned up while I hunted up such tackle as we had and 

 found a braided silk line but not a hook, the hooks had 

 been lost somehow. Henry had some wire and we made 

 half a hundred hooks, but whether they were the regular 

 "Limerick," "sneck," "Pennell"or "Kirby" is impo.ssible to 

 say at this late day. They were simply fish hooks, and we 

 could say of them as Macbeth did to the murderers: 



"Ay in the catalogue ye go for men, 

 As hounds, greyhounds, mongrels, spaniels, ciu-s, 

 Shoughs, water- rugs, and demi- wolves are cleped 

 All by the name of dogs.'' 



So our hooks, though made of wire, were "hooks" and 

 much better than those illustrated in Dame ^Juliana Berners' 

 "Boke of Saint Albaas" or by Leonard Mascall. Old Yel- 

 low-foot was to accompany us, in fact it would have been 

 impossible to have given him a "cold shake" as long as there 

 Avas anything to eat in the camp, and while we shouldered 

 our tackle and provisions he took an implement which it 

 pleased him to call "au-gau-quet" instead of the simple 

 word axe and we moved on to the frozen lake. The old duf- 

 fer did know where the springs came in and where we could 

 get minnows for bait, and we supphed ourselves with them 

 in good quantity and then proceeded to cut holes in the ice 

 and set our lines. 



As has been recorded, the day was fair, but the ice was 

 thick. We cut and baited about twenty holes, lunching 

 ana smoking at intervals, and then went up in a ravine to 

 have a grand lunch while the fish took hold. Old Yellow- 

 foot never missed a chance at the fodder and encouraged us 

 with hopes of "kingee kenjsha," and we laid off until near 



*Here 1 would call the attention of etymologists^ to the derivation 

 of tlie word;"mascalouge" and its variation. My spelling of the 

 Ojibwa name of pike, Kexosha, is entirely phonetic. I have no idea 

 how it might be spelled. Give the o a nasal sound and twist it into 

 '■ Kiaoje" and it is not a far cry to •' maskinoie" which most author- 

 ities try to twist into a French derivation witb "mask" as a synonym 

 of "face.'' I do not pretend to decide this matter for I am not 

 learned enough m either French or Ojibwa, and know the latter 

 tongue hai; received many additions since the "Ohemokman" came 

 among them. As an instance of this ; A poor Indian had begged 

 around camp for some days with more or less success, when one 

 morning he came in and requested "pungee pegushigua." To my 

 untrained ear this meant " pungee"" (little) ''puqaishigan" (.bread) 

 audi told him "gowin pequishigan" (no bread); he insisted, and 

 taking up a gun showed me that '"pegushigun ' meant percussion 

 caps for a gun, and not bread -showing that he had made a word, 

 or others had, for something new. 



sundown, when we went to the holes and lifted the lines 

 with what adhered to them and started for camp, 



The sun was just sinking as we entered camp and the 

 boys were gathered about the kettle of festive beans when 

 Crosby bailed us: " Halloo Nitchle,* what luck ?" 



"Not a durned fish," answered Neville, "but we've got all 

 our bait left. " Fked Mather. 



*Friend. 



A SOCIAL ANGLING CLUB. 



\"17"E have just read a four page report of the annual din- 

 T T ner of the FJy-Fisbeis' Club of Loudon in the Fishing 

 Gazette, and have been struck by the fact that there is no 

 association of this kind io America. There are angling clubs 

 in plenty, but they usually own or lease waters and live for 

 angling alone. The Fly-Fishers' Club does not live for fish- 

 ing but for social purposes only, to meet at the rooms, look 

 through the library, chat, smoke, talk of fishing and fishing 

 tackle, and to have an annual dinner. These in themselves 

 are a sufficient reason for its existence. It numbers 264 mem- 

 bers, and up to December 5, last, had a balance in the bank 

 of nearly |l,bOO. English anglers have long known that "it 

 is not all of fishing to fish," and social clubs composed of an- 

 glers are not at all uncommon in that_ country. There is 

 room for just such an organization here in New York and it 

 could be made very popular if the right men could take hold 

 of it. 



English nublishers claim that the bulk of their more ex- 

 pensive angling works co'me to America which, if true, shows 

 that we have a large class who are interested in angling be- 

 yond the pleasure derived from actual fishing. 



At the late dinner referred to Hon. Sir Ford North pre- 

 sided, and Mr, Wm. Senior (the well known "Red Spinner" 

 and Mr. R. B. Marston, of the Fishing Gazette, were vice- 

 chairmen. Over one hundred and fifty members were pres- 

 ent and the reported speeches were capital. Among other 

 things the president said: "Of late years one had heard a 

 great deal about the fishermen of America. He confessed if 

 any one had told him ten years ago that Ameiican fishermen 

 deserved the name, he should have laughed at them. But 

 either one's ideas got opened or Americans had come forward 

 in the way which was not expected. At any rate, there was 

 no doubt now that there were persons in America who, if 

 they had not gone into fishing queslions very thoroughly and 

 deeply, at any rate had done a great deal toward contribut- 

 ing to the perfection of the tackle which was now used. In 

 addition to that they had written some most excellent books. 

 He need only mention one which he was sure many of them 

 knew, though it had only recently been published. ' He meant 

 a book on fly-fishing and tackle, of which Mr. Wells was the 

 author. We knew now that there were many gentlemen in 

 America who were first-rate auth orities on the subject. When 

 gentlemen, eminent in science or literature, came to this coun- 

 try, they were, upon introduction to the Athenteum Club, 

 made honorary members for a certain time, which placed 

 them on precisely the same footing as its ordinary members. 

 He thougiit the 'model set there was one which, if they got 

 on a little bit in the world, it would be very desirable for 

 them to follow. (Hear, hear.) He should be very glad if 

 they found the Fly-Fishers' Club was one to which iimerican 

 gentlemen who were fond of the pursuit might, when rec- 

 ommended, become members during their stay in this country. 

 He was sure they would appreciate the opportunity they 

 would have of .seeing the angling works of England collected 

 together better than most of "them would have an opportunity 

 of seeing in their own country, and it would also be a great 

 satisfaction to know that they would have an opportunity of 

 making the acquaintances and offering hospitality to such 

 gentlemen. He hoped very much that as they got on a little 

 bit and got established on a good footing, they might be in a 

 position to have communion of that sort with the anglers of 

 another country who spoke their own language, at no ex- 

 pense to themselves, but greatly to their benefit and pleas- 

 ure." 



Mr. R. B. Marston, wh-om we believe was the originator 

 of the club, referred to the fact that both his father and his 

 son were members of it, and he felt proud of it. "He would 

 not go into the history of the club, but would simply con- 

 gratulate the members who were present at their first dinner 

 that they had survived the fearful crush on that occasion. 

 The chairman had referred to one subject which he should 

 like to mention before he read the report as to the state of 

 the club— viz., the question of pubhshing angling books. 

 That was a thing which he thought the club should never 

 attempt — particularly those with colored plates — the ex- 

 pense was so great. (Hear, hear. ) The other suggestion, 

 hat they should have a book in which anglers from all parts 

 of the country could place their flies, so that all could see 

 the kind of flies used in certain districts, would be most val- 

 uable, and would be obtained at no expense whatever. The 

 chairman had referred to the question of honorary and foreign 

 members; but he might say they had some honorary members 

 already. They had his friend, Mr. F. Mather, one of the 

 best anglers and most genial fellows hi the world, and if he 

 came over from America, he was sure they would give him 

 a hearty welcome. Then they had Mr. Harris, and Mr. 

 Wells, the author of "Fly -Fishing in American Waters." 

 They had also Mr. Cheney, and one or two other American 

 gentlemen. On the Continent, there was Herr Max v .d. 

 Borne, one of the best pisciculturists in the world, who had 

 done much for flj^-fiisbing, and. who would be ready to do all 

 he could for any of their members who went to Germany. 

 Then there was" Herr Emil Weeger, an Austrian gentleman, 

 who would be most happy to make any friends welcome in 

 Austria, and show them the best fishing there." 



W^e have only quoted parts of the speeches which related 

 to this country, as space forbids our giving all the good things 

 which were reported. The Rod and Reel Association at 

 present exists merely to hold tournaments but might be made 

 the basis of such an organization as we have named. The 

 Ichthyophagous Club is entirely [social but it has no organi- 

 zation and its membership consists merely of those who, 

 getting invitations, pay for a dinner ticket, and it is doubt- 

 ful how long before the possibilities of the water to furnish 

 new forms of horrible creatures for their delectation will be 

 exhausted. We would suggest to the members of the Rod 

 and Reel Association the advisability of their extending 

 then organization in the direction named. 



Habits OF BujEPisH AKD Tomcods. — A member of the 

 Jersey City Heights Gun Club writes: "Will you kindly 

 advise me the name of the best book in "which I could learn 

 of the habits of fish in American waters, especially those of 

 blneflsh and to moods'? I should like to .settle a dispute 

 about the manner of living of above named fish."" Some- 

 tlilug on the habits of bhieftsh may be learned from '*Tli« 



