Aug.' 24, 1895.] 



FOREST AND STREAM, 



163 



ANGLING NOTES. 



Caddis Flies. 



Some time ago, so long ago in fact that I do not wish 

 to be specific about the date, Mr. Edwin Hallam wrote 

 me from Manitowoc, WiB., as follows: "Inclosed in an- 

 other envelope are a few flies that came into the car 

 window while I was at Appleton, Wis. , which is on the 

 Fox River. The conductor of the train called them 

 'Green Bay flies.' What are they?" I must apologize 

 for the delay in replying to the query, but it has been 

 impossible for me to write any "Angling Notes" for 

 several weeks past. 



The fly inclosed was one of the Caddis or Caddice flies, 

 and I sent specimens to Prof. Lintner, New York State 

 Entomologist, asking if there was a common name for 

 this particular species, and he replied: "There is no com- 

 mon name for the particular speoies of insect which you 

 send me. They are a 'Caddice fly,' of which there are 

 numerous species. The 'Green Bay Caddice fly' might 

 serve as a local name for it, but it is not a local species, 

 for I have a specimen of it in my collection — unnamed 

 scientifically — which I took years ago at Schoharie, in 

 this State. 



"The Caddice flies, and their larvas, which live in the 

 water within cases of bits of vegetable matter, small 

 stones or coarse sand, etc., which they drag about with 

 them, protruding their front portions when they feed, 

 are very serviceable for food for fishes, as I have shown 

 in my paper on the 'Insect and other Forms of Caledonia 

 Creek, New York,' in the Tenth Report of the New York 

 State Commission of Fisheries." 



The Caddis fly has sometimes been confused with the 

 May fly, particularly in its larval state, but the flies are 

 easily distinguished one from the other. The Caddis fly 

 has two pairs of wings nearly of the same size, each pair 

 having a fuzzy edge. When at rest the wings are folded 

 lengthwise of the body. This fly has no antennas and the 

 May fly has. The May fly has two pairs of wings, one 

 pair very much smaller than the other, and when the fly 

 is at rest the wings are upright. 



The Tenth Annual Report mentioned)by Prof. Lintner is 

 a very rare one — so rare, indeed, that I have understood 

 that the New York Fish Commission does not possess a 

 copy; and it is to be hoped that the Commission as now 

 constituted may reprint Prof. Lintner's paper, with the 

 illustrations, in some future publication, as it will prove 

 of great value to all who are interested in fish food. In 

 this paper Prof. Lintner says: "Insects, in either their 

 larval or perfect stages, form a portion of the food of 

 nearly all our fresh-water fishes, and a very large propor- 

 tion of the food of most of the species." 



Scotch Trout Fishing. 



Mr. Archibald Mitchell, the salmon fisherman, of Nor- 

 wich, Conn., is now in Scotland, and writing me from 

 Largo, in Fifeshire, he says: "An angling club held a 

 competition on a small lake in this vicinity on Saturday, 

 and I and my son were invited to fish with the members 

 and we accepted the invitation. The conditions were not 

 favorable and the trout were not on the feed and it re- 

 quired very fine fishing to take them. Here are the 

 scores: Ashton 13 trout, 5£lbs.; Honeyman 9, 3£lbs.; Dun- 

 can 8, 3jlbs.; Anderson 5, S£ihs.j Raside 4, 21bs.; Stewart 

 4, 2£lbs.; Young 4, If lbs.; Hood 4, 1 ilbs. ; Edmonds 3, 

 lilbs.; my son and I weighed together 12, 4flbs. The 

 fishing commenced at 10:30 A. M. and finished at 8 P. M. 

 This will give you an idea of how much angling it takes 

 here to kill a few small trout. I inclose one of the casts 

 of flies I used. The largest trout I killed weighed 9oz. 

 and the largest taken during the day weighed looz. I 

 intend to spend a few days on Loch Leven just as soon as 

 I can spare the time. I spent an afternoon with Forrest, 

 of Kelso, last week.^ He makes very fine salmon flies and 

 has been in the business for many years. I consider the 

 banks of the Tweed to be the home of fly-tying." 



The cast sent by Mr. Mitchell consists of drawn gut 

 leader and three flies, also on drawn gut, tied on No. 14 

 hooks. I find that I used still smaller flies than these on 

 Caledonia Creek this season, but there are few waters in 

 this country where such fine tackle is required. 



Strike of the Rattlesnake, 

 In one of the late magazines I saw a reproduction of a 

 photograph of a rattlesnake "coiled to strike," and it 

 caused me to look over my notebook for an interview with 

 a rattlesnake hunter. It may be urged that rattlesnakes 

 do not properly come under the head of "Angling Notes," 

 but every one who has fished a trout Btream in a rattle- 

 snake country will admit that it is an appropriate 

 heading. Mr. Reuben Ripley, of East Lake George, 

 has been a rattlesnake hunter for many years. If asked 

 why he hunted rattlesnakes, I presume he would sav 

 for fun; but be that as it may, Mr. Ripley and a mer- 

 chant retired from business have made it a point to go 

 each spring where rattlesnakes abound and shoot them as 

 they come out of their "dens" for a sunning on the rocks. 

 He says that it is exciting work when the snakes are 

 thick — and he has killed over seventy in one day; but now 

 that he is getting rather clumsy with age he considers 

 rattlesnake hunting too dangerous for him to pursue it. 

 The point to which I wish to refer chiefly, however, is 

 that Mr. Ripley declares that the rattlesnake does not coil 

 to strike, and cannot strike, as we understand a strike, 

 when it is coiled. When he said this, and said it so posi- 

 tively as to be convincing, I concluded that the 

 coifing of the rattlesnake to strike, which I had 

 been brought up to believe in implicitly, was sim- 

 ply another doll stuffed with sawdust. Mr. Ripley tells 

 me that when coiled a snake, if teased, will strike only 

 with that portion of the body that is above the ground, 

 or as he described it the motion was somewhat after the 

 manner of a mother hen pecking at something that an- 

 noyed her. He says that the real strike of the snake, 

 when it reaches furtherest with its poisoned fangs, is 

 when the snake drawB its body back toward its tail in 

 curves on the ground, "just as you frequently see garden 

 hose on a lawn," and then shoots the head forward until 

 the body is straight. Further, a free snake cannot strike 

 above a man's knee if he stands erect, and a snake can- 

 not strike beyond about one-third of its length. Mr. Rip 

 ley has learned this from repeated experiments to test 



just what a rattlesnake can do under varying circum- 

 stances. If a snake is fastened to the ground at its tail it 

 can strike its entire length. This reminded me of an in- 

 cident which occurred near Shelving Rock, Lake George, 

 which confirms Mr. Ripley's observations in this particu- 

 lar. Bony McCabe was haying and saw a snake trying 

 to escape from the shelter of a haycock, and he attempted 

 to spear it with a hay fork; one of the tines of the fork 

 went through the snake's tail close to the rattler, pinning 

 it to the ground, and at once the snake struck and ex- 

 tended its entire length upward at an angle of about 45°. 

 While on this subject I am reminded that old George 

 Kenyon, a professional rattlesnake hunter, once told me 

 that there was nothing to fear from rattlesnakes at night, 

 for they always crawled under cover where there was no 

 danger of stepping on them, and there they remained 

 until morning. This was a hard.and fast rule, that snakes 

 do not travel at night, and yet within a week after old 

 George had given me this information a rattlesnake was 

 seen to crawl along a path in front of a summer cottage 

 at 10 o'clock at night, and old George was summoned to 

 kill it, which he did five minutes before I came strolling 

 along the same path with a friend to whom I had con- 

 fided the fact that it was perfectly safe for us to walk 

 along that path in the dark because old George had said 

 so. He may have been right in the main, but there are, 

 it is said, exceptions to all rules. 



Fluid Silkworm Gut. 



It is rarely that I hear from an old correspondent of 

 Forest and Stream who, when he does write for this 

 journal, signs himself "Splasher," but I have just received 

 a letter from him describing the fishing in the State of 

 Washington and incidentally he refers to another matter 

 as follows: "I have been thinking what a fine thing it 

 would be if some chemist would solve the problem of 

 dissolving silkworm gut, that is, reducing it to its original 

 fluid form in considerable quantities so as to admit of 

 drawing leaders of any desired length from it. If this 

 could be done, what an immense amount of waste gut 

 could be saved, to say nothing of the other advantages. I 

 have spoken of this a number of times. I believe it pos- 

 sible, and I offer the suggestion hoping some one may yet 

 accomplish it. Some time ago there was a notice in the 

 Scientific American of an artificial process of making silk 

 fabric. My recollection is that this material is first pro- 

 duced in fluid form. Perhaps there is a possibility in it." 



It may be possible to reduce the dried gut to a fluid 

 state by a chemical combination, frut I imagine any such 

 process would injure its strength, in which event the gut 

 would be useless for leaders. On the other hand we do 

 know that gut 9ft. long and of corresponding strength 

 has been drawn from the American silkworms, and what 

 has been done can be done again. The difficulty in the 

 way at present is to find out how and upon what to feed 

 the worms. Dr. Garlick, the father of fishculture in 

 America, who drew the gut referred to, is dead. He wrote 

 me that he fed the worms on the leaves of the apple and 

 the plum, but when in the East the worms were fed on 

 apple leaves the gut lacked strength. Whoever may dis- 

 cover the proper food for feeding Alticus cicropia and A. 

 prometheus will not need to resort to chemicals to reduce 

 the Chinese silkworm gut to a fluid state to produce the 

 best salmon leaders, in one piece, that it is possible for one 

 to have. 



Growth of Angling Works. 

 The earliest printed list of angling books was compiled 

 by Mr., after Sir, Henry Ellis in 1811, and appeared in Sir 

 Edgerton Brydges's "Bibliographer." It consisted of 

 eighty works. I am somewhat specific in this matter be- 

 cause I have just read a newspaper item giving credit to 

 Brydges for compiling the list. This list was extended to 

 180 entries, and appended by Pickering to Boosey's "Pis- 

 catorial Reminiscences" in 1836. This was followed in 

 184™ by Dr. Bethune's Waltonian Library, consisting of 

 about 300 titles. In 1856 the Bibliograohical Catalogue of 

 Mr. J. Russell Smith contained 264 1 titles. The New 

 Bibliotheca Piscatoria (1861-9) contained 650 distinct 

 works. Westwood and Satchell's Bibliotheca Piscatoria 

 of 1883, really a second edition of the volume of 1861-9, 

 contains the titles of 2,148 distinct works and 3,158 edi- 

 tions and reprints. Of this last-named work I possess 

 what I believe to be a unique copy. The work as it came 

 from the printer contained a number of errors, and these 

 Mr. Satchell corrected with a pen in the copy which he 

 presented to me, and on the fly leaf he wrote an account 

 of how the errors came about in a book of this sort. 



A. N. Cheney. 



Troublesome Vegetation. 



Texas, August.— I was appointed "a committee of one" 

 by our boating and fishing club to request the Forest and 

 Stream to suggest some means to get rid of a moss that is 

 growing rapidly in our lake. It is a green stuff that 

 grows up from the bottom and slightly resembles a minia- 

 ture tree under the water. When it reaches the top it 

 seems to decay on top and forms a slimy substance of a 

 lighter green color. When caught on a hook or oar it be- 

 comes stringy and is very troublesome. It is very spongy 

 and heavy when full of water. 



Any information you might offer through the paper or 

 otherwise would be thankfully received. 



The club at Corsicana, Tex., are experiencing the same 

 trouble. They employed a man with a boat and chain 

 and span of mules to drag theirs out. He cleared a space, 

 if I remember rightly, about 200yds. square in a week or 

 such a matter and gave it up. 



A liberal quantity of salt sprinkled over the moss might 

 kill it out, as salt will kill all vegetation when used in a 

 field to kill Johnson grass. The Newsman. 



Cayuga Lake Fishing. 



Ithaoaj- N. Y., Aug. 16.— John H. Selkreg and Warren 

 Lyons, local anglers, returned from Redwood on the 14th, 

 having spent a week at that point trout fishing. "Splen- 

 did luck" is their verdict. They succeeded in doing what 

 past masters in the art of angling rarely do — taking a 91b. 

 wall-eyed pike on a light fly-rod with a trout fly as 

 lure. 



Good bass fishing is now reported at all the favorite 

 bass grounds on Cayuga Lake. Some big pickerel and 

 mascallonge are being taken at Union Springs. Near the 

 village of Cayuga the bass fishing has been exceptionally 

 fine during the past ten days. M, Chill. 



BOSTON ANGLING NEWS, 



Boston, Aug. 16.— Sport with rod and reel was never 

 more popular than it is to-day. Every man, and espe- 

 cially every boy, wants a share in it on his summer vaca- 

 tion. Even the man or boy who is chained to business 

 takes his rod and line along when he gets off for a day, 

 and pickerel or bass are tried for in the fresh water; or 

 mackerel, cod or bluefish in the salt water. The Boston 

 man or boy who has a lucky "pull" can get an occasional 

 permit to fish the Brookline Reservoir for bass, though I 

 have heard of few catches there yet. Even the canoeist 

 on the Charles River puts out a trolling spoon or bait, and 

 sometimes a pickerel and sometimes a black bass comes 

 out to grace his creel. Harry L. Chatman, the junior 

 Chatman in the house of Cnatman, Kendal & Daniel, 

 was canoeing on the Charles the other day with a friend. 

 He had a line out. All at once there was a mighty 

 splash, and the reel began to hum. The paddle was 

 dropped and the rod taken in hand. It was evident that 

 "a big one" was hooked. He would take about all the 

 line Harry dared to give, and then when the attempt was 

 made to reel him in, the light canoe was actually towed 

 about the way the fish desired to go. Twice he came out 

 of the water in grand style, and the angler is sure that he 

 heard the jaws snap as he tried to shake out the hook. 

 But such fighting was of no use, and after a hard struggle 

 against rod and reel for fifteen or twenty minutes a 

 magnificent black bass weighing nearly 31bs. came to the 

 net. 



Everybody who goes to the seashore takes a line along 

 or hires a boatman who furnishes the rigging. Mr. Wil- 

 liam J. Leckie, than whom no man in the United States 

 is better known in the hide and leather trades, is just 

 back from a couple of weeks at Martha's Vineyard. 

 Every day he was out fishing or sailing. Often Mrs. 

 Leckie was with him, but the sea off Katama Rips was 

 generally too much for her to enjoy bluefishing, and as 

 for mackerel, fishing that was about out of the question 

 for any lady. Indeed, Mr. Leckie and one or two other 

 landsmen were not exactly sick when the mackerel boat 

 lay to, anchored so that she was broadside on the waves 

 and part of the time in the trough of the sea. They were 

 not exactly sick, but the smell of the bait — well, enough 

 has been said. But Mr. Leckie actually took over 200 

 mackerel that were very fine. He is greatly pleased with 

 the mackerel fishing, and says that there is lots of sport 

 there yet. Bluefishing has been a good deal of a failure 

 in the neighborhood of Martha's Vineyard thus far this 

 season. Mr. Leckie's party tried them faithfully, with a 

 result of only two bluefish. The same report of a scarcity 

 comes from Buzzard's Bay. 



Mr. D. H. Blanchard is home again from his salmon 

 river, the Northeast Branch of the St. Marguerite. The 

 record for his river this season, caught by himself and 

 guests, is thirty-five salnion. Mr. Walter M. Brackett, the 

 salmon artist, whose preserve is just below that of Mr. 

 Blanchard, is still at his river. He has had good luck this 

 season, and had taken some seventeen salmon up to last 

 accounts. 



Mr. E. H. Wakefield, of Boston, is an angler who takes 

 great delight in fishing. One of the best features of his 

 angling is that he takes his wife with him; she is also an 

 expert, and they never fish for count. They make a 

 great many trips to ponds not far distant in quest of pick- 

 erel and bass fishing. They are just back from Wallace 

 Pond in New Hampshire, where they have had the good 

 luck to take twenty bass. Mrs. Wakefield has carried off 

 high line by securing a bass weighing 51b3. The couple 

 are now about starting for the Rangeleys, where they will 

 make only a short stop, however, their objective point 

 being Tim Pond and the trout fishing they are sure to find- 

 there. They have visited those waters before. 



Aug. 17.— There is an exhibition in Appleton & Basset's 

 window to-day that is exciting a good deal of attention. 

 The exhibit is the skin and mounted head of a mountain 

 lion. When alive the beast measured 8ft. in length and 

 weighed 194lbs. His height at the shoulder was 24in., 

 and the girth of his forearm was 15in. The lucky man to 

 kill such a beast was Mr. C. A. Hardy, a senior at Har- 

 vard, and a son of Mr. Edward E. Hardy, who has done 

 so much for the propagation and restocking of game birds 

 in Massachusetts, in connection with the Massachusetts 

 Fish and Game Protective Association. The animal was 

 shot near White River, Col., early last winter. But the 

 skin and head are not the principal source of attraction in 

 the window. There is a series of three photographs, the 

 work of Mr. A. G. WaUihan, of Lay, Col. 



Mr. Hardy, who is greatly interested in pictures 

 of live game, heard of Mr. WaUihan and his expedition, 

 and obtained consent to join them. With his father he 

 had sfome time ago obtained a picture of a flying grouse, 

 from some birds they were liberating, a picture that 

 caused a good deal of interest and comment at the time. 

 On the trip Mr. Hardy had the satisfaction of seeing at 

 least eight mountain lions or cougars, and some of them 

 under peculiar circumstances. Each of the series of 

 photographs mentioned Mr. Hardy saw taken, and can 

 vouch for their validity. They are not fancy sketches, 

 but were taken by Mr. Wallihan from the live game itself. 

 The first one shows the mountain lion, the skin of which 

 is mentioned above, treed by the dogs. The beast is 

 looking out of the tree at the hunter and the dogs. The 

 second picture, and the most wonderful of all, shows 

 the lion in mid-air and in the act of springing at the 

 photographer. The guides were trying to dislodge the 

 lion from the tree by stoning it, and Mr. Wallihan was 

 standing not far from the base of the tree, camera in 

 hand, watching for the beast to make a move. As the 

 mountain lion is apt to do, the guides expected him to leap 

 down the hill and run away, and Mr. Wallihan was watch- 

 ing for this motion. But his surprise may be imagined 

 when he saw the beast actually crouching and preparing 

 to spring at himself. This was the moment of his life. 

 He had the nerve to poise his camera and to press the 

 bulb when the beast was actually in the air springing for 

 his own head, and, like the lightning flash picture, catch 

 him as he sprang. His next motion was to dodge, and the 

 beast was soon surrounded by the dogs, where he was 

 shot by Mr. Hardy. The third photograph shows him 

 being harried by the dogs as Mr. Hardy shot him. 



Both Mr. Edward E. Hardy and his son are greatly 

 pleased with the pictures obtained. They have a num- 

 ber of others. One shows the skeleton of a deer as com- 

 pletely cleaned by the mountain lions as though boiled 

 and stripped. Mr. Hardy says that he saw a good deal of 

 mountain lions during the trip. His opinion is that they 



