Feb. 33, 1888;J 



89 



Bay as far as Alexandria. That this is bo there is one 

 living witness, the Rev. Mr. Dinwiddie — a Presbyterian 

 minister formerly lecated in that town — who is an angler 

 of such phenomenal skill, or luck, that the colored people 

 suspected him of "cor j rih de fish," and are shy of him. 

 .He lias repeatedly caught off the end of Agnew's wharf, 

 "rockfish" that weighed 2 or 2^1bs. each, while scores and 

 perhaps hundreds of able-bodied and experienced fisher- 

 men, Using corresponding tackle and like bait, fishing at 

 exactly the same depth and equally careful to abstain 

 from Swearing; have not even had a nibble. Doubtless 

 there Was a Dibwiddie in George Washington's day—for 

 the family. I understand; ^ s Mhite an old one in Virgiuia 

 —who was also a Mighty fisher before the Lord arid 

 ■fcatiglit striped bass enough to eneoiirage G; W. in mak- 

 ing that statement. And perhaps those caught by the 

 Dihwiddie of to-day are but the astral bodies of those 

 taken by his ancestor, materialised to keep up the fafhily 

 reputation for veracitv. 



| I wish that G. W. had not said anything about the carp, 

 for I would like to retain my confidence that be couldn't — 

 we all know what. The fact is that 1 have not been able 

 to find anybody who ever saAV a carp caught in the Poto- 

 mac, or had even heard, as a legend, of one having been 

 taken here, prior to the escape of some young carp from 

 the Fish Commissioners' hatchery and breeding ponds 

 seme three of four seasons ago. The stream is one in 

 ^Vhieh it. seems they should thrive* but there is exceed" 

 irigiy little evidence that they have done set; A few have 

 been, taken in the river and several in the old eahal neai' 

 the Hvbr; but not enough; all together; to encourage any 

 lane man to go carp fishing in the Potomac. 



I can do something toward giving precision tq G; W.'s 

 glittering generality about "various kinds of fish" arid 

 '■etc." There are white and yellow perch, of which speci- 

 mens are occasionally caught weighing as much as seven 

 or even eight ounces each, but generally runniug from 

 half an ounce to an ounce and a quarter. There are sand 

 smells, minnows, "cats" and "pizen cats"— the former 

 "cats" white and the latter yellow and no more poisonous 

 ■than the others, though not such good eating— and the 

 "cats" seldom weigh more than a pound, generally only 

 about half so much. In the pound-nets, red mullet — a 

 kind of discolored sucker, even more bony than the pseudo 

 herring, and unfit to eat=—are caught occasionally, In a 

 pptlplc of creeks entering the river not far from the Mount 

 Vernon estate, trolling with a spoon will sometimes yield 

 a few rather nice pickerel. Thirty or forty miles down 

 the river one can catch "spots," "taylors" and "tobacco- 

 boxes;" all very small but tolerable panfish, in the taking 

 hf which no real angler can find any sport. There you 

 have the list, 



All but the eels, They must Hot be forgotten, I 

 decline accepting the eel as a fish, or in any other way so 

 far as I am personally concerned, but as he is the most 

 multitudinous and abundant thing in the Potomac, it 

 will hardly do to pass him by unmentioned. Only the 

 man who has caught an eel and seen the restless, writh- 

 ing-, coiling'; slippery, unsellable devil tangling up his 

 best line into a thousand hard knots, daubing his tackle 

 With its gluev slime and swallowing his hook far beyond 

 the reach of the largest "disgorger," knows how to 

 adequately hate an eel. I am told that some of the 

 Potomac eels are quite large, but have seen none thicker 

 than a small cigar and from 12in. to 14in. long. Mr. 

 Lambert, Deputy Collector of the Port at Alexandria — 

 yes, they have a custom house there, though for no 

 ffeasOU that I Can see, other than that it has always been 

 their custom — waxes eloquent when he talks of the mini* 

 Iters, size and ferocity of the Potomac eels. The f ailing 

 off of the shad fishing in late years he ascribes to the eels, 

 He says that they attack the shad caught in the gill nets, 

 bore into their bodies to get the toothsome roes, and eat 

 them out so that only heads and empty skins are left 

 hanging in the meshes of the nets. Gunners who pursue 

 the nefarious practice of shooting birds on their roosts, 

 or while sleeping on the water at night in the swamp 

 opposite Alexandria, complain that the eels completely 

 destroy the dead birds before they can see to pick them 

 up in the morning. It is affirmed that Snyder, who keeps 

 a wet goods store near the Alexandria ferry, one evening 

 sank a barrel eel trap in the dock before his place and the 

 next morning found it jammed so full of eels that he 

 just nailed a board over the hole in the top and shipped 

 the whole thing off to the PhUadelphia market. 



That mention of Philadelphia reminds me that the 

 Quaker City has, for years past, drawn large quantities 

 of her celebrated "Wissahickon catfish" from Hunting 

 Creek, a tributary of the Potomac, that enters the river 

 just below Alexandria. But even the catfish appear to 

 be growing scarcer. "Dey aint no mo' like dey used to 

 wuz," is the common refrain of the darkies, who are the 

 most inveterate anglers for them. Seining has made 

 even the catfish scarce. But if only one fish per month 

 were caught the enthusiasm of tee colored population f or 

 the sport would hardly be diminished. Their season is 

 over now for this year, but go out on the Hunting Creek 

 bridge any summer evening and you will see the "coons" 

 almost elbow to elbow its entire length, their bare feet 

 swinging over the water, and a myriad of lines dangling 

 among what seem to be the reflections of trunks in the 

 stream. There are sometimes almost as many women as 

 men. Behind them stands a long row of battered tin cans 

 holding worms, these convenient receptacles having 

 almost entirely superceded the old way of carrying bait 

 in the mouth. At long intervals an agitated voice pro- 

 claims that "Thomas Jefferson done got a bite!" or "Miss 

 'Linda Lee cotch a cat, fo' shuah!" and a thrill of excite- 

 ment runs along the line. The eel is welcomed there. 

 He is" grub. And all through the long hot summer days 

 colored men make fishing an excuse for sleeping in the 

 sun on the piers, while their lines drift with the tide. 

 They don't really expect to catch anything, but are re- 

 luctant to admit the fact, even to themselves. "Do you 

 ever catch fish here?" you ask one of them. "Yes, in- 

 deedy, sah." "When did you catch one?" "Boy ketch 

 one hyah dis mawnin; he done gone home now." "But 

 when did you catch one!" "Well— de week 'fo' las', or de 

 week 'fo' dat; I don' jes' rightly 'member, sah." Their 

 beBt hauls of "cats" are made by seining, or when they 

 wade.through the long eel grass on the flats above the 

 lighthouse at low tide and scoop up the stranded fish and 

 eels to be found there. 



Two causes seemed to have worked together for 

 the destruction of the fishing in the Potomac River. The 

 first and doubtless the greatest is the wickedly general 

 nee of nets. There are, of course, laws prescribing the 



use of small meshed gill-nets and restraining the employ- 

 ment of "pound" and "fyke" nets and kindred other evil 

 contrivances. But those laws, hot being enforced, are 

 worthless. The entire season, from early April until late 

 November, both sides of the channel are lined with 

 stationed nets of various sorts, in the channel itself deep 

 gill-nets are floating, and, wherever there is a shore per- 

 mitting the practice, huge seines are hauled that sweep 

 from vast areas of the river every thing that lives and 

 swims. It is simply wonderful that any fish ever get up 

 the stream as far as Alexandria. Surely none, ever get 

 back to the bay. 



There is a la w forbidding shad fishing within the limits 

 of the old District of Col imibia— which formerly took in 

 Alexandria— the southern boundary of which is at Light- 

 house Point, the intention being to' provide for the shad a 

 iiatui-al spawning ground in tin's reach of the Potomac. 

 But all last sum toet the water was dotted with shad 

 fishers, in front 6f Alexandria and even above the town, 

 fully two miles north, of the boundary prescribed, and 

 nobody interfered with them. Arid what a host of those 

 fishers there were. Great numbers of meh who labor at 

 various other avocations during the rest of the year, in 

 the shad season abandon everything else, bring out their 

 murderous gill-nets and plunge with frenzied eagerness 

 into the general butchery. For a time, shad are surpris- 

 ingly cheap. The wholesale dealers pay from $12 to $18 

 per hundred for superb fish. As fine roe-shad as were 

 ever seen in New York are sold at a quarter dollar each 

 at retail. Everybody eats them as if possessed by a fury 

 for their extermination. They arc packed in ice and sent 

 away by thousands, and great quantities are salted down, 

 iike 'plebian mackerel, tor winter use. If any shad gets 

 through to the.spa-vvnnlg ground further up the river, I 

 fancy that it dies there of loneliness and is eaten by the 

 eels,' as the spawn certainly is.- Is it any wonder that 

 year by year the Potomac shad supply diminishes? nr 

 questionable that it will continue to do so until there is a 

 reform, for a few seasons at least, in the manner of frab> 

 iug here? 



1 Bpoke of another cause of the decline of fishing in the 

 Potomac. That is the great change since Washington's 

 time in the quality of the water. Tradition affirms that 

 this was once a pellucid river, in which the black bass 

 Would have found a home suited to his taste. But now 

 it is a mass of mud thin enough to move with the tide, 

 but seldom, if ever, so clear that one can see to the bottom 

 of a glass of it. Excellent bricks have been made of it; 

 not, of course, of the most diluted portion near the top, 

 but from where it thickens somewhat down below. It is 

 at least as bad as the Missouri. Most other muddy 

 streams settle sometimes, but its uliginous tide never 

 cleats. It is unreasonable to expect to find anything 

 better than mud cats and eels as the constant inhabitants 

 of such a river. And not alone is its turbidity a disquali- 

 fying condition for its being the home of game fishes, but 

 it is shoaling so that deep water is no longer to be found 

 in it, except m its contracted channel; and on the shal- 

 lowly covered mud flats the only food to be found is such 

 as suits only the baser sorts of fish, the dirty and fool 

 sorts that allow themselves to be stranded and picked up 

 by "coons" at low tide. The shoaling has been going on 

 for years with increasing rapidity. The arm of the Poto- 

 mac upon which the Navy Yard is located, when viewed 

 at high tide from the main channel, seems to be a fine 

 sheet of water. So it is, a sheet— and hardly anything 

 more. There is a channel in it, available for light draft 

 navy vessels still, but the only safe time for a stranger to 

 attempt going through in an ordinary rowboat is at low 

 tide, when the tortuous thread of water deep enough for 

 his passage will be clearly outlined along the northern 

 edge of the great meadow of waving eel grass. But men 

 yet in the prime of life remember when large schooners, 

 heavily laden, used to tack to and fro across where that 

 meadow now lies, and sail far up beyond the Navy Yard 

 to Bladensburgh, which was then quite a port. Now, 

 there is no more water at Bladensburgh than the people 

 in the neighborhood should use for mitigation of the 

 quality of whisky sold there — to say nothing of washing. 

 In front of Washington the main channel is so narrow 

 that an ordinary river steamboat lies clear across it, and 

 turning without getting aground is a very delicate opera- 

 tion. 



It will not be strange if, in a few years hence, Wash- 

 ington is left "high and dry," as Bladensburgh now is. 

 and all her business requiring water transportation is 

 transferred further down stream, probably to Alexandria. 

 The Government engineers engaged in walling and filling 

 the Potomac flats expect that the contraction of the 

 stream effected by their operations will give it a stronger 

 current, capable of scouring out and keeping clear this 

 portion of the channel. They may be right. It is to be 

 hoped that they are. But the unexpected is that which 

 happens in dealing with water courses, much as engineers 

 fancy they know about them, and what new flats and 

 bars the Potomac may take it into its thick head to create, 

 [ in retaliation for their restriction of its liberty remains to 

 be seen. 



The cause of the present condition of affairs is still 

 operative. It is in the denuding the hills and valleys of 

 their natural forest covering. In the days when Bladens- 

 burgh was a port, the thickly wooded hill slopes consti- 

 tuting most of the water-shed of the Potomac were 

 nature's reservoirs of the rains and melted snows, storing 

 them, holding them back and giving them forth gradu- 

 ally, by seepage under the mantle of forest leaves and 

 through the earth to the tiny crystal rivulets and clear 

 brooks that filled the river's bed with a pellucid cmrent. 

 But now the water that falls on the bare, unsheltered 

 tilled land rushes down the hillsides in torrents, carrying 

 with it vast quantities of the light, loose soil. There is 

 where the Potomac mud comes from. 



I don't pretent to offer any suggestion for amelioration 

 or reformation of the existing state of affairs. That is 

 not my business. I have simply given my findings upon 

 the question, why there is no decent fishing in the Poto- 

 mac. J. H. Connelly. 



Painting of a Black Bass.— We recently had the 

 pleasure of seeing a very spirited painting of a black bass 

 of 5|lbs. weight. The nsh was a small-mouth and was 

 caught last summer in Back Bav, Lake Champlain, by 

 Mr. E. A. Olds, of 100 Fulton street, New York city. Mr. 

 Olds had a correct drawing mad§ at the time, and the 

 painting was made by R. LeB. Goodwin, a famous painter 

 1 of game birds. It is represented ~ as leaping from the 

 water with the fly in its ujmith. 



FLOATING FLIES. 



THE art of fishing with the. dry fly is one but little 

 known or practiced in this country, but will, no 

 doubt, lie found valuable on many of our well-fished 

 streams., where the trout are quite familiar with the wiles 

 of the angler and are critical as to the imitation insect 

 offered, as well as to the manner in which it is placed 

 before them. A book* on this mode of fishing, which 

 goes into the subject in full and in a thorough manner, 

 has been published. The hand-colored plates of flies are 

 exquisitely done and the cuts showing how they are 

 made are excellent. 



We do not personally know any angler in America who 

 uses the dry fly, but no doubt many will try it dvu'ingtbe 

 coming season. The late Reuben Wood learned some- 

 thing of it from R. B. Marston, Esq., editor of the Fish- 

 ing Gazette, while in England a few years ago. The flies 

 used are. as a rule, smaller than those which the majority 

 of Adirondack and Maine anglers prefer, being about 

 the size of those which the educated trout of Caledonia 

 Creek will accept, ajid they are not allowed to sink in 

 the water. The drying is done by waving the fly to and 

 ffo in the air after each cast, a process that requires some 

 time, but it is claimed that it is successful where other 

 forms of casting fail. 



The author says: "One word of advice, however, to our 

 North Country and Scotch friends: When you find in one 

 of the streams you frequent that your trout from being 

 over-fished are becoming more educated, and consequently 

 more shy, do not be too wedded to your old notions to try 

 the advice of a 'Southson,' and see if a single floating fly, 

 fished upstream, will not be effectual in basketing some 

 of your otherwise unattainable fish." 



The book is an octavo of 130 pages, handsomely printed 

 on large paper, and is a welcome addition to the literature 

 of angling. That fishing with the dry fly is well worth a 

 trial in this country we are certain. A firm in San Fran- 

 cisco, Kewell Bros., late of London, advertise "Boyton" 

 floating flies as "new to the States," but we do not remem- 

 ber to have seen them mentioned by our Eastern tackle 

 dealers. 



*" Floating Flies and How to Cress Them.' 1 A treatise on the 

 most modern methods of dressing artificial flies for trout and 

 grayling, with full illustrated directions, and containing ninety 

 hand-colored engravings of the most killing patterns, together 

 with a few hints to dry-fly fishermen. By Frederic M. Halford. 

 New York: Scribner & Welford, 713 and 745 Broadway. 1886. 



PICKEREL THROUGH THE ICE. 



ALTHOUGH I am not much of an angler, I take an 

 interest in general piscatorial matters, and therefore, 

 while reading my last week's Forest and Stream I 

 noticed the article written under the above caption. I 

 was amused at the weight given of "the big five" pickerel 

 taken; so much so in fact, that I read the article to a 

 nephew who is visiting me from Jefferson county, and 

 who has been president of the Fish and Game Club of the 

 town of Theresa, where he resides, and is well posted on 

 the species of the pike family in question. I asked him 

 how large pickerel he had known to be caught through 

 the ice in any of the small lakes lying in that town. He 

 said that Alf O'Niel caught one' weighing 18lbs., A. E. 

 Carpenter one of 211bs., and another of 22£lbs. was caught 

 by a party whose name he could not recall. I remember 

 seeing in the Theresa Sentinel of about a year ago, men- 

 tion made of the last fish. Of course these fish are ex- 

 ceptions to those generally caught, but to show how fast 

 they increase in weight I will mention that five years ago 

 this coming March there were placed in Indian River at 

 Theresa 200 pickerel, none of which weighed over 21bs., 

 and they were the oniy fish of the species ever put in that 

 stream. In July, 1885, two years and two months after, 

 one was caught weighing lOlbs. Goz. I was at Theresa in 

 August of the same year, and it was nothing unusual to 

 see a 6 or 81bs. pickerel taken, and Mr. Evans informs me 

 that during the past season Mr. W. A. Fisher, the genial 

 ticket agent of the Rome. Wateitown & Ogdensburgh 

 Railroad, caught one weighing 161bs. 3oz. Supposing 

 this to be one of the original fish placed in the river, it 

 shows an increase of 141bs. in four and a half years. 

 Where is the stream that can beat this record? All 

 pickerel weighing not over 31bs. are put back in the water; 

 also many that are much heavier. Mr. Evans informs 

 me that another party and he caught 30 in two days the 

 past season, and put back all but 3, as they did not need 

 them. 



But pickerel are not the only species of the pike family 

 caught in the river and adjoining lakes. In the room 

 where I am now writing hangs the head of a 301bs. mas- 

 calonge (Esox nobilior) caught in Red Lake by my sons 

 when only seventeen and fourteen years of age. They 

 also caught others weighing from 5 to 181bs. each, the 

 same season. Mr. Evans tells me that in Millsite Lake he 

 took thirteen black bass that weighed 39ibs. , an average of 

 Slbs. each. Here is another record for some one to beat. 

 But I find that "pickerel through the ice" have quite dis- 

 appeared hi this screed, and as I am not much of an 

 angler, I will leave my lines for some one else to take up. 



Lockpobt, N. Y., Feb. 13. J- L. DAVISON. 



[Our Massachusetts correspondent no doubt referred to 

 Esox reticulatus as "pickerel," a fish seldom exceeding six 

 pounds. Mr. Davison writes of the lake pike, Esox lucius, 

 which is also called "pickerel," and grows to a weight of 

 forty pounds, or more. Anglers have not separated these 

 species in their vocabulary, hence the misapprehension 

 as to species, which often occurs. "Pickerel" really 

 means a small pike.] 



Fly-fishing for Shad. — Hartford, Conn., Feb. 13.— 

 Can you give me any information as to when, where and 

 how to kill shad with a fly in the Connecticut River near 

 here? Or can you refer me to some brother angler in 

 Hartford who "knows it all?"— Mac. [Shad are taken 

 with a fly from the middle of May to the first of August. 

 They are taken at Wiilimanset and just below the bridge 

 at Holyoke. Use red-ibis, brown and ginger hackles. 

 The man who knows more about fly-fishing for shad than 

 any one else is Mr. Thomas Chalmers, Holyoke, Mass., 

 and he will be glad to post you.] 



The Fly Fishers' CLUB.-^The third annual report of 

 the Fly -Fishers' Club, of London, shows it to be vigorous, 

 and on a good financial basis. At the end of 1 887 there 

 was a balance on hand of over £166, clear of all liabilities, 

 an increase of £50 over the previous year. The annual 

 dinner will take place on March 7, 



