616 



FOREST AND STREAM. 



[July 19, 18B8. 



THE MISSISSIPPI GULF COAST. 



BILOXI, Miss., July 8.— Editor Forest and Stream: 

 The Gulf coast of Mississippi has developed into 

 one of the finest fishing grounds in this country- All 

 known game fish inhabiting the Gulf of Mexico abound, 

 and among the various species is that locomotive of the 

 sea, the tarpon, or as known hereabouts, the silver fish. 

 One was caught right off the wharf of the Montross Hotel 

 weighing 20Slbs. not long since. Mr. P. J. Montross, 

 proprietor of the hotel, has preserved a number of scales 

 of this monster, which are larger than a silver dollar. 

 Inclosed are specimens. No doubt fine sport could be 

 had along this coast by all who glory in finished fishing. 

 Plenty of potnpano, sheepshead, rnoonfish, bluefish, red- 

 fish, red snapper, green trout, speckled (sea) trout, white 

 trout, Spanish mackerel, drum, grouper, mullet, flound- 

 ers, Dream, croakers, crabs, prawns, shrimp, oysters, etc., 

 abound. Ship Island is only a few miles from Biloxi 

 and is the principal ground, while the numerous passes 

 are also fine waters for sport. The accommodations at 

 the Montross Hotel are excellent. Biloxi is on the Mobile 

 & New Orleans division of the Louisville & Nashville 

 Railroad and only eighty miles from New Orleans and 

 easily reached from almost any point, has a population 

 of 4,000. As a lover of sport my object is simply to let 

 the world know through your columns what can be found 

 at these unlimited fishing grounds. Those who indulged 

 are reaping good results, but there is a lack of enthusias- 

 tic anglers. G. 



BLUEFISHING ABOUT LONG ISLAND. 



riTHE bluefish have been plenty during the past week in 

 X those waters of Long Island which they usually fre- 

 quent. Along the south side, from Sheepshead Bay to 

 Shinnecock Bay, good catches have been the rule, while 

 in Great South Bay and off Fire Island they have fairly 

 swarmed. On Saturday last a party of four from Say ville 

 took 119 bluefish in one hour, and then quit, the fish 

 ranging from 1 to 21bs. Another party took twenty-two 

 fish which weighed 681bs. Off Shinnecock Light a party 

 of three New Yorkers took twenty-seven fish which aver- 

 aged nearly 41bs. each. 



At the eastern end of the island some larger fish have 

 been taken, and the catches in Peconic and Gardiner's 

 Bay included some fish which would run about 41bs. This 

 is a good average for this time of year, the larger fellows 

 of 6 and 81bs. seldom coming to these waters until autumn. 

 Trolling in Plum Gut is fair now, but will bo better a 

 month later. 



On the north shore of the island the fish have come 

 into bays where they have been strangers for years, and 

 fish weighing from 1 to lilbs. have been taken as far west 

 as Oyster Bay. Taking the waters of Long Island as a 

 sample would indicate a good season for bluefish along 

 the coast. 



LARGE BROWN TROUT. 



WE record elsewhere the capture of a 51bs. 14oz. 

 brook trout in the Adirondacks. 

 The capture of the Adirondack giant on the 10th by a 

 Syracuse angler was followed the next day by the feat of 

 an emulous Rochester fisherman who took in a brown 

 trout of unusual proportion. The fish has been exliibited 

 at Mr. Blackford's, in Fulton Market, this city. Its cap- 

 ture is related by a Rochester correspondent, who writes 

 under date of July 12: 



"The numerous members of the angling fraternity in 

 this city have seen nothing recently that awakened their 

 admiration so much as did a trout caught last night by 

 Frank J. Amsden in his preserve on Spring Creek, below 

 the State hatchery at Mumford, eighteen miles from 

 town. The fish was caught on a white-miller and killed 

 on an 8oz. rod, with the fine tackle essential to success on 

 that stream. It took the fly between 11 and 12 o'clock at 

 night, and' when landed marked olbs. 4oz. on the spring 

 balance. It was in prime condition and measured 24in. 

 in length. It was of the German or brown trout variety, 

 and is one of a consignment of fry placed in the stream 

 in 1884. It is not so stout nor baautiful a fish as the 

 native brook trout, but is equally as game. — E. R." 



CAMPING IN COLORADO. 



CAMP ON THE MUDDY RIVER, Middle Park, Col., 

 July i. — Two of us have traveled sixty miles on 

 horse back and are now encamped on the Muddy River, 

 one of the tributaries of the Grand. We have come 

 from North Park to try the trout fishing. As is well- 

 known in the West, streams that flow northward con- 

 tain no trout. Hence we North Parkers have to cross 

 the range into Middle Park for trout rivers that flow 

 southward. For all the rivers in North Park flow north 

 into the Platte. 



We made the trip in a day and a half. The second day 

 we crossed the Arapahoe Pass where just six years ago 

 the famous battle between the Utes and the Arapahoes 

 was fought. Our road lay right over the battle field. 

 On either side are large heaps of rocks which the Ara- 

 pahoes made for the defenses. Tradition has it that while 

 the Utes had left North Park for several days to sign a 

 treaty, the Arapahoes came in to capture it. When the 

 former returned over the Muddy Pass from Middle Park, 

 they were confronted by the latter behind these huge 

 piles of stone. However, the Utes had their country to 

 fight for and after a three days' battle were victorious. 

 They kept North Park thereafter until they were re- 

 moved to the White River Agency. 



Once in Middle Park, you notice the southward flow of 

 the streams. The first cast of your lines brings out a 

 brook trout. In a few minutes we caught enough for 

 dinner. About 3 in the afternoon we reached The 

 Muddy. Why called "The Muddy" I can't say, for a 

 clearer stream I never saw. Following the stream up to 

 within five miles of its source we pitched camp, where 

 we now are. We are surrounded by small clumps of 

 willows. The stream is but 10ft. from us. At our back 

 is a steep hill covered with timber. We are just one mile 

 below the celebrated canon, between which and our camp 

 the best fishing is supposed to be. Our lines are soon 

 rigged. In half an hour we have enough trout for supper 

 and breakfast. And such beauties! One weighed 21bs. 



All went smoothly in camp until one day our horses 

 got away. We had been fishing about a mile above 

 camp, supposing our horses to be securely picketed. On 

 our return, to our horror all the horses but one had 



escaped. The one left was terribly excited. Judging 

 from tracks near by we concluded a mountain lion had 

 paid the camp a visit. He evidently had so frightened 

 the horses that they broke their picket ropes. Then the 

 grand horse hunt began. And it was a serious matter, 

 too, for what if the horses were tied up in the timber and 

 should starve to death. 



My companion quickly saddled the remaining horse. 

 He rode from 5 until 9 that evening, but with no success. 

 Next morning he started out at 6. After riding until 2 in 

 the afternoon he found them tied up in thick bushes and 

 so hungry that they were glad to eat even quaking asp. 



We think we shall break camp on the 4th and try some 

 antelope shooting on the way back. F. B. W. 



Black Bass at Plymouth.— Boston, Mass., July 13.— 

 On July 4 we went to Chiltonville, Plymouth, Mass., to 

 try the black bass, and had a very good time indeed, and 

 very fair fishing. There were six of us on the glorious 

 Fourth, and altogether we caught eighty-five bass, the 

 best being one of 34lbs. strong, and better still it came to 

 me, the best bass (small-mouth, as are all in this State) 

 I have yet caught. The next best was a 2£lbs., lflbs., and 

 a number of good ones of about LJlbs. Thursday there 

 were only five of us, and we had much poorer luck, tak- 

 ing in all forty-five bass, the best two weighing l^lbs. 

 each. We used all the kinds of bait we could find, and 

 in the two days I took bass on dobson, frogs, crickets, 

 minnows, live dragon flies and a brown hackle with worm 

 attached. The fellow who wrote in your journal that a 

 snake was sure, I don't think much of, for I tried a green 

 grass snake three separate times on the Fourth Avithout a 

 bite, till the other fellow vowed he would go ashore if I 

 did not throw him away, which I did, finally, and saw 

 him swim across the pond as prettily as you would wish, 

 notwithstanding his hard usage.— F. J. T. 



The Enterprise Manufacturing Co., of Akron, O., 

 have just completed a new addition, 30x60, two-story 

 brick building. This, with their present large plant, 

 gives them a floor space of over two acres, occupied ex- 

 clusively in the manufacturing of all kinds of fishing 

 tackle and specialties. This is without doubt the largest 

 manufactory of these goods in America. They are fully 

 equipped with the latest automatic machinery, good and 

 central shipping facilities, cheap fuel, and many other- 

 advantages, which, to a certain extent, accounts for their 

 building such desirable goods at popular prices. Through 

 the energy of Mr. E. F. Pflueger, president and manager 

 of the company, it has steadily grown until it has reached 

 the present mammoth size, as* it seems "onward and up- 

 ward" is his motto. 



The Scarlet-Ibis.— This fly was quite a favorite with 

 trout anglers twenty years ago but seems to have gone 

 out of fashion. It has been decried by those who hold 

 that the artificial fly should resemble some living thing, 

 which the one in question does not. In our own fly book 

 it has had a long rest, perhaps for three or four years, 

 until last week when fishing a small pool we tried it as a 

 last resort, after a dozen or more favorites had failed to 

 provoke a rise, and took three line trout on it. It is pos- 

 sible that if we had fished the next day in the same place 

 the trout would have preferred something else, but, under 

 the circumstances, we feel like giving credit to the old- 

 time favorite, now almost in retirement, for what it did 

 in saving the day. 



The Saguinay Club, of Rochester, N. Y., returned this 

 week from its preserve on the river after which the club 

 is named. Six members during their three weeks' visit 

 caught 416 landlocked salmon or "wininish," and re- 

 port that the fishing was better than last year. — E. R. 



Bass fob Rochester Anglers.— There is excellent 

 black bass fishing in Lake Ontario, at Nine-mile Point, a 

 resort within two hours' drive or rail of the city, and there 

 has also been some rare sport with the bass, pike and 

 pickerel in the river above the city. — E. R. 



THE DISTRIBUTION OF FRESH-WATER FISHES 



BY PEOF, DAVID STARR JORDAN. 

 [Read before the American Fisheries Society.] 



WHEN I was a boy and went fishing in the brooks of 

 western New York, I noticed that the different streams 

 did not always have the same kind of fishes in them. Two 

 streams in particular in Wyoming county, not far from my 

 father's farm, engaged in this respect my special attention. 

 Their sources are not far apart, and they flow in opposite 

 directions, on opposite sides of a low ridge— an old glaeial 

 moraine, something more than a mile across. The Oatka 

 Creek flows northward from this ridge, while the East Coy 

 runs toward the southeast on the other side of it, both flow- 

 ing ultimately into the same river, the Genesee. 



It does not require a very careful observer to see that in 

 these two streams the fishes are not quite the same. The 

 streams themselves are similar enough. In each the waters 

 are clear and fed by springs. Each flows over gravel and 

 clay, through alluvial meadows, in many windings, and with 

 elms and alders "in all its elbows."' In both streams we 

 were sure of finding trout (SalveUnv.s fontlnalis Mitchill), 

 and in one of them the trout are still abundant. In both we 

 used to catch the brook chub (ScmotUus atromacidatus 

 Mitchill), or, as we called it, the "horned dace;" and in both 

 were large schools of shiners (Natropis mcqalops Rafmesque) 

 and of suckers (Catostomus teres Mitchill). But in every 

 deep hole, and especially in the mill ponds along the East 

 Coy Creek, the horned pout (Ameiurus melas Rafmesque) 

 swarmed on the mucky bottoms. In every eddy, or in the 

 deep holes worn out at the root of the elm trees, could be 

 seen the sunflsh (Lepomti gibhosus Linnaeus), strutting in 

 green and scarlet, with spread fins keeping intruders away 

 from its nest. But in the Oatka Creek were found neither 

 horned pout nor sunfish,nor have I ever heard that either 

 has been taken there. Then besides these noble fishes, 

 worthy of a place on every school boy's string, we knew by 

 sight, if not by name, numerous smaller fishes, darters 

 (tithenstoma flabellare Rafmesque) and minnows (Bhin- 

 ichtliys atronasus Mitchill), which crept about in the gravel 

 on the bottom of the East Coy, but which we never recog- 

 nized in the Oatku. 



There must be a reason for differences like these, in the 

 streams themselves or in the nature of the fishes. The sun- 

 fish and the horned pout are home-loving fishes to a greater 



extent than the others which I have mentioned; still where 

 no obstacles prevent they are sure to move about. There 

 must be, then, in the Oatka some sort of barrier or strainer 1 , 

 which keeping these species back permits others more ad- 

 venturous to pass; aud a wider knowledge of the geography 

 of the region showed that such is the case. Further down 

 in its course the Oatka falls over a ledge of rock, forming a 

 considerable waterfall at Rock Glen. Still lower down its 

 waters disappear in the ground, sinking into some lime- 

 stone cavern or gravel bed, from which they reappear after 

 some six miles in the large springs at Caledonia, Either of 

 these barriers might well discourage a quiet loving fish; 

 while the trout and its active associates have sometimes 

 passed them, else we should not find them in the upper 

 waters in which they alone form the fish fauna. This 

 problem is a simple one, a boy could work it out, and the 

 obvious solution seems to be satisfactory. 



Since those days I have been a fisherman in many waters — 

 not an angler exactly, but one who fishes for lish and to 

 whose net nothing large or small ever comes amiss, and 

 wherever I go I find cases like this. 



We do not know all the fishes of America yet, nor all those 

 well that we know by sight; still this knowledge will corae 

 with time and patience, and to procure it is a comparatively 

 easy task. It is also easy to ascertain the more common in- 

 habitants of any given stream. It is difficult, however, to 

 obtain negative results which are really results. You can- 

 not often say that a species does not live 'in a certain stream. 

 You can only affirm that you have not yet found it there, 

 and you can rarely fish in any stream so long that you can 

 find nothing that you have not taken before. Still more 

 difficult is it to erather the results of scattered observations 

 into general statements regarding the distribution of fishes. 

 The facts may be so few as to be misleading, or so numerous 

 as to be confusing; and the few writers who have taken up 

 this subject in detail have found both these difficulties to be 

 serious. Whatever general propositions we may maintain 

 must be stated with the modifying clause of "other things 

 being equal;" and other things are never quite equal. 



Still less satisfactory is our attempt to investigate the 

 causes on which our partial generalizations depend— to at- 

 tempt to break to pieces the "other things being equal" 

 which baffle us in our search for general laws. 



We now recognize about six hundred species of fishes as 

 found in the fresh waters of North America, north of the 

 Tropic of Cancer, these representing thirty-four of the 

 natural families. As to their habits, we can divide these 

 species rather roughly into the four categories proposed by 

 Professor Cope, or, as we may call them— 



(1) Lowland fishes; as the bow-fin, pirate perch, large 

 mouthed black bass, sunfishes and some cat fishes. 



(2) Channel fishes; as the channel catfish, the moon-eye, 

 gar-pike, buffalo fishes and drum. 



(3) Upland fishes; as many of the darters, shiners and 

 suckers, and the small-mouthed black bass. 



(4) Mountain fishes; as the brook trout and many of the 

 darters and minnows. 



To these we may add the more or less distinct classes of (5) 

 lake fishes, inhabiting only waters which are deep, clear 

 and cold, as the various species ofwhitefish and the great 

 lake trout; (6) anadromous fishes, or those which ran up 

 from the sea to spawn in fresh waters, as the salmon, stur- 

 geon, shad and striped bass; (7) catadromous fishes, like the 

 eel, which pass down to spawn in the sea; and (8) brackish- 

 water fishes, which thrive best in the debatable waters of 

 the river mouths, as most of the sticklebacks and the Mlli- 

 fishes. 



As regards the range of species, we have every possible 

 graduation from those which seem to be confined to a single 

 river, and are rare even in their restricted habitat, to those 

 which are in a measure cosmopolitan,"- ranging everywhere 

 in suitable waters. 



Still, again, we have all degrees of constancy and incon- 

 stancy in what we regard as the characters of a species. 

 Those found only in a single river basin are usuallyuniform 

 enough; but the"species having a wide range usually vary 

 much in different localities. Continued explorations bring 

 to light, from year to year, new species; but the number of 

 new forms now discovered each year is usually less than the 

 number of recognized species which are yearly proved to be 

 intenable. Three complete lists of the fresh-water fishes of 

 the United States have been published by the present writer. 

 That of Jordan and Copelandt, published in 187(5, enumerates 

 670 species. Tha t of Jordan J in 1878 con tains 065 species, aud 

 that of Jordan | in 1885, 587 species, although upward of 75 

 new species were detected in the nine years which elapsed 

 between the first and the last list. Additional specimens 

 from intervening localities are often found to form connect- 

 ing links among the nominal species, and thus several sup- 

 posed species become in time merged in one. Thusthe com- 

 mon channel catfish (Ictalurvs pttnetatus Rafmesque) of 

 our rivers has been described as a new species not less than 

 twenty-five times, on account of differences, real or imagin- 

 ary, but comparatively trifling in value. 



Where species can readily migrate, their uniformity is pre- 

 served; but whenever a form becomes localized its represen- 

 tatives assume some characters not shared by the species as 

 a whole. 



Comparing a dozen fresh specimens of almost any kind of 

 fish from any body of water with an equal number from 

 somewhere else, one will rarely fail to find some sort of dif- 

 ferences — in size, in form, in color. These differences are 

 obviously the reflex of differences in the environment, and 

 the collector of fish seldom fails to recognize them as such; 

 often it is not difficult to refer the effect to the conditions. 

 Thus, fishes from grassy bottoms are darker than those 

 taken from over sand, and those from a bottom of muck are 

 darker still, the shade of color being in some way not well 

 understood, dependent on the color of the surrotmdings. 

 Fishes in large bodies of water reach a larger size than the 

 same species in smaller streams or ponds. Fishes from foul 

 or sediment- laden waters are paler in color and slenderer in 

 form than those from w r aters which are clear and pure. 

 Again, it is often true that specimens from northern waters 

 are less slender in body than "those from far south; and so on. 

 Other things being equal, the more remote thelocalties from 

 each other, the greater are these differences. 



It is evident, from these and other facts, that the idea of a 

 separate creation for each species of fish in each river basin, 

 as entertained by Agassiz, is wholly incompatible with our 

 present knowledge of the specific distinction or of the geo- 

 graphical distribution of fishes. This is an unbroken grada- 

 tion in the variations from the least to the greatest— from 

 the peculiaraties of the individual, through local varieties, 

 geographical sub-species, species, sub-genera, genera, super- 

 families, and so on, until all fish-like vertebrates are in- 

 cluded in a single bond of union. 



It is, however, evident that not all American types of 

 fishes had their origin in America, or even first assumed in 

 America their present forms. Some of these ate perhaps 

 immigrants from Northern Asia, where they still have their 

 nearest relatives. Still others are evidently modified im- 



♦Thus the chub-sucker (Erimyzon sucetta) in some of its varieties 

 ranges everywhere from Maine to Dakota, Florida and Texas; 

 while a number of other species are scarcely less widely dis- 

 tributed. 



tChei-k List of the Fishes of the Fresh Waters of North America, 

 bv David S. Jordan and Herbert E. Copeland. Bulletin of the 

 Buffalo Society of Natural History, 187(5, pp. 133-1(54. 



tA Catalogue of the Fishes of the Fresh Waters of North 

 America. Bulletin of the United States Geological .Survey, 1S7S, 

 pp. 107-442. 



II A Catalogue of the Fisbes known to inhabit the Waters of 

 North America North of the Tropic of Cancer. Annual Report 

 of the Commissioners of Fish and Fisheries of 1SS4. and 18*55. 



