536 



FOREST AND STREAM. 



[■July 14, 1887. 



SALMON AND TROUT. 



SALMON fishing in New Brunswick waters has not yet 

 been much of a success this year, that is if we are to 

 judge by the reports. Several parties from Boston have 

 tried them, but even where costly leases are presumed to 

 protect the fishing till the lessee arrives, there are no fish 

 or very few fish. Two gentlemen from this city— they 

 would* not want their names mentioned— took up the line 

 of march, or rather took <he line of railroad, to a salmon 

 preserve the other day. They were supplied with all that 

 modern invention could provide for a successful trip, but 

 they have returned empty-handed. They are not pleased 

 with New Brunswick salmon waters this year. They have 

 both had great luck on former occasions, but now they 

 declare that there is a scarcity of fish. Black flies! Don't 

 mention them in the hearing of either of these two sports- 

 men for a year to come, no more than you would mention 

 one of the occasions of great suffering that may have been 

 a part of their lives. They were "perfectly dreadful!" 

 The outfit of the sportsmen contained some of the best fly 

 preventives known to the woods fisherman of the day, 

 but all to no purpose, or at least to no purpose after the 

 compound had been exposed to the rays of the sun or the 

 scorching of the parched atmosphere for a few moments. 

 Then the flies were ready to live upon what the inventor 

 druggist had designed for their destruction. When fresh 

 and pungent the"" swarms of blood-thirsty insects were 

 turned back for a moment, but soon they worked through 

 the wall of aroma, and once the most venturesome of the 

 throng had drawn blood the rest came on like a pavk of 

 hungry wolves. These gentlemen say that the only re- 

 spectable feature about the black fly is that "he retires at 

 nightfall, while his brother in deviltry, the mosquito, 

 carouses all night." The accounts of salmon fishing in 

 the Penobscot,~at Bangor, are still good. The number of 

 smaller fish being taken is large. 



The brook stripper is abroad. Accounts of 200 and oven 

 up to 500 to the catch are far too common. When will 

 the day of such foolish and unmanly slaughter, such 

 wicked waste of what might be reasonable sport if allowed 

 to mature, be done? The cheap writer in the country 

 papers, the country editor who hangs out his porringer 

 for whatever the lover cf cheap notoriety may drop in; 

 both are to blame in a measure for this deplorable de- 

 struction of fingerling trout. They chronicle the big 

 catch of little fish, bat carefully leave out the little part 

 of the item. They make the' catcher out a brave and 

 an expert with rod and line, when rather he ought to be 

 ashamed of his deed. But the scribbler usually eats the 

 fish — or a part of them — and what can be expected of a 

 man of little caliper with a lot of baby trout in his stom- 

 ach? But the spirit of protection is on the move, and 

 legislation in Maine will in due time be asked to stay this 

 destruction of nursery stock. It begins to be understood 

 that these brooks and streams are the nurseries where the 

 little trout seek safety from the larger fish till they are 

 better grown, and that to take a fingerling is to kill what 

 would be a great fish, but perhaps in deeper waters, if left 

 alone. Those who have given the subject the most study 

 are on record as believing that to protect the smaller fish 

 in their growing places is one of the true secrets of suc- 

 cessful fish propagation. Again, the landlords and guides 

 in some of the trouting sections of the northern New 

 England States are becoming greatly dissatisfied with 

 this brook stripping, especially if it be done by those they 

 term "the natives." They mean the inhabitants of their 

 own and adjoining towns; and it is by such fishermen 

 that the worst of the brook stripping is done. They alone 

 have the patience — the hardihood — to travel through 

 brier and tangle and up the bed of the rocky stream for 

 miles, simply for the sake of the little trout. The city 

 sportsman — the vacationist — is apt to tire on the first 

 mile, and the flies are too much for him by the end of 

 the second. These "natives'" leave the landlord no money. 

 Said one of them to me the other day, "I am sick of 



this brook stripping by the men and boys of and the 



other tows below here. They come with their own teams 

 driving in over our road, which it has cost us so much 

 labor and money to build. They bring all that they have 

 while in the woods, both for themselves and their horses, 

 and the result is that we never get a dollar out of them. 

 They camp on the stream and they stay till they have 

 taken every trout. They catch them by every means 

 that they I now of, be it fair or foul. They will even 

 stoop to dynamite cartridges in a pool where there are a 

 few trout left, too shy to take the hook. They strip the 

 brook till there is nothing left for the reasonable sports- 

 man who comes later and pays us for board and teams, 

 and is satisfied with a few large trout taken on the fly! 

 I am sick of such work. We need a law that shall limit 

 the number of trout that a man can take to 25 or 30. 

 Then the fishermen will try for the larger ones, and will 

 put back the smaller ones. The next time you write for 

 the Forest and Stream write something that will make 

 a man ashamed of taking hundreds of little brook trout, 

 just for the name of it." 

 The following item is from a daily paper of yesterday : 

 "Two hundred trout in two hours is the record of an 

 Elm House boarder on a late trip to a brook in the woods 

 just west of Madrid. They were small, but toothsome, 

 and fairly offset Chicadee's two suckers a day which was 

 mentioned as an index of our piscatorial attractions. 

 Since then a string of pickerel has come to our frying- 

 pan, and they were even sweeter than the little 

 trout." 



This is from an occasional correspondent, and it is 

 evident from the reading of the item what was upper- 

 most on the mind of the writer. Truly toothsomeness 

 and the fryingpan are mighty elements. The pen ! the 

 sword ! Both bow to the frying-pan. But "piscatorial 

 attractions" even can soon be dissolved in a frying-pan. 



The latest reports from the Maine trout regions speak 

 of another rise in the waters, and consequently good fish- 

 ing. It appears that recent rains have raised the streams 

 in eastern Maine, as well as some of the lakes, and that 

 this has brought good fishing. It is remarked by nearly 

 every sportsman who has lately returned, that the season 

 on trout lias held out most remarkably. This is also true 

 of salmon in the Penobscot. There are also reports of 

 big catches of trout in locations where the sportsmen 

 have almost ceased to frequent, for the reason that the 

 idea had got out that the streams were exhausted. The 

 fishing in some of the ponds in Somerset eour ty, more nota- 

 bly Pleasant Ridge Ponds and Carrying Place Pond, has 

 been better this year than for a long time." It is thought that 

 the higher water has had something to do wkh the better 



sport. There has been good fishing at the outlet of Moose- 

 head Lake, and for a short distance down the Kennebec. 

 The Moose River region is being more thoroughly visited 

 by sportsmen than usual this year, and there are reports 

 of some fine catches of trout at Moxie, both at the falls 

 and on the stream. These catches of trout are many of 

 them larger than they should be. They come within the 

 scope of the brook stripping, wliich has come to be such 

 a shame in many sections in Maine. The Rangeley region 

 is now pretty thoroughly populated with summer tourists 

 and vacationists, and it is the grand object of some of the 

 local and county papers in that part of the State to keep 

 up the idea that there is good fishing even in July and 

 August, or when the mercury is running from 90 "to 100 

 in the shade. Well, let the tourists and vacationists have 

 all the fishing there is when the weather is as hot as it 

 was last week, they will the sooner tire of such things, 

 and the field will be all the more clear for the real sports- 

 man, who is willing to go to the lake and stream at the 

 time when the fish do bite, instead of when it is fashion- 

 able to take a vacation. 



There are reports of several catches of landlocked sal- 

 mon with the fly this season. It has always been a ques- 

 tion with sportsmen, as they all well know, as to whether 

 the landlocked salmon was ever to be much of a success 

 as a fish to rise to the fly. Fish Commissioner Henry O. 

 Stanley has given the subject a good deal of attention, 

 being an excellent fly-fisherman himself , and also tying 

 with his own hands some of the best trout and salmon 

 flies in use. He has caught landlocked salmon on the fly 

 in Weld Pond and other waters, but at the same time he 

 has had but little success in that method of fishing in the 

 Sebago waters, where the landlocked salmon is found 

 naturally — that is, where there is no record of the sea 

 salmon having been put in, from which the original land- 

 locked salmon sprang. But now comes Mr, R. C, Stan- 

 ley with the report that he took six landlocked salmon in 

 Sebec Lake last week, all with the fly. The united weight 

 of these fish was 271bs. Mr. Stanley says that he had 

 nearly all of his success with the brown-hackle. 



Special. 



ANGLING LITERATURE OF AMERICA.-dl. 



IN 1850 the indefatigable Storer, of Massachusetts, 

 wrote up the "Fishes of Nova Scotia and Labrador." 

 Dr. Gilpin, Matthew Jones, of Halifax, N. S., and Rev. 

 M. Harvey, of Newfoundland, were also industrious 

 pamphleteers. In 1852 Guard published his "Fresh Water 

 Fishes of North America." In 1855 the ichthyology of 

 the Northwest was fairly covered by Dr. Suckley. U. S. 

 A., in the "Pacific Railroad Reports." Moses Parley 

 printed his "Fisheries of New Brunswick" in 1862. In 

 the same year Holbrook's ambitious work on the ' "Fishes 

 of South Carolina" appeared — a large quarto, with colored 

 portraits of the fishes described. The civil war broke out 

 before the work was finished, and the subsequent death 

 of the author precluded its continuance. In 1866 Lord's 

 "Naturalist in British Columbia" was published. Other 

 books, of more or less interest to the angler, appeared 

 from time to time, but none of special value. Nothing 

 like a comprehensive manual was published until 1864, 

 when Roosevelt's "Game Fish of the North" came out. 

 That was during the year of the first lease of a Canadian 

 salmon river, the Nepissiguit, and the book made special 

 reference to that famous stream in its chapter on salmon 

 fishing, itself a new revelation to the fraternity of fisher- 

 men. How to fish for salmon, and the implements to be 

 used, and a description of the sport, had never been pre- 

 sented before. The volume was a godsend to anglers, for 

 it included the technology of angling, fly-fishing, tackle- 

 making, entomology, fishculture, camping out, etc. It 

 described new devices, new methods and new fields of 

 sport, which had come into use during the sixteen years 

 that had intervened since the enterprising Browne had 

 prepared his "Angler's Guide." Moreover, it introduced 

 new species of fishes, not previously regarded for sport, 

 and identified others which had been in doubt. The 

 whole subject was in chaos at that time, scientifically 

 considered. Experts had not even quite determined 

 whether a brook trout and a samlet (parr) were the same, 

 or that brook trout were not, in fact, immature salmon. 

 The world has moved since then. 



In 1865, the year following, Roosevelt put ottt a supple- 

 mentary book, entitled "Superior Fishing," relating 

 chiefly to the fishes of the Great Lakes, and touching the 

 lately mooted subject of fish protection. The two books 

 together covered the common brook trout, the sea trout, 

 the salmon, landlocked salmon, the coregoni group, the 

 common carp, the mascalonge, pickerel, and great north- 

 ern pike (now known as the Mississippi mascalonge, in dis- 

 tinction from the mascalonge of the St. Lawrence sys- 

 tem), the two then scarcely recognized varieties of black 

 bass, the rock bass, yellow perch, pike perch or wall-eye, 

 the great lake trout (namaycush), lake trout, and sis- 

 cowet, all of them fresh-water fish ; and the bluefish, 

 striped bass, Spanish mackerel, and snapping mackerel 

 (which has since been identified as a young bluefish), all 

 salt-water fish — twenty -one varieties all told. The same 

 year "Uncle" Thad Norris produced his "American An- 

 gler's Book," a magnificent illustrated octavo of 700 pages 

 (distinctively American, and no mistaking its type), of the 

 same general character and scope as Mr. Roosevelt's dual 

 publication, and including descriptions of some fifty 

 varieties of fishes, of which sixteen were salt-water forms; 

 but with the disadvantage of being not al ways accurate. 

 The author was somewhat " mixed " in his ichthyology, 

 and liable to describe without having seen. His careless- 

 ness in these respects drew upon himself the gentle repre- 

 hension of certain professional Canadians, which he had 

 the good sense to receive graciously, and print in an ap- 

 pendix to later editions. For the most part, however, the 

 book can be relied on, and is serviceable. In 1869, Genio 

 C. Scott, an expert in trout and striped bass fishing, 

 printed a copiously illustrated octavo volume, entitled 

 "Fishing in American Waters," which is open to the same 

 objections as Norris's book, only more so. He devoted 

 large space to salt-water fish, with many of which he was 

 well acquainted, and would have made "a first-class book 

 had he not prospected beyond his depth. By this time, 

 too, science had made considerable progress, so that his 

 errors became the more glaring. The praiseworthy 

 quality about Roosevelt is that he seldom makes mis- 

 takes. 



The same year Mr. Allerton described the monster trout 

 of Maine, which have been caught of 181bs. weight, in a 

 very creditable book with the rather general" title of 

 "Brook Trout Fishing." There were other readable books 



of the generic type, some of them having high literary 

 merit (Dawson's "Pleasures of Angling" being one of them, 

 and Dr. Updegraffs "Botlinco" another), but whose 

 specific value consisted in the acquaintance they made 

 with new resorts* such as the Adirondacks (Headley, 

 1856), the White Mountains (Prime, 1867), the Delaware 

 Waters (Krider, 1858) the Blue Ridge of Virginia (Strother, 

 1856)i the Magog District of Canada (1867), the Upper Mis- 

 sissippi (Oliver Gibbs, 1869), and Carolina Sports (Elliott). 

 Bertram's "Harvest of the Sea" (1866) was valuable to 

 naturalists, containing much new information about 

 Florida fishes. By the close of the decade fishculture 

 attracted increased attention, and we therefore note sun- 

 dry books on that subject, to wit: "Artificial Fish Breed- 

 ing," by Fry (1866); "Fish Culture for Shad, Salmon, etc." 

 (1868); "Directions for Raising Trout" (Stone, 1868), "Do- 

 mesticated Trout" (1872), bv the same author, and "Trout 

 Culture," by Slack (1872). Perhaps a full bibliography of 

 American books to the date last named will assist the 

 collector and interest the reader, in spite of the partial 

 recapitulation, and I therefore venture to interpolate it 

 here as a sort of relay house on our historical tour. I 

 claim it as the most perfect fist yet printed: 



BIBLIOGRAPHY OF AMERICAN ANGLING LITERATURE. 



Rafinesque— Ohio River and tributaries 1820 



Fishes of Ohio, Kirtlaud .1838 



Memoirs of Schuylkill Fishing Club from 1758 to 11320 .1830 



Observations on Angling, Smith , » < 1883 



Massachusetts Fishes, Hitchcock .. ,1835 



Rambles hi North America, Latiobe ...... ., .1835 



Ichthyology of Massachuset ts, Storer , 1689 



Embryology of the Salmon, Agassi ss 1812 



Fishes of New York, Tic. Kay. \*4st 



American Anglers' Guide (English) 1848 



Pishes of North America. Scorer , 1846 



Walton-Bcthune 1848 



Fishculture, Gaiiick 1848 



Adventures of an Angler in Canada; Tour of the Saguenay, 



Lailman 1848 



Owl Creek Cabin Letters, Prime 1848 



L'Acadie (London) 1849 



Fish and Fishing, Forrester 1849 



American Anglers' Guide, J. J. Browne 1849 



American Sportsman, Lewis 1ST.0 



Fisher's Manual for the United States 1850 



Long Lake, Todd 1850 



With Hook and Line, Forrester 1851 



Fresh- Water Fishes of North America, Girard 1852 



Old House by the River, Prime 1853 



Sporting Anecdotes, Klapp-Krider 1853 



Blackwater Chronicle, Strother 1853 



Hills, Lakes and Streams, Hammond 1854 



Pacific R. R. Reports, Suckley 1855 



Wet Days at Edgewood, G. K. Marvel 1855 



Virginia Illustrated, Strother 1856 



Adirondacks, Headley 185G 



Frank Forester's Manual 1857 



Hudson Bay, or Every-day Life in the Wilds of North America.1858 



St. Lawrence and its Tributaries, Hattle 1859 



Carolina Sports, Elliott 1859 



Salmon Fishing in Canada. Hamilton 1860 



Fisheries of New Brunswick, Perley 1863 



Fishes of South Carolina. Holbrook 1862 



Game Fish of the North, Roosevelt 1864 



Arcadia (Northern New York) 1864 



American Angler's Book, Norris 1865 



Shooting and Fishing, Revoil 1865 



Superior Fishing, Roosevelt 1865 



Naturalist in British Columnia, Lord 1866 



Artificial Fish Breeding, Fry 1866 



Later Years' Fishing, Prime 1867 



Magog District 1867 



Hints to Anglers, Bell 1888 



Random Casts .1868 



Adirondacks, Murray 1868 



Directions for Raising Trout, Stone 1868 



Lake Pepin Fish Chowder, Gibbs 1869 



Brook Trout Fishing, Allerton 1869 



Fishing in American Waters, Scott 1869 



Forest Life in Acadie, Hardy i860 



Chiploquorgan. Dash wood 1871 



Trout Culture. Slack 1872 



Domesticated Trout, Stone 1873 



Hallock's "Fishing Tourist" appeared in 1873. It was 

 chiefly a record of personal observation and travel, which 

 covered all the trout and salmon waters of the continent, 

 including the Pacific coast. It introduced the Michigan 

 grayling, which thenceforward became such a popular 

 game fish that it was well nigh exterminated in the 

 course of the succeeding ten years. In 1877 the same 

 author, being editor of Forest and Stream at the time, 

 printed the "Sportsman's Gazetteer," a volume of 900 

 pages, wliich became at once the standard reference book 

 of American sportsmen. It was strictly an encyclopedia. 

 It described and classified some three hundred varieties 

 of salt and fresh-water fishes, giving their local names 

 and synonyms, the first attempt ever made in a popular 

 work. It included also a copious glossary of sporting 

 terms, and a complete directory to all the sporting locali- 

 ties in each State, Territory and Canadian Province, by 

 townships and counties, evon to far-off Alaska — a region 

 whose ichthyology has since been treated at length by the 

 same author in "Our N w Alaska." The "Sportsman's 

 Gazetteer" made the first classification of Pacific coast 

 fishes, the same having been revised and verified by Pro- 

 fessor Gill, whose scientific work plays such important 

 part in advanced ichthyology. In 1878 Professor Jordan 

 issued his "Manual of Vertebrates," a comprehensive and 

 much needed work, fully up to the times. Ferguson's 

 "Fishes of Maryland," and the annual reports of the 

 thirty or more State fish commissioners, formed import- 

 ant accessions to the rapidly accumulating knowledge on 

 fish subjects. Henshall's "Book of the Black Bass"(18Sl) 

 was a special monography of great value. "Sport with Gun 

 and Rod" (1 883) is deserving of mention as an elegant collo- 

 cation of sketches wliich combine vivid style with practical 

 information. In the technology of angling four books 

 have appeared during the past three years, which are 

 quite thorough and comprehensive, and altogether in dis- 

 pensable to the practical angler. "Fishing with the Fly" 

 (Or vis-Cheney, 1886) is illustrat :d with colored lithographs 

 of salmon, bass, and trout flies, in no less than 143 popular 

 and approved patterns. "Fly Rod and Tackie" (Wells, 

 1885) is a thoroughly American book of instruction, cover- 

 ing the entire field of angling mechanics in a masterful 

 way, with drawings, diagrams, and demonstrations of 

 perfunctory problems. The author is somewhat theoretical, 

 and consequently dogmatic and arbitrary, a disposition 

 wliich is made especially manifest in his more pretentious 

 but less reliable book " The American Salmon Angler." 

 Old anglers accept as much of it as they can approve and 

 quietly reject the balance. A more thorough paced book, 

 as a horseman might term it, is Keene's "Fishing Tackle" 

 (1886). The author is an Englishman, resident in the 

 United States, but equally at home in both countries, and 

 altogether dispassionate and unprejudiced. He seems to 

 have the happy faculty of a wise discrimination and 

 judicious selection, rejecting whatever is bad in this or 

 the other, and striving to combine, hold fast, and recom- 

 mend that which is good. "Fly-Fishing and Fly-Making' 



