170 



FOREST AND STREAM. 



[Sept. 18, 1890. 



easily remove the coating by slightly warming the barrels 

 and rubbing it off with alcohol and a rag. 



The coming season, opening Nov. 1, promises to be one 

 of the finest for quail that this part of Illinois has known 

 for many a year, their name in legion- 

 Some of the farmers object to shooters coming on their 

 lands, but if properly approached (that is recognize them 

 as the owners of the land and ask their permission), very 

 few will object. 



And now, in conclusion, let me ask you to request of 

 Kleinman, "Chasseur," and other writers on duck shoot- 

 ing to continue their interesting articles, as they amuse 

 the young and make the old feel gay. Kizer. 



Cyclones on Tap.— Says the Hartford Courant: The 

 usual slaughter of young partridges has begun, and the 

 game law is as usual falling into disrespect in regions 

 where this sort of thing is tolerated. Where the Connec- 

 ticut Association makes itself felt there is more regard 

 for the statutes. Down in New Haven county they are 

 printing a letter from Mr. A. C. Collins that reads as fol- 

 lows: "Sportsmen never shoot out of season. They 

 leave the ranks of sportsmen the minute they shoot un- 

 lawfully and become — poachers. If your sportsmen wish 

 the game and fish protected let them each contribute $1 

 to the association at Hartford and we will guarantee 

 some prosecutions. But as long as sportsmen sit on the 

 fence and yell game protection without lifting a hand (or 

 a dollar from their pocket) to prevent the illegal work so 

 long will the game law be broken. "Within the past two 

 years we have convicted fifty-one persons for violating 

 the game and fish laws throughout the State. If the 

 sportsmen wish to see some convictions let them chip in 

 a dollar and we will attend to the rest. Gentle breezes 

 will not stop poachers from getting in their work. We 

 have several cyclones that we can turn out loose on 

 them. Order your cyclone now. — A. 0. Collins, Pres." 



Texas Game.— Fort Worth, Sept. 1.— Our chickens are 

 now full grown, so I took a trip up the Fort Worth & 

 Denver R. R. branch of the Union Pacific. At Henrietta, 

 100 miles from Fort Worth, I made the first hunt. Hunt- 

 ing over a portion of two miles west of town with two 

 dogs, I killed 14 chickens in two hours. I found chickens 

 in great numbers, but my dogs were too fat to keep 

 it up. The next day I went to Iowa Park, 30 miles, 

 and found good shooting. With a companion from Ver- 

 non we killed 20 brace, and our dogs were now down to 

 work; next day we killed 62 brace, all young grouse. The 

 next day we went into the Waggoner Pasture and killed 

 to three guns 60 brace. Two years ago the grouse left 

 this region and for some unknown reason did not return 

 till this year. This region is well watered, and the peo- 

 ple will let a stranger hunt all he wants. Quail and tur- 

 key abound, and after this date everybody will get good 

 shooting.— Almo. 



Off for a Campaign.— Dayton, Ohio, Sept. 16.— Three 

 hunters, L. L. Brown, C. C. Harman and Charles McCon- 

 neil, are preparing for an expedition by boat down the 

 Ohio and Mississippi rivers to Hickman, Kentucky, thence 

 across the country to Reel Foot Lake and Obine River, 

 where they will shoot ducks and geese until January. 

 The party is thoroughly equipped for roughing it, are 

 experienced in woodcraft, and are going to the same ter- 

 ritory where they camped last winter. In January they 

 will move into Mississippi to hunt bear and deer, and to 

 trap otter, coon, mink, beaver and wildcats, and will not 

 come home until the middle of April, — Brown. 



m mjd H^ivqr fishing. 



FISHING NEAR NEW YORK. 



Tj^OR practical and specific directions to reach several hundred 

 fishing resorts within easy distance of New York city, see 

 issues of 18S8 as follows: April 18, April 25, May 2, May 9, May 30, 

 June 6, June 13, June 20, June 27. 



THE OLD STREAM. 



WELL, here I am again, where I have wanted to be 

 for so many years, on my way to the trout stream 

 of my boyhood. They tell me that there are still some 

 fish left in its waters. I only hope there may be, for I 

 have come a long way to try them and I know there are 

 no better trout in the world than those we used to catch 

 in this stream. I ought to know this, too, for I have tried 

 them in very many places. 



Oh, you dear old stream! You have helped to educate 

 me! You have helped to make me love nature. And 

 they tell me you have made a man of me, too. How 

 often I have seen you in my dreams, and thought over 

 the pleasures that I have enjoyed along your borders. 



But I am here now. And is this really you? Is this the 

 "gulf" that once seemed so deep? And is that Snake 

 Rock that once looked so high? And is this little brook 

 coming in here really the Roarer. What a change. Why, 

 I need not have brought my boots to cross here now. It 

 looks as though I could even wade Frothy Hole. 



And these rocks; have they grown out of the water in 

 my absence? They look as though they had: and there is 

 one with its head above the surface that I never saw 

 before. 



Yes, this must be the place where we always com- 

 menced our fishing — when we were out for more than 

 half a day. It was just below that hill with its granite 

 cap, and although the two small clearings that appeared 

 to be crawling up its sides are overgrown with brush and 

 only the ruins of Ned's house remains, still the hill is 

 there the same. 



But I will commence in the gulf, where I caught my 

 first pounder (what joy it gave me), and fish down two 

 miles or more to the clear old home of my childhood. Ah, 

 but those who made it home to me have long since left 

 this earth. Yes, and long since our name has been almost 

 forgotten here. 



Here goes, though. I will cast below the rocks that 

 the naughty boys loved to call the Devil's Mouth. Why, 

 a rise! I feel the young blood coursing through my veins 

 again. And here comes a fish, I declare! But my! if the 

 rocks have grown taller the fish have grown smaller, if 

 this is a sample of them. Not six inches long. If we 

 ever caught one here (and I have caught many) he was 



never under nine inches. I will try again; this one must 

 go back. No luck. We will move a few step3 down, 

 where the water is smoother. My! what a lot of fish of 

 some kind come,for my flies. Now, one is hooked and 

 they are fighting for the "dropper," I have two. What 

 are they? The biggest "red fin'' I ever saw and a "silver 

 back" 4in. long. When I was a boy some fellows used 

 these (only of smaller size) for bait fish. I try again and 

 again, and every time I cast a minnow or "silver back" is 

 hooked. The whole place seems alive with them; and as 

 the flies come ashore a half bushel of "bait fish," it seems 

 to me, follow them. I think to myself, "1 was only oc- 

 casionally in the past we would see one of these in this 

 stream." 



But I will go on to the pool. That was always a good 

 place. Pool? Pool? Where has it gone, I wonder? Noth- 

 ing but a creek, running through a bed of stones and 

 gravel, about 50ft. long, by 20ft. wide. Longhole is next, 

 if I remember. I come to the place, but there is no hole 

 there. The stream runs close under the bank now. And 

 the bank has no trees on it. I don't see a remnant of 

 the old birch where I shot my first partridge, nor does it 

 look as though there had ever been an otter or a mink 

 caught in this neighborhood. Nothing but little gray 

 birches here now, with a scattering pine or hemlock bush. 



i have a rise, though from under the bank. And O, 

 delight again, I have a fish nearly lOin. long. He is 

 killed. But I must look at him. I lay him on my hand 

 and mark his spots, and ask myself , "Can this really be a 

 descendant of the trout I used to catch in my boyhood?" 



Now there is nothing but boulders for some distance. 

 They seem to have grown too in my absence. The stream 

 that was always half way up their sides (and often over- 

 topped them) is now almost lost as it trickles along down. 

 But there is a nice place below. We used to call it Sugar 

 Bush Pond. I will make my way to that. It is the place 

 where Dave used to fix his set lines and bait them with 

 minnows. He caught some large fish there, and then he 

 would come boasting and trumping over us fellows. We 

 found him out at last. We found the ends of his lines 

 fastened under water out of sight. His fun was up then. 



But this pond is as shrunken as the rest of the stream. 

 No doubt it would have been more shrunken though had 

 it been able to get lower. It could not do this, for on one 

 side a projecting rock dammed it up and on the other a 

 large boulder stood in the way. Everything that floated 

 down was caught between these two points, and. it was 

 not swept away until the fall or spring freshets. 



So I have a promising place to cast and the fly hardly 

 touches the water before a trout is on. He is an eight- 

 incher and the next cast brought me another of nearly 

 ten. "I shall find plenty," I say to myself, "before I get 

 down and have a basketful to carry home." But we 

 shall see. 



No more could be tempted from this hole, while min- 

 nows by the dozen pursue my flies as they come in. In 

 the Sugar Bush itself there is very little change. The 

 trees themselves did not seem to be much larger than I 

 remembered them. This has been preserved, not so the 

 stream. 



I pas3 down and get not a rise. Here the woods had 

 been cleared off for some distance, and there was a mass 

 of stones and gravel spreading out for several yards below 

 me. I bear a cow-bell tinkling on a place that was wild 

 when I was a boy. Now I run into a brier patch near 

 where the blackberries grew, and where we came to shoot 

 partridges in those happy days. It was somewhere here 

 where my dog once attempted to pick up a porcupine in 

 his mouth, and a bee-tree stood not far from that rising. 

 What hunting I have done over that swale and over that 

 hill! Rabbits, partridges, squirrels, wild pigeons have all 

 fallen to my gun here. Now I see only bare rocks and 

 blueberry bushes, where once monarchs of the forest 

 grew, and where we caught rabbits in the winter time is 

 a sheep pasture now. 



No more fish. "Stone Hole" is dried and the mouth of 

 "Rocky Brook" and "Little Bend," "Log Pond," "Still 

 Run" and "Shallow Hole" are no more. You would not 

 think such good trouting places ever had an existence. 

 But there goes a partridge just as of old, and a hen hawk 

 screams far up those hills, and a bluejay is calling here. 

 "It is easier to fish tnis stream now," I say to myself, 

 "than when I remember it." 



And now I come to a hole of which I have no recollec- 

 tion. There was no hole here when 1 was a boy. Ah! I 

 see it has been made by first cutting the timber off of the 

 land, then the earth washed down and the stream made 

 its way into the bank and some brush and stuff got in, 

 and this is the result. The place gives me another fish, 

 and I have a rise which I fail to take. I look into the 

 water here to learn its depth, and then I see thousands of 

 minnows and some fish that I do not know. Maybe they 

 are suckers, but there were none in the brook as I re- 

 member it. 



On I go. I am coming to "Alder Run" now. It was 

 a dreadful place to get through in the past. There was 

 only one way of doing it. That was to wade the stream, 

 and where the alders overlapped part them. There were 

 fine fish in it, though, and many a one have I taken. I am 

 here, but no alders now— only a meadow, cleared on both 

 sides, and I can see the course of the stream. How fresh 

 and green the grass looks!' "Here is a chance," I say, as 

 a thrush springs from her nest in a spruce bush by my 

 side, and the next moment a woodcock goes whistling 

 away. It was near here that in the spring on quiet even- 

 ings they would mount high in the air and then twitter 

 themselves round and round in circles as they came down, 

 calling as a night hawk when they reached the ground. 

 I regret to think, too, that once or twice in my life I was 

 tempted to wait for them and shoot them when they 

 came down. 



But I reckoned without my host in regard to this nice 

 meadow below me. It is a mass of bog-heads of the 

 largest and most treacherous class. I have three falls 

 before I get through it, and had it not been for my boots 

 I would have been mud above my knees. I see several 

 water snakes glide off into the stream as I go along, and 

 in one of my falls I came near going in head first. It is 

 hard to watch one's footing and flies at the same time. 

 Two more trout are the quota it furnished to the basket. 



Nearly a quarter of a mile of rapids after this, and little 

 falls, and then the "still water." One more fish in this 

 distance that I could keep, two that had to go back. 

 Another partridge flies, a rabbit starts, and a ground 

 squirrel scurries along over an old log; and tracing my 

 way through a tangle of rocks and briers I am here, 

 Change, change, change, more bog-meadow on one side 



and a growth of alders on the other; and down some two 

 feet below the level a wide shallow brook where minnows 

 are disporting themselves, with occasionally a small 

 trout, that darts under the nearest bank. Only one fish 

 went into my basket here (the smallest of the lot) in this 

 place, where years ago I always caught my best flab. 

 Kingfishers are passing up and down here all the time. 

 I have seen two hover for a moment over some shall >w 

 pool and then dash down and secure a fish. I should 

 think that such a place would be a paradise for kingfishers. 



But I am nearly done now. When I get over the near- 

 est fence I will be in the old place. Will try Brookmoutb, 

 if it be still there, and Duck Pond, and then to the cars. 

 Two more reward my efforts, while minnows in abundance 

 pursue my flies and hook themselves at their pleasure. 



I have seen the old stream and am satisfied. It did not 

 briDg back my boyhood, nor did the recollections it in- 

 spired reward me for my trouble. It would, perhaps, 

 have been better had I cherished its remembrance instead 

 of trying to renew what can never be again. 



I passed out of the old wood road below the house (th© 

 thrushes and white-throats singing as in evenings of old) 

 saying to myself, "This is only a sample, I suppose, of 

 many a New England trout stream, and I am but one of 

 thousands, no doubt, who would fain revive the past." 



Stillaboy. 



EXPLODING HORN POUTS. 



Editor Forest and Stream: 



Mr. H. C. Jackson, of the dry goods firm of Jackson, 

 Mandall & Daniel, has just returned from Poland SpriDgs, 

 Me. He did not do much fishing on this trip, but to illus- 

 trate the folly of pursuing fish and game to the last ditch, 

 he tells a good story of his boyhood days, when he went 

 a-fishing with a hook of his own manufacture and a line 

 made up of the best piece of twine that he could find. 

 At first his hook was made of a bent pin, but later he 

 learned bow to make a very good fish hook for those days. 

 It was with a hook of his own manufacture that he used to 

 catch horn pouts in the creek — not always to eat, for it 

 was a country where fish were plenty in those daj s of a 

 better quality than horn pouts. But the love of the sport 

 made a fisherman of him, as it does many an active, in- 

 telligent boy, fit to be at the head of one of the most 

 enterprising dry goods houses in the country in later 

 years. The creek ran across the road under the little 

 bridge. On the right hand side the wagons were driven 

 down through the little stream and the thirsty horses 

 were allowed to drink. The stone wall was just above, 

 and over the wall was the deep pool where the h >rn pouts 

 were taken, sometimes in goodly numbers. Finally there 

 came a very dry season. The water dried up in the road- 

 way where the horses watered, and day by day the water 

 grew lower and lower in the pool in the bottom of the 

 meadow over the wall. At last, in the haying time, the 

 boy Jackson observed that there was scarcely a fool of 

 water in the now very narrow creek. He wondered 

 where all those horn pouts were. The hay rake was in 

 his hand, and it was but the work of a moment to reach 

 across the pool and draw it through the water, following 

 the bottom. Several horn pouts were quickly jerked out 

 and lay writhing in the sun. This was a novel way of 

 fishing — with a hay rake. It may be novel to some of 

 the trout jiggers, and they can take a rake with their kit 

 this fall to use on the spawning beds, if the notion is 

 worth anything. The Jackson boy was pleased with his 

 success. He continued to jerk the fish out with quick 

 movements of the rake till about every horn pout in the 

 pool was on the bank. It took years to restore even the 

 horn pout fishing to that pool. But they were taken. 

 What was to be done with them? was the question. They 

 were not wanted to eat. The terrible horns about the 

 head of the pouts had frequently injured the hands of the 

 boy when he had previously caught them, and now was 

 a chance for revenge on the whole race. A live one was 

 placed on a smooth stone. Another stone, as big as the ; 

 boy could lift, was let fall on to the fish, when — bang I 

 What a report! The bladder of the fish went off like a \ 

 small cannon. Here was the sport. A new idea. An- 

 other and another followed with a satisfactory noise, and 

 there was no further question as to the use that the 

 raked out horn pouts should be put to. Such is usually 

 the case. The fish and game that are taken foolishly — in 

 an unsportsmanlike manner — are generally not of the 

 slightest use to the catchers, except it be to make a re- 

 port. Special. 



CHICAGO AND THE WEST. 



CHICAGO, Sept. 13 —Messrs. W. H. Bartlett, Arthur 

 Orr and C. L. Williams, of Evanstown suburb, and 

 Mr. A. C. Bartlett, of Peoria, all well known B^ard of 

 Trade men here, are outfitting to-day for an extended 

 trip to the Turtle Lake country of northern Wisconsin. 

 They go over the Hurley Division of the Milwaukee, 

 Lake Shore and Western Railway, and go in the char- 

 tered Pullman hunting car "Nimrod." They go in good 

 shape and to a good country. It is not altogether clear 

 what they intend to shoot at this season, but they cer- 

 tainly ought to get fine mascallonge fishing after the cold 

 snap we have just had out here. They may get a few 

 ducks, and could doubtless gee deer inseason. The char- 

 acter of their outfit may be inferred from the fact that 

 to-day one of their party invested $160 in sporting mate- 

 rial. * Tney certainly should have a pleasant time in their 

 chosen country. 



Messrs. R. M. Bissell, A. V. Armour, H. N. Tuttle and 

 R. W. Hamill, all of this city, start next week for a mas- 

 callonge trip, and may get over the Michigan line and get 

 a deer. They go in at State Line station, taking Doats 

 there to the west, and striking into some country which 

 they believe is not visited or known. Good fortune go 

 with them. ■■ E. Hough. 



The Jeannotte.— Quebec, Aug. 20.— Lieut.-Governor 

 Angers and his son caught I25lbs. of beautif ul trout, in less 

 than three hours, at the Jeannotte River last Monday. 

 On Wednesday a party of three Americans caught about 

 the same quantity, and on Thursday five members of the 

 Orleans Fishing Club, who have leased the Jeannotte 

 River, did also very well. The trout ranged Jrom 2 to 

 4§lbs., specimens of which could be seen yesterday in the 

 window at the Chinic Hardware Company. 



Mb. J: Hakueb, of -Clear Said, Pa., in this issue advertises tot 

 sale the patent oi a combination bieecn-loaumg shotgun and rifle. 

 Their factory and plant was destioyed b> Ore and they have not 

 the necessary capital to pneh ite Bale,— Adv. 



