312 



FOREST AND STREAM. 



[Mat 7, 1891. 



Rangeleys. They go every season, and are very success- 

 ful. Their names are M. P. Clough, Frank Keene, J. S. 

 Bartlett, and a brother of Mr. Bartlett, wlaose initials I 

 have not at hand at this writing. But I promise him 

 that if he catches a big trout that T will find his initials, 

 even if it requu-es a special trip to Lynn for that purpose. 

 The boys were with this party last year and caught the 

 big trout, Mr. Harry Button and wife, of the dry goods 

 firm of Houghton & Button, will early go to their beau- 

 tiful camps at Oupsuptic. They spend a good part of 

 each season there with numerous friends. The celebrated 

 Houghton & Button camps are in charge of Billy Soule, 

 one of the best guides in the Rangeley region. Mr. Geo. 

 T. Freeman, of Harrington & Freeman, jewelers, will 

 make a few days' trip to Camp Stewart, with friends, 

 about May 25. Mr. Mark HoUiugsworth, with his friend 

 T. B. Stewart, will go to the Upper Bam as soon as the 

 ice is out. Mr. Stewart will spend a good part of the 

 •eason there as in seasons gone by. Mr. Hollinggworth 

 is an artist as well as a sportsman. Mr. Hatch, of Henry 

 <fc Hatch, boot and shoe auctioneers, "with a party of 

 friends, is booked for the Rangeleys. Mr. Hatch is an 

 gld-time A'isitor to these waters. 



Other p.arties are also booked for the Rangeleys. The 

 Gol. H. T, RockweU party is one of the best known par- 

 ties that visits the Rangeley Lakes. Besides the genial 

 Colonel may be mentioned Mr. E. B. Haskpll, of the Bos- 

 ton Herald, Mr. Frank Priest and several others. The 

 Tuttle party must not be forgotten. This party goes to 

 then- beautiful summer home, Lake Point Cottage, early 

 in the season. Numbers of the Oquossoc Angling Asso' 

 elation will early be at their camps. 



Mr. Hall, with Rice, Kendall & Co., will make a trip 

 to some celebrated trout waters in the vicinity of Yar- 

 mouth, Nova Scotia, in due season. He will be accom- 

 panied by friends, and they are sure of trout, Mr. Baniel 

 G-uun, a friend of the Forest and Stream, mentions a 

 letter which he received from the same fishing grounds 

 last week, stating that already some good creels of trout 

 had been taken there, ]\Ir. Gunn and Mr. Hall both slip 

 away quietly down there, and each time they come back 

 much please'd with the spot they have found. Mr. Gunn 

 also fishes for sea trout in that part of the country. He 

 has a record of a perch, a pickerel, a trout and a rattle- 

 snake all on the same cast. But a part of that story— 

 the true part— has already been told in Forest and 

 Stream. 



Salmon fishing at Bangor is not proving a success this 

 year. A gentleman came back to Boston the other day. 

 He had been there for a week, and had tried the salmon 

 faithfully, with a result of only one, weighing some 121b8. 

 He is discouraged, and does not believe that there is to 

 be a run of salmon at Bangor this year. He thinks that 

 either the netting from the river below, or the fact that 

 considerable of the restocking has been in the streams 

 below Bangor, is to blame for the lack of salmon there 

 this year. He says that but few outside sportsmen are 

 staying at Bangor now, though the pool is very thor- 

 oughly fished by local fishermen. His idea is that if the 

 salmon restocking fry are put into the streams below 

 Bangor that they return to these streams to breed, instead 

 of coming ux^ to Bangor. In connection with this subject 

 it may be mentioned that Mr, F. R. Shattuck, well known 

 to the readers of the Forest and Stream, has word from 

 Chatham of the taking of a S71bs. salmon in the weir at 

 that point. The fish was brought to Boston for sale, 

 tbougi the neighbors ofEered ninety eejxts a pound for it. 



NEW ENGLAND FISHING. 



THE ice is out of the Sebago waters and the landlocked 

 salmon fishermen are abroad. A Portland gentle- 

 man (I did not learn his name) has taken two, one of 

 which weighed lOlbs. Other parties in Maine are at the 

 Sebago Lake, and the report is that the salmon are fol- 

 lowing very closely upon the schooling of the landlocked 

 smelt, and their m'ovement up the streams to spawn. It 

 is a curious feature, in regard to this curious fish, that 

 they follow the smelt each spring, and that then is about 

 the only time to take them. One or two Boston parties 

 will also go to the Sebago for landlocked salmon. One 

 party is already made up to go next Friday. It consists 

 of Mr. L. B, Chapman, salesman with Bame, Stoddard & 

 Kendall, well known fishing tackle dealers in this city; 

 Geo. Rogers, a Boston coal dealer; L. K. Harlow, a Boston 

 artist; Br. Befriez, of Brookline, and N. E. M. Webster, of 

 Boston. 



The ice is not out of the Rangeleys, nor is it out of 

 Moosehead at this writing. But all the same I believe 

 that the interest in the moving of the ice in those trout 

 waters has never been greater than this year. It would 

 be no exaggeration to say that fifty prominent business 

 and professional men are waiting for the news of the 

 going out of the ice from those lakes, and by this I mean 

 that they are men with their tackle all ready to the last 

 sinker in place, ready for the word that the iee has gone 

 out. They then will take the first trains for the old fish- 

 ing grounds. Year after year they do the same thing, 

 and in these fishing trips they renew their youth and 

 gain strength for another year with the battle of life. 

 Gray hairs begin to mark the kindly visages of the most 

 of these veterans with Line and rod, for veterans they are 

 and there are apparently few to take their places. Indeed 

 young men in these ranks are few; they are old and mid- 

 dle-aged. Mr. Chapman, mentioned above, will supple- 

 ment his landlocked salmon trip by a trouting excursion 

 to Richardson Lake as soon as the ice is out. He will 

 doubtless be accompanied by a party of five or six, 

 though only three or fom- are now sure of going. 



Prominent among these will be Mr. G, W. M. Guild, a 

 Boston jeweler, who has a record of a 9|lbs. trout taken 

 at the Narrows, Richardson Lake, last 'year, a note of 

 which the Forest aih) Stream had at the time. He will 

 be accompanied by his friend Mr. Fox, of New York. 

 Mr. Fox also has a record of an Slbs. trout on the same 

 day as Mr, Guild secured his trout. But his success was 

 nipped in the bud. The day was a very cold and windy 

 one. The two happy fishermen concluded to go ashore 

 soon after they had taken their big trout. They landed 

 at the wharf of Camp Vive Vale, in order to wait for the 

 downward trip of the little steamer to take them to the 

 Middle Bam. The hands of the guide were slippery, IMr. 

 Fox's trout was heavy, and down he went between the 

 boat and the wharf. ' They waited till the afternoon boat, 

 hoping that the trout, apparently dead, would rise. But 

 they waited in vain, and poor Mr. Fox went back to New 



York bewailing his fate. He has been to those lakes 

 many times and has not yet succeeded in saving a big 

 trout. Mqy bis success be better this year. 



Mr. Walter Hill, of John. P, Squire & Co. , the noted 

 Boston pork packpre, will again go to Moosehead this 

 year. He will wait till the weather is fairly warm, for 

 Mrs. Hdl will accompany him. Mrs. Hill is a daughter 

 of John P. Squire. Last year Mr, Hill proposed that she 

 take the trip; she was hardly in favor of the idea, never 

 having had any experience with line and rod, but she 

 was willing to try it "just for once." She succeeded in 

 landing several fine trout for Moosehead and was much 

 pleased with her success. This jear she was the first to 

 propose the trip to Moosehead in that family, rather than 

 any other vacation. 



The Kineo Club will go to Moosehead soon after the 

 first of June. They go for fly-fishing only, not caring for 

 trolling. This club is made up of Mr. J. B. Thomas, of 

 the Standard Sugar Refinery, a prominent officer of the 

 American Sugar Refining Co. Mr. Thomas is also com- 

 modore of the club. The other members are J, Walter 

 Sanborn, Frank Wise and W, S, Hills, of the flour and 

 grain trade; H. S. Nickerson, of the wholesale grocery 

 trade; Mr. Beal, of Beal, Higgins & Henderson, of the 

 dry goods trade; and Mr. Launat, of Estes & Lauriat, a 

 well-known book firm of Boston. This club always en- 

 gages one or two of the little steamers that ply* upon 

 Maine's taland sea, and they enjoy life only as such men 

 can enjoy it. 



But one of the largest parties to the Maine lakes this 

 spring will be the one planned by Mr. A. N. Parlin, of 

 the Magee Furnace Co., of Boston. Mr. Parlin is a Maiae 

 boy, and visited the Rangeleys in his early boyhood. It 

 was then that the love for such outings was acquired, and 

 he has succeeded in instilling something of his enthusiasm 

 into his partners and friends. He has almost annually 

 visited Mooselucmaguntic for some twenty years. Rarely 

 has he missed a year, and he has been twice a year with 

 sufficient frequency to more than make up for any loss of 

 an annual trip. With him this spring will be Mr. Geo. 

 B. Clapp, a retired Boston broker; Mr. John Magee, of 

 the Magee Furnace Co., with his wife and daughter; 

 Frank A. Magee and wife; Mr. A. M. Kidder, wife and 

 daughter, of Plymouth, N. H. Mr. Kidder is of the firm 

 of A. M. Kidder & Co., of Boston and New York, The 

 party will also consist of Mrs. Pratt, of St. Louis, and 

 Thomas Cunningham and wife, of Boston. Mrs. Cunning- 

 ham has a record of a lOlbs. landlocked salmon last year. 



The brook fishermen are having some sport in the 

 streams in Massachusetts and Connecticut. Mr. Toby, 

 salesman with Jackson, Mandall & Baniell, Avith a friend, 

 fished a brook in the western part of the State the other 

 day, with the result of a handsome string of trout. The 

 brooks are now low in this State and the weather is fine. 

 Those who visit the streams with rod and reel are gener- 

 ally happy with fair creels, and doubly happy in the 

 outing. 



The question of the ice leaving the Maine lakes is still 

 an uncertain one. Summing up all the opinions that I 

 can get from the Maine papers and from private letters, 

 and then striking an average, that average indicates 

 about the 10th of May for the ice to leave the Rangeleys, 

 and a day or two earlier for Moosehead. Still, very 

 much will depend upon the weather. The woods are 

 still well supplied with snow back in those regions, and 

 the streams are very liigh. On the first of May it will 

 again be legal for everybody to fish Maine waters. The 

 inhabitants of the State, who can fish during the months 

 of February, March and April, for their own use, have 

 taken some good creels of trout from the streams in the 

 southern part of the State. 



The latest announcement in the line of controlling the 

 forests and waters is that the board of directors of the 

 Megantic Club has secured the camps at Big Island Pond 

 lately operated by Julian K. Viles and Kennedy Smith, 

 and executed a five years' lease with the Berlin Mills Co. 

 for the whole Seven Ponds township. Such is indeed the 

 case. Another jjublic fishing and hunting resort has be- 

 come the extension of a preserve of a powerful club, and 

 strangers will be invited to stay away. 



Capt. Fred C. Barker writes the Phillips Phonograph 

 that four caribou seem to be spending the most of their 

 time about the Bemis end of Mooselucmaguntic, as they 

 have been seen several times from the camps. The other 

 day they came out on the lake to within a mile of camp 

 and stayed around all the afternoon. With the aid of a 

 good glass parties at Bemis get a fine view of them. 



Special. 



AN ACCIDENTAL BASS. 



Editor Forest and Stream: 



Last summer while fly-fishing for black bass I was 

 casting along as we were floating through some shallow 

 water, when my attention was attracted by a large bass 

 jumping out of the water several times some distance 

 below us. I told W. to row down there and we would 

 try him. We anchored the boat about 75ft. above where 

 we saw him jump. I cast and changed flies till I was 

 sure I had none that suited him, and then we concluded 

 to try bait-fishing, as they were not taking the flies very 

 well that day anyway. I took off my iiies and baited 

 with a helgramite and a stone catfish and let them float 

 down over where he had been jumping, in a place where 

 the water was quite deep, but no bite. After we had re- 

 mained thei'e a few minutes I commenced to reel xip my 

 line slowly, when I felt a peculiar jerking, such as I had 

 never felt from a fish before — it would feel the same as 

 if you were pulling in a bass that would weigh 3 or 41bs,, 

 and then it would slide along as if you were drawing it 

 over a board, and so it went, until my line was reeled up 

 so that I could see my leader; then imagine my surprise 

 to see a bass jump out of. the water 75ft. or more below 

 us still fast to the Une. While I was trying to think 

 whether I was awake or asleep, W. , who was looking 

 down in the water, says, "You are fast to another fine;" 

 and sure enough one of my hooks had caught around the 

 line which the bass was fast on. The other end of the 

 line was under and above the boat and was fast to some- 

 thing on the bottom of the river. The line was a cheap 

 cotton line about 100ft. long, with a nail for a sinker, 

 and my hook sliding along on the other line was what I 

 couldn't account for. The bass weighed SJlbs. ; it had 

 been speared or hurt in some way^ so that it was blind in 

 one eye and it was healed up so you could hardly see where 

 the eye had been. A. V. R. 



TOWANDA, Pa, 



THE CASTALIA STREAM.— I. 



THERE has been more or less writing about and around 

 the Castalia trout stream of northern Ohio for some 

 years, the topic being of natural interest, but if anything 

 like a thorough investigation of the history and present 

 condition of the streams and its clubs has ever 

 been made by any paper but Forest and Stream, 

 I confess I do not know when or where that was done. 

 Within the past thirty days I have at the suggestion of 

 this journal spent a week or so upon and near this singu- 

 lar stream, making whatever effort seemed possible to 

 learn the earliest and latest facts concerning it. The 

 result has been quite a little mass of data, which in the 

 total would be enough to make a little book. Indeed, I 

 may forerun a little and say here that one of the Castalia 

 clubs is even now compiling a little book for publication, 

 which shall cover all history of the stream. Forest and 

 Stream's history cannot be so long as that; but it would 

 go hard if nothing interesting could be found in it, for 

 certain it is that there hardly exists in the whole settled 

 portion of our country a stream more unique, more 

 mysterious or more interesting from a dozen points of 

 view. 



Early in this century, though Kentucky had long been 

 settled and the Indian wars along the great north and 

 south hunting trail been brought to a close, much of Ohio 

 still remained unhewn from the wilderness. Even to-day 

 you can see portions of the great forest standing along 

 the shore of Lake Erie, with edge as sharp cut as where 

 the mower shears the tall standing grain. But long 

 before all this, and before the Indian wars were settled or 

 well begun, and before Ohio was a State, and before the 

 United States had been born, the strange stream of the 

 Castalia Valley had been seen, visited and commented 

 upon as a singular freak of nature. The earliest printed 

 record of such comment is to be found in the book pub- 

 lished in 1765 by one Major Rogers, of the British army. 

 Let us hope that the club in looking up its history will 

 get hold of Major Rogers's book. If they wish to find this 

 book, let them look up Col. E. A. Scoville, once of Cleve- 

 land, and ask him for the tin pail of the Castalia stream. 

 There is more history on that little tin pail than in 

 all our journals, probably, and the pail itself has a history. 

 Years ago, in the early days of the trout regime on Cas- 

 talia stream, Mr. Miller, the present keeper of the lower 

 club, caught some trout from the stream and gave them, 

 inclosed in this historic vessel, to Mr. O'Heagan, then of 

 the Ohio State Fish Commission. The Commissioner had 

 the record and the leading facts of the history of the 

 stream painted on this tin i^ail, and it is said that in this 

 script was reference to Major Rogers's book. And now 

 comes some arrant thief, stealing this historic trout pail, 

 so that a lapse occurs in its history. A clue, however, is 

 obtained, the relic is traced, and again Miller, the original 

 donor, gets possession of it, subsequently giving it to Col. 

 Scoville. Its present whereabouts are unknown, but it 

 certainly should be secured by the Lower Club and placed 

 beyond further change as one of its most valued posses- 

 sions. 



What Ma jor Rogers saw, or what the little tin pail saw, 

 or what the warriors of the Great Nations saw, was much 

 what you may see to-day; a stream not over six miles in 

 length, but with a total fall ot 4oft. in that distance, 

 flowing from great cavernous spring holes in whose 

 depths the water seems a weird and ghostly blue, running 

 between low banks, always just this rapid, always just 

 so full, always clear and always just so cold. The course 

 of this stream was then as now, down a wide and level 

 space of country, hardly different enough from the ad- 

 jacent swells to be called a valley, and yet distinctly 

 divided from the country near by in certain natural 

 characteristics. In earlier days there were some heavy 

 thickets scattered along this short valley. They find 

 scores and scores of great elk and deer antlers close 

 beneath the surface in the spots where these copses once 

 stood. Keeper Miller has found 200 of these antlers on 

 his farm. Men who live now will tell you how once the 

 wild grape vines matted over these thickets so densely 

 that a man could walk upon the top of them, while if he 

 should break through he would find room beneath to 

 walk upright. These thickets were once inhabited by 

 droves of wild hogs, and this was the scene annually of a 

 great fall pork hunt by the settlers. 



Under all the valley surface there lies a most singular 

 rock, a coral-like limestone, more porous than pumice 

 stone, the like of which is not found in all the country- 

 side near by, nor in any part of the country now known. 

 In Castaliatown, in Sandusky, and other towns cf that 

 region, you can see masses of this rough fantastic rock 

 heaped up as lawn ornaments. Within a few years the 

 value of this product has been learned, and now by boat 

 and train, far and wide, the "Castalia stone" goes to a 

 paying market. It is chiefly used in paper factories in a 

 pulverized form for a stock filling. Much of it is shipped 

 as far east as Maine. 



Blue, cold, forbidding and mysterious, the stream ran 

 down its mysterious valley, and many saw it who turned 

 from it with a shiver. Strange beings ruled that valley, 

 it was sure, and an unholy blight rested on the stream 

 beyond all question, thought the early settlers. They 

 shunned the valley, and it was long left untouched, the 

 stream all the time running through it, telling to itself 

 the story of its mysterious sources under the earth, always 

 just so large, so blue, so cold, so strange. Enchantment, 

 beyond doubt. Because, from head to mouth , in all the 

 clear, pure water, fish would not live in the Castalia 

 stream! That was known and settled long ago. Put a 

 big strong fish in one of the great "blue boles," as the 

 giant springs are even now called, and the blue dismal 

 depths at once became its sepulchre. Now, that meant 

 that the stream was nothing less than bewitched, en- 

 chanted, tmcanny, dangerous and good to leave alone. So 

 the elk and the deer claimed the thickets, and a few great 

 trees stood up over the valley, and the stream ran on and 

 on, how long, only the stars knew, from whence, not even 

 they could tell, though the stars are counted wise. 



Enter now upon the scene one R. H. Haywood, a -man 

 with money and not afraid of mysteries. The more mys- 

 tery the better. He picked up the land along the haunted 

 valley in great lumps, the owners "guessing it off," for 

 payments often absurdly small. Mr. Haywood some- 

 times resold over 100 measured acres out of a tract he 

 had bought "guessed ofl" for 40 or 50 acres. Mr. Hay- 

 wood resolved to harness the Castalia stream, spirits and 

 all. Unwise resolve. He might have known it would 

 ruin him, and ruin him it did. He spent |60,000 in cut- 



