84 



FOREST A]SJID SITREAM. 



THE SHEOMET ANGLERS. 



Eiiitor Forest and Sir coin: 



I desire to acquaint yoa of a newly-formed angling 

 club, all of whose members, with two exceptions, are 

 residents and prominent business men of Springfield, 

 Mass. The club has chosen an Indian title, the Sheomet, 

 and has purchased 180 acres of land in Franklin county, 

 Mass., six miles from AthoU and two hours by railroad 

 from Springfield. The land compasses a little lake of 

 some 50 acreo. in which trout have always abounded, and 

 in which 50,000 fry were placed this spring, the same ex- 

 periment to be repeated annually. The club has also 

 secured leases covering fifteen years of the various brooks 

 in the vicinity and measuring over twenty miles in length. 

 An excellent'house and stable are included in the club's 

 purchase, but the buUding will at once be enlarged and 

 elaborately improved with all modern conveniences and 

 comforts. Membership is limited to twenty persons, at a 

 fee of $200 each, and when the project was started it re- 

 qLuired l»ss than two hours to complete the roll. This 

 will eive an exhibit of the angling spirit that blossoms iri 

 the Qaeen Cicy of the Connecticut Valley, and bpcomes 

 more interesting from the fact that for some years Spring- 

 field has been the home of another prosperous coterie of 

 fly-capters— the Amabelish Club, whose preserve, cover- 

 ing 800 square miles of woods and waters, lies near great 

 Like Sc. John, Quebrc — thehomeof that marvelous finny 

 •warrior, the wminnish — the one superlatively grand 

 game fish nf the world. 



The rfiioprg of the rewly-formed Sheomet Club are: 

 Pres., Dj,Qjon N. Cjatp; Vice'-Pres., Henry M. Phillips, P. 

 M ; S c'y and Trpas., W. F. Callender. Directors: W. H. 

 Wti-son and N. D Bill. Members are: B, M, Coats, A. B. 

 F >rbes A. B. "Wallace, E. S. Bradford, mayor of Spring- 

 fi Id. W. H. G Ibert, E. C. Barr, E. H. Sterns, H. S, 

 Dickenson, J. W. Goodrich, J, W. Kirkham, D. F. Ful- 

 lerton, G, L, Goodhue, J. A. Murphy, Warren Cheney 

 and R. L Cheney. Kit Clakke. 



Netv York, July 16. 



Merrimack Salmon. 



The salmon fisherman does not need to go down into 

 Maine to fiad excellent sport at his favorite amusement. 

 The Merrimack is now an inviting field for angling with 

 the rod for the king of game fish. The salmon can be 

 seen striking all over the lower river — that is, from the 

 mouth of the Siiawshin down — but it requires an expert 

 handler of the rod and fiy to secure a fish worthy of his 

 prowess. Twenty-pound fish are no exception. They can 

 bo seen disporting themselves in the Waters of the Merri- 

 mack at early morn or deAvy eve, their silvery sides flash- 

 ing back the earliest rays of the sun or its last glances as 

 it reluctantly leaves the earth to lunar's glories and the 

 night. Patrick McCarthy, with commendable pride, 

 shows the first salmon caught with a fly of late years in 

 the Merrimack, It is a fine specimen, weighing about 

 lOlbs,, and was captured just before dusk. Mr. McCarthy 

 used his old rod which has stood him in good stead in 

 Penobscot waters and there pstablished his fame as a 

 salmon killer. A fire-brown fly — an Irish production — 

 was used. The salmon took it greedily, and was handled 

 with cai'e and skill for ten minutes, when Mr. McCarthy 

 gave the rod to his companion, Fred Palmer, who con- 

 tinued the operation of leading the "silver king" into 

 captivity for five minutes longer, when Mr. McCarthy 

 gave him the erfiff and secured the ■pi-'vz&.— Lawrence 

 (Mass.) Eagle, July IS. 



Fresh- Water Sunfishes. 



From the Eeport of the U. S. Commissioner of Fisheries 

 for 1888 we have just received a pamphlet copy of a Re- 

 view of the CentrarchidaT or Fresh-water Sunfishes of 

 North America, by Charles H. BoUman, A.B. This review 

 was unfinished at the time of Mr. Bollman's death, but 

 notwithstanding the want of notes on the names and 

 observations on the habits of the species, which he in- 

 tended to add to the paper, it will prove useful to students 

 of these fishes. The article contains keys to the genera 

 and species, together with accounts of their distribution 

 and some critical notes upon their relationships. 



Most of the species of this family are fully described 

 and fifteen of them are illustrated, the figures with one 

 exception being reduced copies of those in the Fishery 

 Industries. The illustrations include the round sunfish, 

 calico bass, crappie, Sacramento perch, rock bass, war- 

 mouth, mud bass, black-banded sunfish, long-eared sun- 

 fish of the West, red-breasted bream, chinquapin perch, 

 blue sunfish or bluegill, the common sunfish, and the 

 small-mouthed and large-mouthed black basses. 



We notice that McK-iy's sunfish {L. euryoriis) "is re- 

 ferred to as identical with the common sunfish , but after 

 a careful comparison with thetypeof this species and the 

 examination of several additional specimens, we find that 

 the two fishes are quite distinct. 



Sale of Pennsylvania Trout. 



The PENliJSYLVANTA. FlSH PROTECTIVE ASSOCIATION, 



1020 Arch street, Philadelphia, -July 1^— Editor Forest 

 and Stream: Your correspondent "T. M. 0.,'" in your 

 issue of July 14, bewails the catching of trout for sale to 

 saloon and hotel-keepers. If he will consult Sec. 8 of 

 Act of Assembly of Peijn., April 16, 1870, P. L. 1870, 

 page 12, he will find this provided for. It is too late 

 this season for the Game and Fish Protective Associa- 

 tion of his locality to take action. This act referred to 

 applies to Potter, Lycoming, Tioga, Clinton and Sulli- 

 van, and if trout fishing is to be of any good hereafter 

 in open waters should be made general. It is to be hoped 

 that a united efi'ort will be made by all the fish and 

 game associations throuabout Pennsylvania to have the 

 Legislature at its next session make it a finable ofl:en8e 

 to catch fish for barter or sale and make the purchaser 

 just as liable to punishment as the seller. This will do 

 away with one great evil which now almost threatens 

 the total destruction of trout fishing in open waters in 

 Pennsylvania. R. M. Hartley, Treas. 



IV^ew Hampshire Fishing. 



LiNCASTER. N. H., July 15. — At last we are having 

 s^me goi d fi-hing, the first this season. For the past 

 week every one here has caught fish and plenty- of them; 

 Bome good ones, too. But the fishing is very backward, 

 and although nearl;^ every one who has been here has 

 had .plenty of fish, it has been an ajl-day's job to get 



enough of them to supply the table, instead of taking an 

 hour or two, as usual. 



The Connecticut Lakes have been well patronized this 

 year and every one has seemed satisfied, after taking the 

 weather conditions into account. 



The j oiliest party of anglers I have met for a long time 

 arrived here last Friday, the 8th. The party was com- 

 posed of twelve traveling men and members of the Stag 

 Outing Club, of Boston. It was their first trip here, and 

 they express themselves as being highly delighted with 

 this section, both for fine fishiner, beautiful scenery and 

 good accommodations, and they all say that they have 

 enjoyed the best fishing both with bait and fly that they 

 have ever had, without any exception, and ihey are ail 

 fishermen, too. 



The fish thus far have not averaged as large as they will 

 from now out probably. Though a few good ones have 

 been taken, they have been running from i to 141 bs., and 

 within a very few days a few of from IJ to 3'lbs. have 

 been taken. I see no reason why fishing in this section 

 will not remain good the rest of the open season or until 

 Sept. 15, so little ha,ving been done early, owing to the 

 unusually wet June; but no one denies that this season 

 has not been a "trout saver" all over the New England 

 States, Rob. 



Something: to Be Proud of. 



This charming picture is from a photograph sent iis by 

 Mr, H. D. Stevens, of Malone, N. Y,, and shows his little 

 daughter, with the 4Hb. speckled trout caught by him in 

 Lake Duane in the first week in June of this year, as al- 

 ready recorded in these columns. A man might well be 

 proud of such a fish, and a man might well be proud of 

 such a daughter. The privilege of being proud of such 

 a fish and such a daughter is something that does not fall 

 to the lot of one man in a million. 



. Texas Tarpon. 



VlCTdEii., 1?ex, — I have just returned from Pass Caballo, 

 which lies between the end of Matagorda Peninsula and 

 the upper end of Matagorda Island, I spent two weeks 

 there fishing, sailing and bathing. The fishing is very 

 poor this year, both on the coast and inland throughout 

 all southwest Texas. It almost seems as if some disease 

 had attacked the fish, for a scarcity of fish is someihirig 

 we very seldom know here. Although most of the fish 

 on the coast are scarce there is one kind that is not — the 

 tarpon, or, as we call him here, the grand de coy. There 

 are great numbers all through Matagorda Bay. The fish- 

 ermen catch them in their nets and either throw them out 

 on shore to die or kill them with a gig. As I had no 

 regular tarpon outfit I only fished about half a day for 

 them and did not succeed in hooking any. If I go down 

 again I shall take a regular outfit and catch one or more. 

 Having read all the accoims in I^'obest and Stream of 

 tarpon fishers' trips to Florida and other places, I thought 

 this might be of interest to them. 



Any information I can give concerning the place can 

 be had by writing me through Forest and Stream. 



W. M. P. 



A Bunker Boat's Haul of Weakfish. 



New York, July 18, — Editor Forest and Stream: A 

 party of friends started last Saturday morning from 

 Canarsie for a day's chumming. The captain of our boat, 

 who had been requested to obtain a barrel of bunkers, 

 had failed to do so because no steamers were in: and he 

 reported hunkers very scarce this season. On the way 

 out we saw a steamer at Fairchild's unloadinsr into the 

 tramway cars that empty the fish into the vats. We could 

 not get a bunker from them, because the whole boatload 

 consisted of weakfish! The name of the boat was the 

 John A. Moore. Gonzale Poey. 



A Iiow Rate to Washingrton, D. C, via Pennsyl- 

 vania Railroad. 



Fob the. meeting of t he League nf American Wheelmen, to be 

 held at Washington, D. C, July ISrh to 30bb. an event which iii-o- 

 mises to surpass anything of the bind held for years, the Penn- 

 sylvania Railroad Company will sell exchrsion tickets « t a single 

 fare for tne round trip from New York. These tickets will he 

 sold and good going J.ttlv IGtih to 19th inclnciye, and valid for re- 

 turn passage until J uly 24th inclnsive.=-^fli'. 



PLANTING TROUT AS FRY OR YEARLINGS. 



[Read before the American Fisheries Society.] 

 Mr. President and, Gentlemen: 



In the last report of this Society, pa^es 11 and 13, this 

 question was discussed in a small way, neither side havine: 

 any figures to show the cost of feeding and planting a trout 

 which was a year old. lam quoted as saying: "I do not 

 believe that it is economy to raise trout" (for distribution ! 

 "to be a year old," and that belief has been confirmed by 

 subsequent experience. The advocates of planting yearlings 

 have had an innings, and have vented their views in the 

 newspapers and perodicals, but the other side has not been 

 heard from, and, if I am not mistaken, th s opening gun 

 from our line will be followed by others of larger caliber. 

 We believe that the best results will be had from planting 

 trout as fry and will essay to prove it. 



If a man wishes to plant an orchard he would like to have 

 trees that will give him a crop at once, and if he would 

 stock a stream he naturally wishes yearling fish, hence the 

 scheme of feeaing trout until they are a year old commends 

 itself to the anglers and also to their jouraals, but what they 

 want and what we can afford to give them are diSrerent 

 things. The nurseryman will give you several small trees 

 for the price of an older one, and the fishculturist can give 

 you a hundred or more frv cheaper than he can raise and 

 deliver a yearling trout. That the yearling is worth many 

 fry is true, for it has escaped a class of eoemie=! that can only 

 kill smaller fish, hut the kingfisher can still take it, and 

 does. I will not consider the question of the ability of a 

 pond-fed flsh to take care of itself, for it may be able to do 

 so, and I nronose to treat the subject squarely, and strictly 

 on what I believe t'l be its merits. 



At the last meeting of this Society, it seemed as if my 

 position was unsupported to any extent, and this was not 

 encouraging to one whose only object was the general good 

 of fishcultui-e, but. months afterward, letters of approval 

 incited an experiment in the cost of feeding young trout 

 and a consideration of the expense of planting them, but it 

 was not until the first of January last that my foreman re- 

 ceived orders to weigh and record the food of 16,800 bi'ook 

 and brown trout, the hatch of the previous spring. The 

 record gives date, pounds of food, tern ptrature of air and 

 water, and remarks on weather, etc. It covers the months 

 of January, February and March, 189;i, ninety-three days, 

 on three of which we had no food. If it be said that these 

 flsh, so near a year old, would consume more food in the 

 last quarter, the record shows that on twenty-three cold 

 days the fish were not taking much food, ranging from 4 to 

 Slbs. of horse meat against 15 to SOlba. on other days. 



During the previous quarter, October to December, I have 

 the word of the man who cut the meat, that the fish took 

 more food, for we have little cold weather on Long Island 

 before Christmas, and the record shows that the taliing of 

 food was influenced not onlvby the temperature of the 

 water dropping below 40:leg. Fabr., but also ijy the temper- 

 ature of the air and the atmospheric conditions. Therefore, 

 I am disposed to take this, the last quarter, as a fair esti- 

 mate of the consumptinn of food during the year, for we 

 started in with nearly 25,000 fry which fc-dalongfrom March 

 to nearly the last of May, when the mortality began, the 

 weaker ones died, and there is a great waste of food when 

 so finely chopped as it is necessary to be for the "babies." 



Horse meat has been spoken of and a digression may be 

 pardoned to say that durmg mv twenty four years' lite as a 

 fishculturist the question of the best and cheapest food for 

 trout has bet-n the leading one. Begiuning with hen's eggs, 

 which is the worst of all, the_ u^ual baef's liver, lisrhts 

 (lungs), heart, maggots, mosquito larvce, soft clams (iVfj/Cf 

 arcnaria) and salt-water mussels {3Iytilus cdulis) have been 

 tried, until in November last, a mm who kills wovq out 

 horses for their hides, bones and doa-meat, was found, who 

 delivers us clean, sound muscle, free from bpne, of horse, 

 mule, or cow that died in calving, at the uniform price of 

 four cents per pound at the station, and it is the best food 

 for trout and the cheappst that we have found. At this .sta- 

 tion beef livers from New York averaged, with express 

 charges, .seven cents per pound, i. e., they cost fifty cents 

 each and averaged lOlbs. apiece, and the freight on the box 

 cost forty cents, whether containing one or three, and the 

 supply was uncertain. 



To resume. During the quarter mentioned, we fed 16,000 

 trout as follows: 



Pounds. 



January '^281-3 



February BIGV^ ' 



March 



1.1403^ 



This, for ninety days, would equal 13 68lbs. per day, which 

 at 4 cents per pound would cost a trifle over H0}4 cents per 

 dav or 8184 per year for the Ifi.OOO flsh. 



Divide this an i it gives 55 per thousand fish. Add to 

 this the transportation. Oae man can take care of ten cans 

 of fry for twenty-four hours, and each can will carry 5,000 

 fry or 30 to .50 yearlings, according to size. 



Say, for instance, that you have a million trout fry to 

 pldut. This will require one man for twenty days, if he can 

 take them in 1- :ts of 50 000 in ten cans of ten gallons c^pacity 

 each. Without counting railway fares, bis d«ilv expenses, 

 say .$3, and his pay, say $3, would equal about -flOO for the 

 whole. Now keep these Jry for one year, and if you have 

 good luck you may have 600,000 to plant. From thirty to 

 fifty of these are all that cm be carried in a can, and ten 

 cans are as many as a man should be asked to care for on a 

 trip of 12 to 24 hours, or 500 at one time, at the largest fig- 

 ure. Thiswould require twelve men for 100 days, and again 

 throwing out railway transportation, would cost at the low 

 average of ^ per day per man for wages and expenses the 

 sum of $4,800, and I defy any man to prove that the result 

 of feeding trout to be yearlings, and then planting them, 

 would be in any sort of proportion to the expense of food and 

 transportation, wliich added together would make a grand 

 total chat would be appalling to States with small appropri- 

 ations. 



• Let us say that one yearling is worth ten fry, which has 

 not been proved, and then compare the expense. Let us 

 plant fry in sufficient numbers to allow for all losses and 

 not waste our means on planting yearlings, a new notion 

 which has been loudly heralded as a grand success, but 

 which cannot be proved to be so. 



It has somewhere been stated that the United States Fish 

 Commission had stocked some far Western stream with 

 trout fry for years and no good results followed: a year or 

 two ago some yearlings were put in, and lo, the stream now 

 aft'ords good fishing. If fry cannot live in this stream, we 

 might ask how the .stock is to be kept up-' By planting 

 yearlings each year, when their progeny cannot live? Surely 

 such a stream is not a good stream for trout and should be 

 abandoned. 



That those who have streams to be stocked yvtU clamor 

 for yearlings Instead of fry is to be expected. They would 

 like two-year olds also, and if we would give them our old 

 three-pounders, they would be very happy; hut they should 

 apply for their two-year olds just two years before they need 

 them and give us twelve months to produce yearlings on 

 natural food in their own streams without expense to the 

 State. 



When we count the cost of food, attendaace and planting, 

 with incidentals, such as ice, extra help, etc., it will be 



