Nov. 8, 1892.] 



FOREST AND STREAM. 



38 3 



The sport grew so exciting and engrossing that at times 

 four or five trout were flopping in the bottom of the boat 

 at once before I could spare the time to put them on the 

 stringer hanging over the side, for it would have been 

 "agin natur" to stop fishing a hole, or, if it please the 

 sesthetic better, a pool, as long as there was a trout in it 

 with his mouth open ready to take in the swirling fins. 



All this time I was having a heap o' fun with the deer- 

 flies; at least that's what Kelpie called it from his low 

 seat in the bottom of the boat wbere they didn't bother 

 him, but gave their undivided attention to "the ole cuss 

 standin' up in the stern." 



As we came up the stream in the forenoon they had 

 not annoyed us, but now it seemed the hot afternoon sun 

 had limbered them up and put vigor into 'em, and they 

 had sallied forth on the war path, each one armed with 

 a red hot needle, and each individual blood-sucker of the 

 entire swarm of some hundreds looking for the ole cuss 

 in the stern, as it appeared from a "cuss-ory" view of the 

 situation. 



The "sampling committee" had probably made a call on 

 Kelpie over in the bow, and finding his blood too thin for 

 sustenance, passed the word to the others to give him a 

 wide berth, and the blessed old sinner was sitting there 

 without a fly around him, watching me with a soft grin 

 on his face, chuckling slyly to himself and looking as 

 complacent as a kingfisher on a limb that had just swal- 

 lowed a couple of Sin. shiners. 



If there is an insect, bird or beast on the face o' this 

 livin' airth with a more ironclad "nerve" than a deer fly, 

 I have failed to run across it. 



When one gets a "toe holt" and settles down to business 

 and you nrnke a pass to f care him away, missing, it may 

 be, by less than a thirty-second of an inch, he don't scare 

 wona a d— ime, nor budge, but keeps right on boring for 

 blood with his red hot drill till you sci-ape him off or 

 smite him out of existence. 



They are the most headstrong, heedless, persistent, 

 stick-to-you, soul-harrowing pests that infest the Korth 

 Woods, and any one that can stand up against thfir 

 attacks for an hour without splitting the commandment 

 bearing on profanity into a thousand splinters need have 

 no doubt about a blessed hereafter. From a swarm of 

 hungry deer flies, good Lord deliver us, or words to that 

 effect. 



They settled on my shirt, neck, hat and face, and I 

 was kept busy as a bob-tailed cow in fly -time scraping 

 them off by ones and twos, and handfuls, with one" hand, 

 while I handled the rod with the other. 



When I hooked a trout, and had to use both hands to 

 reel him in and release the hook, the bloody-minded 

 "varmints'' had me at their mercy for the time, and 

 then the cuss words, blue-tinted, ornamental and other- 

 wise, that rent the air wore a caution to the unregener- 

 ate. 



If Kblpie thought the atmospliere smelled a trifle sul- 

 phurous he said nothing: he only grinned and enjoyed 

 the performance going on at the stern— and it was, no 

 doubt, worth the price of admission. 



The trout bit more eagerly as we went down the stream 

 and the flies grew less annoying, or it may be that the 

 sport got so "overpowerin' " that I forgot all about the 

 flies, but Kelpie guessed that "a good many got killed in 

 the tight, and a good many others had fallen into the 

 water, disabled by having their wings scorched, which 

 accounted for their thinning out." 



At fany rate, I forgot the combination of a good many 

 of the plain, every-day cuss words and found more time 

 to attend to the trout and string them when they be- 

 came too much exhausted to flop in the bottom of the 

 boat. Kingfisher. 



ANGLING NOTES. 



"Days in Clover." 



In one of my notes in Forest and Stream last July I 

 referred to an angling outing on the Itchen in the south 

 of England, by "The Amateur Angler" and "Piscator 

 Major." It is an open secret that "The Amateur Angler" 

 is Mr, Edward Marston, the head of the great London 

 publishing house of Samson Low, Marston & Co., and 

 that "Piscator Major" of his sketches is his son, Mr. 

 Robert B. Marston, editor of the London Fishing Gazette. 



The elder ]\Ir. Marston is the author of several works 

 that have an interest for the angling fraternity, and one 

 that has just been issued with the title, "Days in Clover," 

 is certainly one of the most fascinating and dainty little 

 volumes that I have had the pleasure of rading. The 

 author is an accomplished man of letters, and he is a 

 fisherman, and something of a naturalist, and a lover of 

 country sights and sounds, and not without a delicious 

 sense of humor; and, withal, a keen observer of nature 

 in her varying moods. There is a charm about his 

 writings that causes one to forget all the worries and 

 perplexities of life and wander by his side in his various 

 outings, where all is blissful peace and quiet; and when 

 the last page of the book is finished one feels that he is 

 parting with a kindly friend who has taught him how to 

 live in the world to make his life brighter and better. 

 The book costs but one English shilling and is just the 

 right size to put in one's pocket as a panacea for a score 

 of ills real or imaginary. I wish I might present copies 

 of "Days in Clover" to hundreds of fishermen, for after 

 reading it they would be ashamed to kill undersized trouc 

 if they had a spark of conscience left, and no one of them 

 would dare to exaggerate his catch, for the author, who 

 says he is an old man, and who writes with the freshness 

 of youth, and overflowing with gentleness and the milk 

 of human kindness, and love of everything good, would, 

 somewhere between the covers of the book, say the 

 words that would prove a rebuke — mildly and gently ad- 

 ministered — to practices that were questionable. One 

 does not wonder that Piscator Major says of him, "He is 

 the best man I ever met. God bless him!" 



"Days in Clover" is composed of fourteen letters, and 

 some of the titles are. An Outing with Izaak Walton, A 

 Day's Fly-Fishing in August, The First of October, The 

 Last of October, My Holiday on the Wye, Angling 

 Sketches, A Day or Tvpo on the Itchen, The Itchen E,e- ■ 

 visited, My Holiday in Wales, etc. Here is a quotation: 

 "I saw a rise in a likely hole; I swung my fly dry and 

 cast it with the utmost precision. My little 'red rail' 

 floated upright and jauntily over the spot where I had 

 seen the rise, and a big trout came at me. I struck in 

 the nineiiy-ninth part of "a second, but I was too late. The 

 fish in this stream consider him a 'duffer' who cannot 

 strike in the one-hundredth part of a second, and that. I 



regret to say, is a point of perfection at which I have not 

 yet arrived. The ninety-ninth I can reach easily. Again 

 I threw over him; again he came at me. I missed him 

 again only by that one-hundredth vibration — a narrow 

 squeak for him, you may be sure; but he knew his supe- 

 riority and clearly enjoyed the fun of playing with a 

 duffer. He became bolct and careless: he tried the ninety- 

 ninth vibration of a second by way of experiment, and I 

 had him, He jumped half a yard clean out of the water, 

 and otherwise fought like a demon, enraged more, I am 

 certain, at being caught napping, as it were, in this way, 

 than if he had been fairly hooked, as he knew he ought 

 to have been, in the one-hundredth part of a second, that 

 infinitesimal point of time making all the difference to 

 these very learned fish." 



Just one more quotation, a short one: 



"I may here say that I never go a-fishing without the 

 Major, I try his wonderful patience a great deal; when 

 1 am dry-fly fishing I have a way of swishing off" my flies 

 in trying to dry them, to say nothing of constantly get- 

 ting caught in the opposite bank or in a tree ; or else I , 

 leave my flies a mile or two behind me, stuck fast in 

 thistle or grass, while I have steadily fished on, uncon- 

 scious of my loss. The Major always comes to my aid 

 and puts me right for a fresh start; in fact, I could never 

 fish at all, but for his ever ready help at hand." 



The book is not all about fishing, and 1 can say of 

 "Days in Clover," as the Amateur Angler wrote of a 

 volume that he once reviewed, "This is a book which no 

 gentleman's or angler's library (the terms are synonym- 

 ous) should be without." 



Dame Berners and Wynkyn de Worde. 



I hold that it is not nice to be hypercritical, but to be 

 critical within certain bounds is a duty, and as such I 

 write what follows. 



In "American Game Fishes" is a chapter upon the 



A i:NdP-SHOT IM' UUB GUIDE. 

 (Forest and Stream Amateur Photosraph.y Compftition. 



striped bass, written by the late Mr. Francis Endicott, in 

 which occurs the following passage: "Contrary to the 

 precepts of the late Wynkyn de Worde (A.D, 1491) who, 

 in his introduction to the famous 'Treatyse on Fysshynge,' 

 holds forth in this manner." Here follows the quotation, 

 At first glance it might appear that Wynkyn de Worde 

 was the author of the "Treatyse" for which he wrote the 

 introduction, but Mr, Endicott himself in an article in 

 "Sport with Gun and Rod" has said that Dame Juliana 

 Berners was the author of the book, which was "em- 

 prynted by Wynkyn de worde," but that is not why I 

 refer to the matter. I know that it is claimed that Dame 

 Berners did not write the book at all, because the treatise 

 is not included in the Book of St. Albans of 1486. In Mr. 

 George W. Van Siclen's American edition of the Treatyse 

 is the preface to the English edition of 1887 in which the 

 date of the first publication of the Book of St. Albans is 

 given as 1488, but Bibliotheca Piscatoria, Wesbwood and 

 Satchell (1883), makes the date 1486, which is ascribed to 

 her. 



The treatise first appeared in 1496 (not 1491, as Mr. En- 

 dicott is made to say) in the Book of St. Albf^ns of tbat 

 date, and later (1500) it appeared by itself, which brings 

 me to the point I wish to make. The quotation which 

 Mr. Endicott ascribes to Wynkyn de Worde "in his in- 

 troduction" is this, in part: "And for by cause that the 

 present treatyse sholde not come to ye hondys of eche 

 ydle persone whyche wolde desire it yf it were emprynted 

 allone by itself put in a lytyll plaunflet, therefore I have 

 compylyd it in a grete volume of dyverse boyks, etc.'' 

 This quotation does not appear in the introduction by 

 Wynkyn de Words or anybody else. Bibliotheca Pisca- 

 toria says of the edition of 1500, the one giving the 

 treatise by itself for the first time: "This edition appears 

 to have been published as a 'lytyll plaunflet' notwith- 

 standing the caution of the authoress against this course, 

 given in the concluding paragraph of the treatise in pre- 

 vious editions, which in this instance is omitted." That 

 tells the story. The extract quoted by Mr. Endicott is not 

 in the introduction, and was not written by Wynkyn de 

 Worde, but it was written by the authoress and formed 

 the concluding paragraph of the book, as will be found by 

 referring to Mr. Van Siclen's American edition. Tliis is a 

 small matter, perhaps, but errors uncorrected grow and 

 take root, and m time become so fixed that it is impossible 

 to correct them, therefore I think it well to nail them as 

 soon as they appear. A. K. Cheney. 



Bass and Young Shad. 



We learn from Fish Commissioner H, C. Demuth that 

 black bass fishing has been poor of late in the Susque- 

 hanna River on account of the large numbers of shad 

 going down to the sea. The bass are so well filled with 

 shad that they will not take live bait. Fishing has im- 

 proved, however, during the past week. As the river is 

 very low and entirely free from the culm of the coal 

 mines which was so annoying last year, he thinke late 

 fishing will be good unless heavy rains set in. 



MORE ABOUT CHIPOLA. 



Columbia, Ala., Oct. 29.— Several inquiries have 

 reached me asking as to the locality, health, accommo- 

 dations, etc., of Chipola or Cypress Lakes, Calhoun 

 county, west Florida. The lake is about the frost line, 

 as oranges, lemons, Japanese plums and other tropical 

 fruits grow here to perfection. It is within twelve or 

 fifteen miles of the Gulf of Mexico on the south, and 

 nearer to St. xindrews Bay on the southwest, and con- 

 stant sea breezes through the immense virgin forests 

 of balsamic pine insure fine, vigorous health to residents 

 and visitors. The hotel accommodations are good. Two 

 well kept hotels and many private boarding houses on 

 either side of the lake fia-nish visitors with good fare, 

 etc., at $1 per day or much less by month. These houses 

 all have well constructed canoes and batteaux, which 

 are furnished free, and guides either for hunting or 

 pointing out the best fishing grounds can be had for a 

 trifle. 



From Oct. 15 to May 1 the hunting and fishing are all 

 you could desire. 



Any person desiring to visit the lakes can readily reach 

 them via Savannah, Ga., and S. F. & W. R. R. to River 

 Junction, thence by steamer to lola, where hacks convey 

 to the lakes, two miles distant, or via Atlanta, Ga., td 

 Columbus, Ga., and steamer to lola, via Montgomery 

 and Eufala, Ala., and steamer; or via New Orleans or 

 Mobile and P, & A, R. R. to Rtrer Junction and steamer 

 to Tola. Society good. Several churches, several general 

 stores, in fact any and everything that a hunter or fisher- 

 mak wants to make him healthy and happy. 



PlSCATOE. 



THE NAVARRA SALMON. 



San Francisco, Oct. 20.— I promised to investigate at 

 the proper time and report upon the question of salmon 

 fishing in the Navarra River, the scene of my former 

 triumphs in taking that gamy fish, and which location I 

 have always advocated as affording splendid fishing; but 

 alas, the hand of the vandal has nosed out my favorite 

 ground. I have just learned that the deadly seine is be- 

 ing plied with the usual effect, and rod fishing is spoiled. 

 I had anticipated being able to write to the several gen- 

 tlemen who purposed joining me here for a raid upon the 

 Navarra, but I cannot encourage them to come since the 

 river has fallen under the ban of seining. 



The river for three miles from its mouth is tide water, 

 with scarcely a perceptible current, hence is easily seined, 

 and as the salmon come in with the flood tide the van- 

 dals lie in wait and scoop them up, and what they don't 

 get are so frightened and demoralized as to destroy rod 

 fishing almost entirely, and thus I am all broken up in 

 my expectation of having one of my good old times when 

 T landed thirty or forty in a day's fishing; so I say drat 

 the selfish Italians, who are thus invading our sacred 

 grounds and robbing us of our sport. 



It is possible I may conclude to try my luck up there, 

 and if things are not as bad as represented I will herald 

 the news to my expectant fisherman friends in the East. 



PODGERS. 



The South Mountain Fishing Club. 



For downright, hard-working, enthusiastic, never-to- 

 be-discouraged, painstaking anglers let me bring forward 

 this aggregation of Washington men famous in literature 

 and law. You may count their numbers on the fingers of 

 your two hands, but the names of their acquaintances 

 and friends would fill many pages of Forest and 

 Stream. 



Lite in October a party of six of its members were on 

 their favorite Potomac River fishing grounds, between 

 White's Ferry and Edwards' Furnace, a beautiful stretch 

 of water, about five miles long, one-quarter mile wide 

 and varying from 4ft. to 15ft. in depth. There were 

 Major T. B, Kirby, Mr. Fergus Ferriss, Col. Richard 

 Bright and Messrs. John P. Miller, A. J. Kaiser and E. M. 

 Hood. 



For three days they fished assiduously with the live 

 "Baltimore minnow'' or black-banded fresh-water killi- 

 fish, and their total catch was 94 black bass. The water 

 was remarkably low and clear — so clear that "Cliff," a 

 Forest and Stream correspondent, who wasjonthe river 

 further down, said he could see the point of his hook in 

 five feet depth. As a consequence, the bass were in the 

 deep holes and dainty about biting. 



Many of the fish were small, but some of thetn were 

 large enough to satisfy the ambition of the average ang- 

 ler anywhere. Major Kirby caught a 3-pounder that 

 fought like a giant, and Mr, Miller made the record with 

 a beauty weighing 51bs. 9oz. on a rtisty pair of spring 

 scales. The club is a unit in placing the actual weight 

 above 6lb8. There was trouble with that fish first and 

 last. After five minutes' furious play the bass found a 

 convenient snag on the bottom around which he wound 

 the leader, and thei^e he conchided to stay and did stay 

 fully fifteen minutes, when some one started him with a 

 long pole and the sharp struggle was renewed. Miller 

 won — and lost. The fish was vanquished, boated and 

 strung; but he was lost before the party reached the land- 

 ing. The record remains, and the basa will linger in 

 memory while the record lasts. T. H. B. 



Trout of Third Connecticut ILake. 



Lancaster, N. H., Oct. 32, — I notice in your issue of 

 Sept, 23 "Ompompanoosuc" speaks of the trout in Third 

 Connecticut Lake as differing in thape and color from the 

 trout of other waters in that section. 1 noted the same 

 thing last June, that being my first trip to Third Lake, 

 and to me they seemed identical with the trout taken in 

 the Diamond Ponds, being more silvery in color and 

 slimmer built, and far more gamy than the average brook 

 or pond trout, and again having a meat of a pronounced 

 salmon color, similar to the Diamond Pond trout. I have 

 always contended in a modest way that there are two 

 species of trout in Diamond Ponds — the short, deep, 

 brown-backed, white-meated trout, and the lonjr, slim, 

 silvery-sided, blue-backed, red-meated trout. You can 

 catch both under similar conditions and in same locality. 

 If they are the same trout, "what makes the difference?" 

 I make these statements in "fear and trembling." as I 

 have in mind discussions concerning this same subject in 

 the past. 



I am glad "Ompompanoosuc" visited Third Lake and 

 has noted the difference in the trout from those of neigh- 

 boring streams and lakes. Rob. 



