Jan. 13, 1894.] 



FOREST AND STREAM. 



81 



ANGLING NOTES. 



"Five-Cent Fish and Four-Dollar Rod." 



A farmdr writing to the Amerieus Times gives a num- 

 ber of reasons for the hard times and the scarcity of money. 

 His text seems to be that we buy more than we produce. 

 Here are two of the reasons which follow the text: 



"We send a 15-cent boy out with a $20 gun and a 

 $4 dog -to kill birds. We land a 5-cent fish witha $4 

 fishing rod." 



A $4 fishing rod is supposed in this instance to illustrate 

 opulent extravagance, whereas, in truth, a $4 split-bam- 

 boo fishing rod, for there are such things, is the proper 

 tool for a 15-cent boy to usej when he goes fishing, and 

 perhaps as a natural sequence he lands a 5-cent fish. 

 Whether he does or not this is as it should be. A good 

 fishing rod, like a good anything else, requires good 

 material to start with, and time and skilled labor to fash- 

 ion it; and when it is finished it represents several times 

 $4 in material and labor alone, to say nothing of the 

 legitimate profit of tae manufacturer. A first-class bam- 

 boo rod with the care that a skillful angler gives his 

 tackle will do good service for many years, and this, 

 coupled with the fact that such a rod always affords the 

 user a sense of delight and a feeling of security under try- 

 ing circumstances, makes it cneap at the price commonly 

 asked for it, while a "cheap and nasty" rod is dear at any 

 price. 



When a man holds up his hands in holy horror at the 

 cost of the best split-bamboo rods, best of materials, best 

 of labor and best of skill in putting the rod together, 

 and ddates with smiling face over the excellence of a little 

 red wagon, it is* safe to put him down as short on rods 

 and long on red wagons. 



There is another view of the matter. How much has 

 the $4 rod to do with making the boy a 15-cent boy? The 

 odds would probably be 100 to 1 on, without being a false, 

 price, that if the boy should be furnished with a good, 

 serviceable rod and other tackle in accord with the rod, 

 would make him into a $1,000 boy, and he would then 

 land some $4 fish. 



The funny man of the daily press frequently takes a 

 whack at the fisherman with his tine tackle in comparison 

 with the barefooted boy with alder gad and pin-hook. 

 Frank Stockton has heard the story, for one of his char- 

 acters is made to say: "Tnat old story about the little 

 boy with the pin-hook who ketched all the fish, while the 

 gentleman with the modern improvements who stood 

 alongside of him, kep' throwin' out his beautiful flies and 

 never got nothin' is a pure lie." 



The Fly-Fishers' Club. 



At the annual dinner (the tenth) of the Fly-Fishers' 

 (Club, London, with Mr. W. Q. Orchardson, R. A., in the 

 -chair, and Mr. Wm. Senior, angling editor of the Field, 

 and Mr. R. B. Marston, editor of tne Fishing Gazette, in 

 the vice chairs, the club gathered together the famous 

 jfishermen, angling authors and writers of Great Britain 

 and Ireland, as it nas done ever since it was organized, 

 «to hear excellent speeches and fine music after the mem- 

 bers and guests had discussed the good dinner provided. 

 .America is generally represented at these dinners, and 

 .. last month Mr. J. G. A. Creighton, of Ottawa, was the 

 i representative. This reminds me of what I read in an 

 ; alleged sporting paper lately. The writer said that hav- 

 i ing tired of the fishing in America he decided to leave it 

 i for a time and go over the border into Canada and try the 

 fishing there. 



The Fly-Fishers' Club has in the United States the fol- 

 lowing honorary members: Mr. Henry P. Wells, Mr. 

 ;Fred Mather, Mr. Gonzalo Poey, Dr. J. A. Henshall, and 

 sthe writer of these notes; but not one of them has ever 

 , been the American representative at the annual dinner of 

 the club, which fact is doubtless cause for regret, by each 

 i of the gentlemen so honored. 



At the recent dinner Mr. Marston, replying to the toast 

 '"The Fly-Fishers' Club," spoke of the threatened destruc- 

 tion of the lovely rural scenery of England by advertise- 

 ments, which were to be seen in the fields and even on the 

 Ibanks of favorite rivers. The members of the club, living 

 as they did in all parts of the country, would, he felt sure, 

 do all they could to prevent this desecration of the land- 

 scape. They all knew that ever since Walton's time 

 milkmaids and anglers had always been on the best of 

 terms. Well, he would just give them an instance of the 

 extent to which the modern system of advertising had 

 permeated to the remotest districts. He was fishing in 

 Devonshire, and on his way to the river one fine morning 

 he met a pretty milkmaid. Of course he made a bow and 

 said, "Where are you going to, my pretty maid?" fully 

 expecting to get the well-known reply. Judge of his 

 astonishment when the fair maiden, with a curtsey, said: 

 "Good morning. Have you used Perkins's soap?" 



An Angler's Den. 

 In the Christmas number of the Fishing Go zette, London, 

 Mr. Francis M. Walbran has an interesting article about 

 "A Few of My Angling Friends." and in it takes occasion 

 to describe the "den' r of Mr. Frederic M. Halford, the 

 great apostle of dry-fly fishing, the author of "Dry -Fly 

 Fishing in Theory and Practice," "Floating Flies and How 

 to Dress Them," etc., and who has written much about 

 angling over the pen name of "Detached Badger." This 



, is an extract from the article: 



"And how about the great 'Detached Badger'? All 

 right, my friends, I have not forgotten hiin. On Sunday 



ilast I spent a most enjoyable afternoon in his company, 

 fitting opposite to him in his model angling den. I use 

 tthe word 'model' advisedly, tor never have 1 seen a more 

 perfect angler's sanctum. Under the window is a table 

 with sockets to hold fly vice, with drawers on all sides for 

 fly-dressing, with one of the new electric lamps devised 

 for that purpose, and described by my host in the Field. 

 To the right are more cabinets and drawers, containing 

 the archives of the new club water owned by Mr. Halford; 

 to the left aresinks, shelves, tables, etc., devoted to micro- 

 scopic work. Facing the window is an ample library of 

 angling works, flanked on each side by cupboards devoted 

 to rods, nets, reels, lines, etc. On the wall, to the right 

 facing the window, are the original plates for Mr. Hal- 

 ford's standard work, 'Dry-Fly Fishing in Theory and 

 Practice.' Facing these is a picture which has a strange 



fascination for me; it represents the familiar old Sheep 

 Bridge at Houghton, drawn by Mr. A. W. Cooper, the 

 well known artist. An angler stands on the bridge in the 

 act of casting; undernea,th is written, 'The Sheep Bridge, 

 Houghton, on the Test. In memoriam, Oct. 16, 1886. 

 Francis Francis' last throw.' Long do I linger in my con- 

 templation of this picture, and for once I disobeyed the 

 commandment, 'Thou shalt not covet.' " 



Sinks and shelves devoted to microscopic work are not, 

 commonly, adjuncts to anglers' dens in this country, but 

 Lee's reference helps one to understand why the Halford 

 patterns of floating flies and May flies are so true to 

 nature as to deceive the very elect of the trout. Mr. 

 Walbran, who is an artistic fly dresser, makes a specialty 

 of the Halford flies, and specimens of his May and float- 

 ing or dry flies are before me as I write. They are not 

 conventional flies, quite the contrary, for at first glance 

 they seem to be the real thing, as, in fact, a visitor took 

 them to be when first discovered on my desk, and they 

 are the result of "microscopic work" on the natural insect 

 to obtain the pattern which Mr. Walbran has followed so 

 closely. , . 



The Halford floating flies have already been adopted m 

 this country and are made by some of our fly dressprs, but 

 as yet our fly tyers have not deemed it necessary to closely 

 counterfeit the various specimens of May flies which is 

 so skillfully done on the other side, but that will be a 

 subject for another note. The practice of dry-fly fishing 

 is growing in this country in the open country streams. 

 When I first tried it I did so only after I had failed to get 

 trout that I saw rising, and which utterly refused my wet 

 fly, or rather a dozen different patterns of wet flies, and I 

 was astounded at my success. One of the editors of the 

 New York daily newspapers wrote me that he had killed 

 trout on Long Island with the dry fly when all the wet 

 flies in his book had failed. 



A couple of years ago a Vermont angler became con- 

 verted to the dry fly and there was an item about it in 

 one of our papers. Mr. Halford read it and in writing 

 me soon after said: "It is certainly a source of gratifi- 

 cation to find one's little efforts appreciated by anglers 

 in the United States, the more so as my work was more 

 specially devised for the use of our chalk stream fisher- 

 men here. However, it goes to prove that the habits of 

 our Salmonidai do not differ greatly in different climates, 

 and that the popularity of the sport is tending to work 

 the same improvement in the education of your trout as 

 it has already over here." 



Certainly, if anything made by the hand of man— or 

 woman — will deceive the wisest trout that swims, it is 

 one of Mr. Walbran's up-winged floating flies, or one of 

 his cleverly counterfeited May flies— when the "May fly 

 is up." 



German Brown and English Brown Trout. 



A fishing paper quotes from an exchange that a lake in 

 Maine has been stocked witii "Von Behr, German brown 

 trout, and Loch Leven or English brown trout." The 

 common trout of Europe, S. fario, are called "brown 

 trout" in Great Britain, when they are not called "yellow 

 trout," and in Germany they are called Bachforelle, or 

 just plain brook trout, and not brown trout at all. The 

 fish are found in all the trout waters of Continental 

 Europe, as well as in thewaters of England, Scotland and 

 W r ales, and to call them French brown, Irish brown, 

 German brown or English brown trout would be like call- 

 ing our own native brook trout (fontinalis) New Jersey 

 speckled trout or Connecticut speckled trout because they 

 happened to be found in the waters of the States named. 

 "Von Behr" is the name given to the European trout in 

 this country by the U. S. Fish Commission because the 

 first eggs of the species were sent here by the late Dr. 

 Von Behr, president of the German Fishery Association. 



Loch Leven trout are not even the fish that are called 

 brown trout in England, so it is absurd to call them Eng- 

 lish brown trout. While the antecedents of the Loch 

 Leven trout are in doubt, they have a specific name of 

 their own, L. levenensis, and are found almost solely in 

 Loch Leven in Scotland. A. N. Cheney. 



'FISHERWOMEN." 



Editor Forest and Stream: 



Why should it be considered outre for ladies to fish?_ I 

 cannot understand! I wanted to go trout fishing with 

 my husband; I had caught my large black bass, turning 

 the scale at over 41bs., and had earned my right to enter 

 the anglers' brotherhood, and wanted to initiate a new 

 split-bamboo rod, the gift of a friend of my husband, so 

 was determined to do some trout fishing even though I 

 had to go alone. 



I found the creek out of which so many toothsome 

 trout had been brought to our camp table. I had to fish 

 with worms because all the flies were in my husband's 

 fly-book. I had been fishing long enough to know "where 

 the trout hide" and dropped the baited hook in a clear 

 space beside the old log and let the bait sink. 



Away went hook and line across the hole, and I gave a 

 gentle strike, but in the excitement of the moment I had 

 not calculated the momentum of the movement, nor the 

 laws of specific gravity, nor the fact that I had forgotten 

 to change my shoes. Suffice to say, my high heels slipped 

 up and in less time than it takes to tell it I was diving for 

 trout to find where they hid. 



Somehow I climbed the log, and, strange as it may 

 seem, I had clung to my rod all the time I was in the 

 water. Of course I got wet, but I took out a splendid 

 trout and hurried off to camp. I presented a delicious 

 trout on the table for supper when we sat down to the 

 evening meal. 



We had a hearty laugh over the mishaps of the day, 

 but it was the beginning of trout fishing for me. Since 

 that time I have joined my husband in many a fishing 

 trip, and I am enjoying life as I never expected to. Such 

 a plunge as I got over this trout would have been my 

 death warrant only a year or two previous. My physician 

 knew some of the delights of trout fishing, and advised 

 my husband to take me along and see if life in the open 

 air would not be beneficial to me. 



I am longing for the end of the official life of my hus- 

 band so that I can once more go camping. Now I spend 

 six or eight weeks every season with him behind the 

 ponies on the broad prairies of Minnesota during the 

 chicken and wild duck shooting, and like to handle a lit- 

 tle 16 -gauge Lefever as well as I do my split- bamboo rod. 



I have for many years contended that the cause of so 

 much unhappiness in our American homes comes from 



the fact that we womenkind are too much absorbed in 

 the cares of the family life; we do not enter into what 

 our protectors enjoy, and the little trouble these hunting 

 and fishing trips cause annoy us; our apathy alienates 

 little by little, until indifference comes in and the home 

 circle becomes a dreary blank. 



I love to be thought something of, and love to join my 

 husband in either fishing or shooting trips, and I am very 

 far from being Amazonian in either tastes or stature; my 

 big son can let me walk under his outstretched arm. 



There is so much to enjoy in the voices of the evenings, 

 and the brooks' murmurings, that I never tire of them. 



Lucy J. Tomles-. 



MAINE FISH AND GAME ASSOCIATION. 



The first annual meeting of the Maine Sportsmen's Fish 

 and Game Association was held in Bangor on the 2d inst. 

 The Fish and Game Commissioners and many other 

 prominent sportsmen of the State were present, besides a 

 considerable number of guides, wardens and other persons 

 interested in the preservation of our fish and game. 



The opening address was delivered by the president of 

 the Association, E. M. Hersey, of Bangor. After alluding 

 briefly to the objects of the Association, Mr. Hersey gave 

 an account of the work done on the west branch of the 

 Penobscot by the patrol of the Association, Mr. B. L. 

 Fowles, who has been stationed during the past season at 

 Pesnadumcook Lake. Through Mr. Fowles's efforts, it is 

 said, dogging has been practically abandoned and summer 

 killing lessened. The relations of sportsmen to lumber- 

 men, including the matter of camp-fires, were touched 

 upon, and the necessity of protecting cow moose urged 

 upon the attention of the Association. 



Col. E. C. Farrington, secretary of the Association then 

 made his report. After giving some further details of the 

 work done during the past season, Col. Farrington sug- 

 gested that the game sections of the State should be 

 divided into districts, each district to have its patrol. The 

 patrol should receive a fixed salary, and should be on 

 duty the year round. In this way the laws would be 

 better enforced and abuses reformed. Col. Farrington 

 also suggested that the "special laws" should be replaced 

 by general ones, and that some provision should be made 

 for the transportation of fish and game by the citizens of 

 the State during open time. After attending to routine 

 business, the Association passed the following resolution: 



Wliereas, The greater number of special laws relating to the pro- 

 tection of fish in the inland waters of the State prove ineffective in 

 their operation, becoming such a hindrance to the proper enforcement 

 of salutary legislation, that the governor, Hon. H^nry B. Cleaves, in a 

 special message to the Legislature under the date of Feb. 13, 1893, 

 called its attention to the advisability of providing by general law for 

 the regulation of such matters; therefore, 



Besolved, That it is the duty of this Association to take such action 

 as will lead to more general and effective legislation, regarding both 

 special and general laws as is consistent with the best interest of the 

 State and to aid in securing such beneficial results. The president of 

 the Association is hereby empowered to increase the committee on 

 legislation from three to seven, on which shall be the president of this 

 Association. 



Hon. Wm. T. Haines, of Waterville, then delivered an 

 address on the propagation and protection of fish. After 

 treating this subject from an historical standpoint, Mr. 

 Haines urged the necessity of more hatcheries and fish- 

 ways, and suggested that if mill owners would be too 

 heavily burdened by the construction of fishways. the 

 State should in such case under tane the work at the 

 public expense. 



Fish and Game Commissioner T. H. Wentworth then 

 spoke on "The Protection of Large Game; What is Being 

 Done? " Mr. Wentworth believes that moose and caribou 

 are on the increase, and thinks it possible that the exist- 

 ing close time of six years may do something for deer 

 in the southern counties. He says that the principal 

 enemies of the large game are the summer hunters and 

 the hide hunters, the former being the worst and most 

 destructive. He suggested that the difficulties of secur- 

 ing a conviction for dogging are such that it would be 

 better simply to forbid killing in the waier. 



Hon. C. E. Och, of Caribou, then spoke of the resources 

 of Aroostock county as a fish and game region, and called 

 attention to the necessity of taking some means for re- 

 stocking the Aroostook River with salmon. 



Hon. J. F. Sprague, of Monson, next discussed the 

 question Residents vs. Non-Residents. He concluded that 

 the State derived more benefit from non-residents than 

 it would by having game killed for the market. 



Hon. Henry O. Stanley, Fish and Game Commissioner, 

 then addressed the association on "Propagation of Fish, 

 Necessity and Methods." After lamenting the falling off 

 in the supply of game fish in the more accessible regions, 

 Mr. Stanley then proceeded to demonstrate the superiority 

 of re-stocking by artificial propagation rather than by 

 trusting to close time and natural methods. He also 

 favored rearing fingerlings where practicable instead of 

 turning out the fry. Mr. Stanley also said a timely 

 word on the matter of fish food, urging every one who 

 was interested in the fishing in any particular pond or 

 lake to stock his water with smelt, and describing how 

 this could be very easily done. 



Hon. A. M. Spear, of Gardiner, then spoke on the 

 question, "Should the Game Preserves of the State be 

 Controlled by Associations or Private Persons or Parties?" 

 Mr. Spear's argument was learned and his conclusions 

 were that neither the Megantic Fish and Game Associa- 

 tion nor any other person or persons could control the 

 right to fish and hunt in any particular area. 



Mr. Mauley Hardy, of Brewer, then spoke on the ' 'Illegal 

 Transportation of Game." He was of the opinion that 

 much game was illegally sent out of the State. Mr. 

 Hardy also delivered many plain, hard, common sense 

 ideas on game protection in general. 



Hon. L. T. Carleton, of Winthrop, then spoke on 

 "Special Fish and Game Laws," arguing against private 

 and special legislation. 



Short addresses were also made by E. G. Gay, of Lewis- 

 ton, on the "Propagation of Game Birds in Maine;" J. H. 

 Kimball, of Bath, on "Shore Fisheries;" H. N. Fairbanks, 

 of Bangor; A. J. Darling, of Enfield, and Jock Darling, 

 of Lowell. F. S. Bunker. 



The Ice and the Trout. 



Charlestown, N. H. — The bitter weather which has 

 set in on us for December, 20° on the 13th and 14th, 

 threatens destruction to what few trout were left in this 

 region, as the brooks were very low, and I fear for the 

 result Samuel Webber, 



