Maboh 24, 1894.] 



FOREST AND STREAM. 



2§i 



possible. A bar of pink] and silver flashed through the 

 waves, and a grand fish threw himself bodily out of the 

 water on to my Scotch fly. I knew that lie was well 

 hooked and at once gave him the butt and led him into 

 the depths of the lake. C. netted him for me after twenty 

 minutes of hard fighting. His weight was 31bs. loz. , and 

 on my fly tackle his fighting qualities appeared to far 

 better advantage than had been the case with the victim 

 of the spoon." 



Similar tactics brought other specimens of Salmo alpi- 

 nus to book. May we not expect that the saibling of 

 Sunapee will also take the fly, soon after the ice goes out 

 in the month of May? No one has made a study of this 

 at Sunapee, for all are content to capture the fish with live 

 results, and whisper it in the bushes, worms. I verily 

 believe the American alpinus will do as his Lapp congener 

 when feathers and silk to his liking are deftly offered. 



Fine'erling Fishermen. 



On the back of an old letter which relates the capture 

 of undersized brook trout, and the disgust of the writer at 

 such unsportsmanlike conduct on the part of the "finger- 

 ling butchers," a friend of mine wrote: 



"Oli the depravity! 

 Dig a big cavity, 

 And in all gravity, 

 Tincture with brevity 

 Lives of such men." 



A Baby Tarpon. 



Mr. Alfred C. Harmsworth, an English gentleman at 

 present in this country for the fishing, writes me from 

 Marco, Florida: "Between constant traveling and fishing 

 our correspondence is sadly in arrears. Following the 

 advice of Dr. Trowbridge, which you sent me, I came to 

 Punta Gorda. Although they did exceptionally well in 

 January, no tarpon had been taken for three weeks. 

 Yesterday I had a big day at Naples, where we are stay- 

 ing. About forty pounds of 'trout,' lady fish (very game 

 this), red snapper, etc., and one tarpon — a baby tarpon of 

 lOlbs., nevertheless the first this year at Naples. 



"To-day I have come down here, the most southerly 

 inhabited spot on the Gulf of Mexico side of the State, 

 and am writing this in a very wabbly small boat while 

 patiently waiting for silver king No. 2. Florida (this part 

 of it, indeed) is undoubtedly the best place for all-round 

 fishing in the world. 



"Just now a big shark gave me three-fourths of an 

 hour's hard work. I reeled him in, and while getting my 

 revolver from my pocket he jumped almost into the boat, 

 and — crack! My No. 18 bass wire was snapped. Shark 

 are fairly game. The best small game fish in Florida is 

 the ladyhsh (local name probably). One jumped fourteen 

 times yesterday, and fought very much like a salmon of 

 twice its size. I find a good sprinkling of English over 

 here for the fishing this year. Will write anon of my 

 sport. Am having an immense time and well fixed gen- 

 erally." 



There is a family of ladyfishes (Albulidce), and the fish 

 that Mr. Harmsworth refers to is Albulavidpes, commonly 

 called ladyfish or bonefish, game on the hook, but not 

 highly regarded for the table. 



Spawning of Rainbow Trout. 



A correspondent, writing from Jackson, Mich., under 

 date of March 6, says: "I saw, at Allegan, Mich., to-day 

 what was called by the fish warden of that place a rain- 

 bow trout. It was caught in a net by men who said they 

 were fishing for suckers, and who turned it over to the 

 fish warden. It was taken at the foot or lower side of 

 a dam, and was a female fish, full of spawn as large as 

 double B shot. It measured 22in. from tip to tip, 4jin. 

 wide, and weighed 4^1bs. I always supposed that trout 

 of all kinds were fall spawning fish. Will you state in 

 your notes in Forest and Stream whether the rainbow 

 trout and landlocked salmon are spring or fall spawners?" 



Landlocked salmon spawn in the fall, October and 

 November, and rainbow trout spawn in the spring. In 

 the McCloud River, California, where the spawning of the 

 rainbow trout has been closely observed, they have been 

 known to spawn as early as Jan. 10 and as late as May. 

 Stone has said that it was reported to him that the rain- 

 bow trout was spawning somewhere in the State of Cali- 

 fornia every month in the year. This is owing to variations 

 in elevation, latitude and temperature. In New York 

 State, in confinement, the rainbow trout spawns from 

 March to May, but eggs of this fish have been received in 

 New York during the first few days of March that were 

 taken from the trout in Michigan, therefore they must 

 have spawned in Michigan in February. Further, the 

 spawning season of the rainbow trout and our common 

 brook trout, fpntinalis, have become so nearly identical 

 in New York in some instances that the two species have 

 been crossed. This was accomplished by bringing together 

 late-spawning fontinalis and early-spawning irideus. 

 Temperature may advance or retard the spawning of 

 either species. 



Smelt in Rivers. 



A gentleman in New Hampshire writes me: "I am 

 obliged for the letters you have written in Forest and 

 Stream about smelt eggs. I have in mind one of the 

 rivers in southern New Hampshire which I think needs 

 some sort of food for the fish now in it. There are five 

 dams on the stream in a distance of five miles, and rapids 

 or falls at each dam. I have doubts if I should plant 

 either adult smelt or the eggs, whether the fish would 

 find their way to the sea, over the dams or through the 

 sluices, and be lost, or if they would run up stream still 

 further. If they will do the latter that is what I wish, 

 but as it is a public stream I do not wish to go to the ex- 

 pense of planting smelt only to lose them." 



The smelt is not a stream fish, they enter streams from 

 the sea, or tributaries of lakes, if they are landlocked, 

 only for the purpose of spawning. They run up the 

 streams at night, spawn, and return to the sea or lake 

 before morning. It would be a waste of fish, money and 

 time to attempt to stock a stream containing five dams or 

 to establish them permanently in any stream. As soon as 

 the smelts are hatched they run down into the water, sea 

 or lake, into which the stream empties. I have seen 

 thousands of little smelt at the mouths of the streams in 

 which they were hatched, and their size gave the best 

 evidence that they lost no time in leaving the nursery 

 stream. 



My correspondent does not say what species of fish he 

 wishes to feed. If trout, the best food for planting the 



stream is fresh- water shrimp; if black bass are to be fed, 

 plant crawfish. Both of these crustaceans are easily and 

 cheaply obtained, and they are very prolific. 



To Preserve Salmon Eggs. 



A correspondent in Portland, Oregon, wishes a formula 

 published in Forest and Stream, which he may use for 

 preserving salmon eggs. I think I can say, after due de- 

 liberation, that the gray hairs in my head are due, in 

 part, to experiments ,in this direction which ended, as a 

 rule, in failure. But at this moment I have eggs and fry 

 of brook trout, brown trout, Loch Leven trout and salmon 

 {solar), that were taken and hatched more than two years 

 ago, and they retain their color perfectly, so that the eggs 

 look as if they were just spawned and the fry look as if 

 they were just hatched. They are preserved in equal 

 parts, in bulk, of glycerine, water and alcohol. The 

 formula was given to me by Mr. Mather, of the New York 

 Fish Commission. 



In the impregnated eggs the embryo is to be seen as 

 perfectly and clearly as if they had never come in contact 

 with anything but pure water. The eggs and fry are in 

 bottles, and a year ago I used them to illustrate a lecture 

 upon fishculture, when they were poured out into open 

 glass vessels, and for the time the preserving fluid became 

 slightly cloudy, owing, as I afterwaxd thought, to the 

 cold, but they are now perfectly clear again except for 

 the sediment in the bottles containing the fry— the eggs 

 have no sediment. Alcohol and water, eighty per cent, 

 of the former, and twenty per cent, of the latter, will 

 preserve the eggs, but it will turn them white and they 

 become opaque instead of semi-transparent as in nature. 



A. N. Cheney. 



FISHING WITH A BARE HOOK. 



hen I was a boy we used to con- 

 sider the act of fishing with a bare 

 hook as the very acme of pleasureless 

 and profitless follies. Indeed we often used 

 the phrase, as descriptive of any enterprise 

 that afforded neither present enjoyment nor 

 prospective advantage; and I might have 

 gone on forever in the same way of thinking, 

 if chance had not brought me to the good 

 city of Oswego, on the south shore of Lake 

 Ontario, where the art is practiced, to very 

 great advantage. 



The Oswego River, a large and powerful 

 / km stream, bears the annual tribute to Ontario, 

 ' flw of an extensive chain of lakes in the interior 

 of the State of New York. Near its mouth 

 the river is about 500ft. wide, 'and 8 or 10ft. deep, and 

 it flows rapidly in a rocky bed. It divides the city of 

 Oswego into two nearly equal parts, and furnishes abun- 

 dant water-power for its numerous mills and factories. 

 But it is not of these that I intend to speak. 



, Every spring, beginning about the middle of April, the 

 river is visited by a prodigious number of fish of the genus 

 Catostomus, commonly called suckers. Doubtless they are 

 inspired by a tribal tradition, transmitted from their re- 

 motest ancestors, to the effect that the Oswego River is an 

 admirable place to set up housekeeping and bring up a large 

 and interesting family. They seem to ignore the fact 

 that the river in reality is polluted by factory waste, and 

 obstructed by mill-dams surmountable only by the aid of 

 absurdly impossible fish-ladders. 



The fish enter the river from Lake Ontario, and work 

 their way slowly up stream against the strong current. 



SUCKER FISHING. 



They swim close to the bottom, and often lie motionless 

 for long periods in the shelter of some stone, their heads 

 pointing up stream; or they may cling to the smooth sur- 

 face of the rock by their sucker-like mouths. They ap- 

 pear to have no disposition to feed, and steadfastly refuse 

 the most tempting hires. The river water is turbid from 

 the spring freshets, so the fish are concealed from view 

 and therefore can not be reached with the spear. The 

 laws of the State, and the swift current for that matter, 

 forbid the use of nets and seines. So it would seem that 

 the fish were in a fair way to avoid capture. 



The young men and boys, however, have discovered a 

 way to circumvent them, and provided witn an apparatus 

 which I shall presently describe, they eagerly await their 

 coming. A cynical writer has summarized the gentle 

 craft of angling as ' ! a stick and a string with a worm at 

 one end and a fool at the other;" and to make use of this 

 definition, without in any way indorsing it, I will begin 

 at the worm end of the arrangement to describe the 

 tackle. 



Three large fish-hooks are first fastened together back 

 to back, so as to form a grapnel. Two of these grapnels 

 are generally used, and are hung about eight or ten inches 

 apart from the ends of a wire spreader. This last is 

 simply a piece of wire about a foot in length, bent in 

 such a way as to form an eye at each end and one in the 

 middle. To the middle of the spreader a strong line with 

 a heavy sinker is attached, and this with a long and very 

 stiff bamboo pole completes the outfit. 



There are two bridges across the river at Oswego about 



a furlong apart, and between them a stone wall has been 

 built right in the middle of the river, parallel to the cur- 

 rent, so that the river is divided and the water flows on 

 each side of the wall. This wall is about 6ft. wide on top 

 and stands 2 or 3 ft. above the level of the water, which 

 here has a depth of 10 or 12ft. This forms the fishing 

 ground, and here upon every pleasant day, as long as the 

 season lasts, dozens of men and boys can be seen, engaged 

 from morning till night in active pursuit of the fish. The 

 operation is exceedingly simple. The angler casts his line 

 upstream, allows the sinker to carry the grapnels to the 

 bottom, and then by a motion of the pole draws them 

 gently down with the current. If the hook touches a fish 

 he gives a smart jerk to fix it firmly, and at once lands his 

 fluttering victim on the top of the wall. When one looks 

 at the size of the river, the chance of lowering a hook 

 down into it and pulling it up with a fish on it seems 

 infinitely less than that of drawing the grand prize in the 

 lottery. In fact, it is like discharging a fowling piece in 

 the direction of a forest in the hope of bringing down 

 some game. But owing to the abundance of the fish, to 

 the great crowds and shoals of them that are forcing their 

 way up the river, large numbers'are caught. Indeed, it 

 is not an uncommon thing to pull up two at a time. 



The fish thus caught consist of two or three different 

 varieties of suckers. They are of good size, averaging 2 

 or 31bs. in weight, and much larger ones are sometimes 

 taken. Occasionally a fisherman hooks on to a lOOlbs. 

 sturgeon. Then there is a lively contest, as a result of 

 which the sturgeon sometimes departs with the tackle. 



Locally these suckers are called "shad," "mullet" and 

 other delectable names, but it would require more than 

 this to make them really desirable for the table. They 

 certainly have a sad lack of flavor and an undoubted sur- 

 plus of small bones. 



They eat them, though! Oh, yes! Perhaps the best 

 that could be said of them would, be a remark once made 

 to me by an old hunter when we were reduced to living 

 on porcupines: "They are a long ways ahead of nothing." 



Capt. Dan C. Kingman, U. S. A. 



BOSTON NOTES. 



Somehow the weather has played the smelt fishermen 

 "fast and loose" this spring. At least the smelt fishermen 

 who usually so much enjoy smelt dipping with their 

 hands in Parker River, and at other rivers along the 

 North Shore, have had no success worth mentioning this 

 spring. The fashion is to go with lantern strapped to the 

 waist or the forehead, wading with rubber hip boots up 

 the stream to where the spawning smelt are struggling to 

 reach the swiftly-running fresh water. The smelt are 

 seen by help of the lantern's rays, when, with a quick dip 

 of the fisherman's hand he is in the basket. On spring 

 nights in former seasons it has not been more than fun 

 for a single fisherman to dip out 20 to 301bs. of smelt in a 

 few hours. But this spring no good hauls have been 

 made. Mr. Claude H. Tarbox, an authority on Parker 

 River smelt, had made one or two smelting excursions up 

 to the end of the open season last week, but with poor 

 success. He thinks that the unusually early spring has 

 demoralized the time of smelt spawning some way. On 

 Tuesday evening he did succeed in getting twenty -eight, 

 however, and the twenty-eight weighed 51bs. 



The tackle dealers say that there is a good deal of in- 

 terest being manifested among the trout fishermen, and 

 the lines and rods are being put in readiness for the first 

 of April. Perhaps it is the early coming of the robins 

 that has set the fishermen to thinking. On St. Patrick's 

 Day these beautiful harbingers of spring were singing 

 merrily in the suburbs of Boston. Reports from the Maine 

 woods and waters also indicate an early spring. Mr. C. 

 Stevens has advices from Andover which say that the 

 snow is going fast, and that the water in Richardson Lake 

 is rising rapidly, with every prospect of early departure 

 of the ice from the Rangeleys. He predicts that the ice 

 will be out of these lakes as early as April 25, provided 

 the weather holds fine. He is making further improve- 

 ments on Camp Vive Vale, in the Narrows of Richardson 

 Lake. On the other hand, Capt. Fred C. Barker is of the 

 opinion that the ice will be late about going out, for 

 the ice is always very slow about leaving the lakes when 

 there is a good deal of snow, and consequently snow-ice 

 on top of the clear blue ice. The snow-ice stops the action 

 of the sun's rays, and the blue or solid ice melts away 

 only very slowly. 



Mr. Harry Dutton is at home from his winter trip to 

 Florida. I learn that he has built a camp at Borie Beach, 

 Big Richardson Pond, and that one of the Soules will 

 have charge of it. Doubtless they have already torn 

 down the old Borie Camp, that has sheltered so many 

 hunters in days gone by. It was there that Herbert 

 Kempton, of the Boston Herald staff, caught the tame 

 bear (?) last year, and exhibited him, with a string to his 

 leg, to the rest Camp Stewart party. He played trained 

 bear in the evening, with Mr. W. T. Farley as manager, 

 and came very near getting put out of the camp, to sleep 

 among the hedgehogs, to which class of animals the bear 

 caught at Camp Borie really belonged. A man who will 

 go deliberately to work to make the ladies believe that a 

 porcupine is really a bear, deserves to be put out of camp. 



Special. 



Potomac River Fish Protection. 



By recent^Congressional legislation, the shad and her- 

 ring of the Potomac River will be protected on their 

 spawning beds, a bill having been passed to continue in 

 force the provisions of the act approved March 2, 1885, 

 entitled "An act to protect fish in the Potomac River in 

 the District of Columbia, and to provide a spawning 

 ground for shad and herring in the said Potomac River. 



It would be well if the protection contemplated in this 

 act could be extended to the black bass in the vicinity of 

 Quantico and Potomac City, which have been caught by 

 hundreds in seines, and are doubtless still being taken by 

 the same means. We have this statement from an eye 

 witness, an enthusiastic bass fisherman whose feelings 

 were outraged by the shameless destruction of the fine 

 fish recently introduced by the Government. 



Robin and Trout Tackle. 



Pittsburgh, Pa., March 15. — To-day I saw the first 

 robin of the season in the Twentieth Ward of this city. 

 He was lively, looked large and fat, and made me feel 

 like going fishing. J. W. HAGUE, 



