£i6 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
|March 14, 1896. 
all the while keeping my eye on the spot where I had 
seen the rabbit last, I then took a rest over one knee and 
pulled. The rabbit jumped about 3ft. in the air and 
started to run, but Ban had seen him and served him 
with a well-directed shot. I had shot a hole through 
both ears with the old rifle, and called it a lucky shot. 
J. H. G. 
ANGLING NOTES. 
Peculiarities of Fishes. 
Should an investigator study the habits of a species of 
fish in one stream or lake and formulate his conclusions 
and publish them as hard and fast facts regarding the 
habits of that particular species, another student might 
study the habits of the fish in other waters, and when the 
two come together it might be a case of "wigs on the 
green" if it resulted in a discussion as to which was right 
and which wrong, when both might be right, although 
they arrived at different conclusions regarding the habits 
of the same species of fish. If all the conditions are not 
alike in the two waters the habits of the fish may be dis- 
similar in a marked degree. 
It is the common belief that pike, generally called 
pickerel, are absolutely fatal to trout in the same water, 
yet there are waters where both exist and the trout in- 
crease annually in numbers and size. Pike found their 
way into an Adirondack lake and at once there was dis- 
may in that region, and a movement was on foot to stock 
the lake with black bass to destroy the pike as the only 
remedy for the destruction of the pike. Before this could 
be done trout (lake trout) were caught with a lot of young 
pike inside of them. The blaek bass is praised for its care 
of its young after they are hatched, and yet the black bass 
has been convicted of eating its own brood after watch- 
ing the eggs and guarding the young for weeks against 
all enemies. 
Our common brook trout that every angler will swear 
is a home-lover, never straying from its birth stream ex- 
cept when opportunity offers for a dip in the sea and then 
only to return, when transplanted to Great Britain and 
liberated will promptly go down stream and disappear 
forever unless restrained. The rainbow trout, when 
brought from the Pacific slope and planted in Atlantic 
streams, disappears in a like manner, but if its journey is 
continued to England it remains in the water where 
planted. If there is any fresh-water fish in the world 
more destructive of trout than the black bass, by common 
report, I have not, I think, heard of it. The black bass 
has acquired such a reputation that when it made its bow 
to a British public there was one long and concentrated 
howl at its introduction to the waters of Albion. 
I have just heard a complaint that is to me novel, and 
that is, that trout are eating the black bass in Eaquette 
Lake, in the Adirondacks. Years ago the black bass was 
planted in this lake by the New York Fish Commission, 
and afterward it was believed to have been a mighty 
blunder to herd this lion fish with the lamb fish of the 
region, and I think it was. Now, Mr. Charles H. Bennett 
tells me the gentle, amiable, poetical, dainty trout has 
been caught with black bass in its maw. He caught one 
trout with 140 young bass in its stomach, and another 
that had swallowed 300 by actual count. After all, the 
bass are to blame and brought their fate upon them- 
selves, for Mr. Bennett tells me that they ate the natural 
food contained in the lake and produced a state of 
famine, and the trout were finally forced to eat the 
famine producers. Fishculture has advanced to the point 
where serious attention must be given to food for the fish 
hatched and planted in such waters. We have improved 
upon nature in the number of fish hatched from a given 
number of eggs, but we have not made the same progress 
in keeping or providing food for the fish after they are 
hatched. 
Since I wrote the foregoing I have learned from a cor- 
respondent in Maine that another tradition has been upset, 
knocked galley west, and crooked. He says that the limit 
in pounds that one could catch of togue (lake trout) in one 
day has been removed from the Maine law, and this 
action was taken because it was thought that the togue 
(lake trout) were devouring the brook trout. To me this 
precaution seems to be parallel to warning the people of 
Kalamazoo to keep indoors, so that when the statue of 
Liberty in New York harbor toppled over it would not 
fall on them. The two species of fish do not naturally 
inhabit the same depth of water; they spawn in different 
places and at different times, but if they do meet and one 
captivates the other as a stomach lining, it is another 
argument for more natural fish food in our watery. 
Dancing for Animals. 
In a personal letter from a lady residing inEome, Italy, 
which came on the last steamer, she says; "To-night we 
are going to a ball at the Grand Hotel which promises to 
be very fine. It is for the Society for the Protection of 
Animals, under the patronage of the Queen and the 
highest ladies of Rome. I wonder if after dancing for 
charity and education and the warm-blooded animals we 
will dance for the fishes. " Why not? I think it would be 
a good idea; but instead of dancing for the fishes, dance 
to provide them with food and let the fish breeders con- 
tinue to hustle for the fishes themselves, If it should be- 
come fashionable to dance in the interest of our food 
Ashes the matter of fish food would have an inning such 
as it never has had, but the millennium is not due yet. 
Ouananiche on Pacific Slope. 
My friend Dr. W. H. Drummond, President of the St. 
Maurice Club, writes me from Montreal under date of Feb 
28 and m his letter says: "An 'old country' friend of mine 
now living in Northern British Columbia, Cariboo Dis- 
trict, tells me he is positive they have ouananiche out 
there, as he has caught them averaging Silbs. and never 
more than 51bs. The description is exactly that of the 
Lake^St. John fish." This is the third time, from three 
different sources, that I have heard of the presence of the 
supposed ouananiche in British Columbia waters, and 
yet, from any positive information on the subject, there 
m no good reason for thinking the fish exists on the 
Pacific slope. Mr. J. G. A. Creighton was the first to call 
my attention to what was supposed to be a landlocked 
form of salmon on the Pacific Water Shed, but he did 
not intimate that it might be other than a form of Pacific 
salmon that bad become landlocked, as we are pleased 
to term it. But later information pointed to a landlocked 
form of the Atlantic salmon in the same waters, but thus 
far there has been nothing offered to substantiate this 
belief. Starting with the knowledge as a positive fact 
that the ouananiche is the Atlantic salmon with solely a 
fresh-water habitat, although it may have access to the 
sea, and that the Atlantic salmon is utterly unknown on 
the Pacific coast, it is difficult to understand how the 
ouananiche can be found in British Columbia unless it 
has been taken there overland, and this I believe has not 
been attempted by the fisheries department of the 
Dominion. 
Snowshoeing over Slumbering: Black Bass. 
A friend writing me to-day from Canada — a friend 
with whom I had some of the best trout fishing last year 
that is to be had in the waters of this free earth — says, 
rather mournfully: "Oh, how I long for the winter to 
pass away and the spring to come. It is such a tedious, 
hardly -ever-ending time to wait, and helps to make life 
seem so short. At present we have to do our fishing in 
our dreams," Well, that is as one may look at it. I went 
fishing on snowshoes one night this week without rod, 
reel, hook, bob or sinker, but my catch was something to 
remember as long as I live, and I may never equal it 
again unless I am favored with the same conditions. It 
was one of those occasions that fishermen refer to as red- 
letter days, though this was a red-letter night. 
I had had a headache for one solid week, and my think- 
ing machinery was out of repair. I had, added to other 
trifling ills, a cold, and could not move my arms without 
pain in some portion of my anatomy. I was taking sev- 
eral kinds of medicine and lots of advice, and all the 
time I knew I was seven different kinds of an ass to bend 
over a desk from morning until after midnight and ex- 
pect a physician to heal me with drugs. 
One afternoon a younger sister sent me a note asking 
if I would go snowshoeing that evening with her and a 
lady who was her guest, and if so to meet them at the 
train for Lake George that evening at 7 o'clock. I pre- 
sume my physician would have said no and charged $2 75 
for the advice, but I did not consult him. I got a lot of 
advice for nothing, but I had decided to go very promptly 
and I was deaf to everything not in accord with my de- 
cision. I got to the train by running for it, but landed 
in a seat a demmed damp, moist, unpleasant body, with 
my heart making about 209 revolutions a minute. By 
the time the train stopped to let me off I was able to speak 
to the friends I had joined, and there were four of us. 
We got off the train on the high ground south of Lake 
George, and at once put on our shoes, and hauling a 
toboggan started south toward Glen Lake. The night 
was glorious, the moon nearly full, no wind, and a tem- 
perature of 10° above zero. The snow was not the best, 
nor was there as much of it as I have seen in this locality, 
but on the south side of the hills we found once in a 
while sufficient crust to hold the toboggan for a slide. 
There was nothing whatever to mar the tramp and nothing 
tried to except one or two barbed-wire fences. Where I 
had the greatest pleasure, soul satisfying, and gifts were 
showered upon me to cause my heart to throb with pure 
delight, was in a piece of brush where I made a short cut 
with the toboggan. That toboggan treed on everything 
that was above the snow. Once in a while it was right 
side up, but not often; the cushion came off every time the 
toboggan treed or turned over, and the rope broke with 
becoming regularity every time I tried to haul the tobog- 
gan over a stump. The others were out in the clearing 
Bhouting to know why I did not hurry, but I was so happy 
I did not want to hurry, and when I caught one shoe in 
a stub and went on my head into a pile of frozen brush I 
was so filled with emotion and snow that I could not ex- 
plain why I did not hurry. The sweetness and bliss of 
that passage of the short cut a poet would put into verse, 
but I cannot. I prefer to think of it. I got through 
finally with most of the toboggan and considerable skin 
left on my hands and face, and came out where the moon 
was shining brightly on the white snow and the other 
members of the party were awaiting me, and all was 
cheerful; but my heart was in the passage of the brush 
with a toboggan upside down. It was clear sailing to 
Glen Lake thereafter, except that one of the ladies instead 
of jumping a brook jumped into it, and the toboggan when 
turned loose ran down a steep pitch and smashed what 
was left of its nose against a tree; and when we were on its 
ice-covered surface I recalled to a select audience where I 
caught a small-mouth black bass of 8ilbs. , and how it 
took several years' time and as many quarts of ink to 
prove it to the angling world. As we crossed the lake I 
could fix in the clear moonlight the place where every big 
black bass had been taken during the past twenty years, 
and I would have given a small farm to have been able 
to turn the X rays down through the ice to the bottom of 
the lake where the bass were sleeping and found the 
largest one; for I believe there are bigger bass in the lake 
than ever came out of it. Across to Mud Lake is but 
a step, but there are no fish there, and thus another 
step and we were on Round Pond, where the 101b. small- 
mouth black bass was taken. The fever was in my blood 
by this time, and if by any possible chance I had ever 
been able to sing, I would have sung a joy song then and 
there. We knew a sleigh was waiting for us a mile or so 
beyond, with fur wraps and heavy coats, and at the end 
of a sleigh ride a hot supper would be waiting later, and 
I postponed any outward manifestations of desiring to 
sing a joy or any other song, but my heart was light and 
my head clear and pains gone, or going, for I was free 
the next morning. The famous Lydia did not hit it ex- 
actly when she framed her familiar war cry, "Yours for 
health." She should have Baid, "Snowshoeing for 
health." Therefore I cannot agree with my dear Cana- 
dian friend and long for the winter to go, for if the 
same conditions should exist as on this evening, particu- 
larly if I was always permitted to make a short cut 
through the brush with a toboggan, I would wish for 
snow all summer. There is a moral concealed in this 
note, but i cannot point it out while I am on such excel- 
lent terms with my family physician, but it is free to all 
who discover it. A. N. Cheney. 
FISHING TACKLE AND THINGS. 
Now that the season approaches, each disciple of good 
Father Walton might be seen, no doubt, at spare mo- 
ments, brushing up his tackle. Rods, reels, lines and 
hooks need to be carefully examined. The rods may re- 
quire new whippings and a coat of varnish and mayhap a 
ferrule or so, while the reel, of course, needs tightening 
up, with perhaps a new screw; a drop of oil, too, is nec- 
essary lor its well-being. Lines must be gone over with 
care to detect any weak spots, for what is more annoying 
than to have a line part when at the height of enjoyment 
with a good game fish? Hooks are to be retied, per- 
haps, and the points filed up, etc. Of course, the lines 
and hooks might be discarded and new ones added to the 
store, but there is to be considered the pleasure that comeB 
to the heart of the angler in the overhauling of this old 
tackle. 
Then there are the flies — those "poetized hooks" that 
must have particular attention — and what retrospection 
one falls into while at this pleasant occupation. There is 
that old "White Miller," the one sewed to a card with 
full record written thereon, and a bit of blue ribbon tied 
in a bow at one corner. It was with this fly at sundown 
many years ago that our very biggest trout was taken, 
since that date this particular "Miller" has reposed in 
luxury. He was pensioned at once, and when sometimes, 
at coldest winter, or at other times when a fit of blues is 
on, this fly brings up the recollection of one particular day 
and we are carried back to a time spent camping on one 
of Michigan's finest streams. That, however, was before 
the frost began to nip our locks. Ah yes, in the blossom 
time of life. But then, does one ever get too old to fish? 
We are up the hill and a part way down the other side, 
we are passing the mark "three score and ten," but still 
the other day our tackle box came out, as has been the 
custom for so many years, and all the implements were 
gone over and tricked up, while now we simply wait for 
the season. Or, as General Stanton has said, 
"I jes' set here a-dreamin'— 
A-dreamin' every day — 
Of the sunshine that's a-Kleainia' 
On the rivers far av ay. 
"An' I kinder fall to wisMn' 
I was where the waters swish, 
Fer if the Lord made fishin', 
Why, a feller orter fish! 
''While I'm studyin' or a writin 1 
In the dusty, rusty town, 
I ken feel the fish a-bitin'— 
See the cork a-goin' down ! 
"An' the sunshine seems a-tanglin' 
Of the shadows cool an' sweet; 
With the honeysuckles danglln'. 
An' the lilies at my feet. 
"So I nod, an' fall to wishia' 
I was where the waters swish; 
Fer if the Lord made fishin', 
Why, a feller orter fish 1" 
Old Rod. 
The Art of Sizing them up. 
P Young fishermen should take great care to acquire one 
faculty which only experience can teach and which all 
old fishermen possess. It is the faculty of mentally weigh- 
ing fish. A young fisherman carries scales from the store, 
but with experience discards them for the mental scales, 
which are very much better, because by using them one 
can always weigh fi3h which are hooked and lost. At all 
times by a glance of the eye any fish is weighed. No 
danger, no doubt, but absolute certainty that the mental 
iveight is the only reliable one upon which to base a story, 
particularly of a lost fish. Bass are so finely shaped, reg- 
ularly curved and close mouthed that as soon as ex- 
perience has given the angler his mental scales they are 
most easily weighed. One peculiarity of bass is their 
wonderful uniformity in size, length, breadth and depth, 
hence more are caught which mentally weigh 31bs. than 
any other weight. 
Much sport is undoubtedly had in taking bass with bait, 
either common earth worms, minnows or fresh- water lob- 
sters, but it is conceded by all of experience that the tak- 
ing with the artificial and most deceitful fly furnishes the 
acme of sport and happiness. In fishing with the artifi- 
cial fly the fisherman makes a cast and suddenly, quicker 
than electricity, quicker than even a "Hello!" comes bsck 
over a telephone, a signal flashes from the hook over the 
line and rod to the nerve center of the brain which en thrills 
the angler, needing no Morse code nor code of civil pro- 
cedure for interpretation; the wrist responds, apparently 
automatically, and yet with the prescience born of the 
most delicate skill, and the fish is hooked. This is only 
the beginning of care, anxiety and trouble. The instant 
that the angler feels the fish on his line all thoughts of 
business, money ,wife or sweetheart are obliterated and the 
whole attention is absorbed by the one desire and impulse 
to save that fish. The prick of the hook and the restraint 
of the line and rod arouse the combativeness which the 
bass possesses to the highest degree. Look at that iron jaw 
and the fire in his eye, now of an intense scarlet hue, from 
the anger aroused. He darts this way and that, leaps 
from the water, sounds the depths, all the time on the 
move, changing his course like lightning, lunging and 
rushing like the born fighter he is. When at last he is 
safely landed the angler settles back in his seat, frequently 
pale and weak, but full of justifiable pride; one glance is 
given to mentally weigh the fish, he is carefully placed in 
the basket, and the angler is ready to try it again. — C. W. 
Smith in Syracuse Standard. 
A Minnetonka Pickerel. 
Henbt Phelps, of Excelsior, Minn., recently speared 
through the ice in Lake Minnetonka a pickerel weighing 
SOlbs., of which, the record states, 3 or 4lbs, were of roe, 
Mice for Bass. 
I should like to suggest to my friends who expect to do 
any bass fishing this coming season, to add to their tackle 
a mouse trap, and keep themselves well supplied with live 
mice, 
I have used them for bait for the last two seasons with 
splendid results, catching a great many large fish. The 
largest, and the record breaker for that stream (a small 
river in the northern part of New Jersey), weighed 51bs, 
I hook the mouse under the skin of the neck and let him 
swim on the surface. H. J, W, 
V 
