338 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
[May 2, 1896, 
gang, eo it will whirl, and whirl as it should, it is not a 
good bait. A yellow perch with the skin removed from 
one side makes one of the very best of baits, as the trout 
can see it a long distance away, and that is the object of 
all whirling baits, to make them visible and give them the 
semblance of life. 
Lake trout come to the surface of a lake in the spring 
as soon as the ice disappears, and they do so because their 
food is then at the surface. The natural food of the lake 
trout is the whitefish, of which there are many species, 
the round whitefish or Adirondack frost-fish perhaps 
being the most common in northern New York waters. 
"When the trout are at the surface no sinker is required in 
trolling, and that is the only time that trout trolling can 
be classed as sport, in my opinion. Even when the trout 
are "on top" they may also be caught at the bottom or 
part way down to the bottom. I have known of lake 
trout coming on to shoals and on the shores in August for 
yellow perch when there was a dearth of food in deep 
water. Last year I saw the trout breaking all around my 
boat, and as far as the eye could reach on the surface of 
the lake, and while they were apparently feeding they 
would not touch my troll or the trolls of friends fishing 
with me. I mean that out of hundreds breaking I could 
get only once in a while a fish. Feeding fish would roll 
over my line and break near my bait, scattering schools 
of whitefish, and leave the bait itself severely alone. I 
used to think if a trout broke within reaching distance, 
so I could swing the bait over him before he went down 
so far he could not see it, he was my fish. Not so. now, 
and the change has been brought about by an abundance 
of food planted in the lake, and the trout no longer have 
to hustle for a meal, as food is all about them, and a single 
whitefish impaled on a gang is lost in a myriad of other 
whitefish with no gang attachment. 
I once read an article written to prove that lake trout 
would not feed before 8 A. M. — I think it was, although 
it may have been 8:15— and did not feed after a fixed 
hour in the afternoon. This conclusion was arrived at by 
examining the stomachs of a large number of trout, and 
by figuring on the time required for the gastric juices to 
get in their certain work in digesting the trout's food. I 
think the argument would have convinced most any one 
who had never seen or caught a lake trout that it was 
correct in theory, but those who have caught lake trout 
at all hours of the day, from daylight in the morning 
until after dark at night, would scarcely accept it as true 
in practice. 
When trout are at the surface in the spring they can be 
heard breaking in the night when the water is still, and 
there is no doubt but they are feeding. A lake trout 
"breaks" the water by courtesy only, it is rather a roll at 
the surface, making a boil such as is made by the blade 
of an oar. In more than thirty years' experience 1 have 
seen but two lake trout jump above the surface, when 
dashing into a school of small fish to prey upon them. 
"Opening Day." 
The 16th of April is the opening day of the brook trout 
season in all pares of New York State except Long Island; 
and as it is quite the fashion to have laws passed to suit va- 
rious parts of the State, or rather to regulate the fishing in 
different waters of the State, I have wondered and still 
wonder why all anglers in northern New York do not 
combine and ask the Legislature to open the brook trout 
season not earlier than May 1. Brook trout fishing in 
April in northern New York is a delusion and a snare. 
The brooks are high and the water thick, and as a rule 
the fish are obtained only by fishing as one would fish for 
suckers on the bottom. In fact, one angler who caught 
some suckers when fishing for trout this year told me the 
suckers wer.e more game than the trout when hooked. 
To some people a trout is a trout, no matter how or when 
caught, but it is a mockery to catch ill-conditioned fish in 
April that give as much play as a pressed brick, and call 
it sport. By the time that the season should open every 
brook has a well-worn path beside it. 
I was out in Washington county planting trout the day 
before the fishing season opened this year, and every 
brook was over its banks with muddy snow water, and 
they could not have afforded anyone pleasure to fish there 
next day. It may be said that this season was exception- 
ally late, but in 1S94 the ice went out of Lake George on 
April 1, although the lake was partly open after March. 
19, and never before was the ice known to go out so early 
as it does not usually go out until after April 15 and some- 
times not until the last of April. In 1894 I fished an early 
brook on May 2. I caught nine trout and reeled up dis- 
gusted; not a single trout was in perfect condition and 
only one m fair condition. One trout 12in. long looked as 
though it had been fasting on a wager and starvation was 
about to claim it. They were thin, slimy; poor, miserable 
things, with no snap in their wasted bodies. 
Warm rain, insect food and a visit to the sun-kissed 
gravel of the rapids would have made them a joy to be- 
hold and a pleasure to catch. The season has been open 
four days and I have learned of but one trout being taken 
that came to the surface to take the bait offered. Anyone 
who likes that kind of fishing can have my share of it for 
nothing, and I will wait for any that may be left to rise 
to a ny. I opened the season by sending a lot of rods to 
the maker to be varnished and they will be back before 
1 will have any use for them. 
Albino Trout. 
I think I have learned not to show surprise at anvthine: 
I may hear about fishes, no matter what I may think 
The reason for this is that I have heard of such a number 
of seemingly improbable things in connection with fish 
that have proved to be absolutely true, that I have found 
it to be good policy not to question any statement, except 
such as crossing the jellyfish with the shad to eliminate 
the bones. When I first heard that albino trout were 
being bred in Minnesota, I thought a good deal, but said 
nothing. Next id came pretty straight that Supt. Watkins 
of the Minuesota Fish Commission, had thirty-nine albino 
brook trout fry and had reared thirteen to maturity and 
from these had hatched 147 fish, forty-nine reaching 
maturity, and frcrn these again had sprung 700 albino 
trout. I made a nieniorandurn of this, for it pointed to 
the fact that albinos would breed truer than was generally 
supposed. A few days ago I met a gentleman fresh from 
St. Paul, and he told me that he had seen the albino 
trout. He described them as cream white rather than 
pure white, with the usual red spots of the brook trout on 
the sides, but no other spottings or markings of the brook 
trout. He could not recall whether there was any indica- 
tion of the vermiculation of the brook trout on the back, 
but the fish had pink eyes and pinkish fins, and were al- 
together the handsomest fiRh he had ever seen. It is said 
that albinism tends to become hereditary and this case 
seems to prove it, but it would be of interest to know if 
all the spawn of the albinos produce albino fish, if not 
what proportion lack the coloring matter in their skins 
which causes albinism? 
Apparently they are not as hardy as the trout with nat- 
ural coloring, and it would also be of interest to know 
definitely about it, and to have an analysis of the water 
in which they are bred. 
Natural Food for Fish. 
The propagation of fish by artificial methods has made 
wonderful strides since Jacobi, the father of fishculture, 
first hatched trout in 1741 by artificial means in the 
province of Varenholz, Germany, and even since 
V. P. Vrasske, a Russian, discovered the method of 
dry impregnation of fish eggs in 1856; but I think all who 
are unbiased will admit that fishculture should go hand 
in hand with fish-food culture to make the first a com- 
plete success in all its parts, and round out the science as 
a perfect whole. Say that nature impregnated but 2 
per cent, of salmon eggs (as I once told in this journal 
from actual count of the eggs in a Canadian salmon 
stream) and man hatched over 95 per cent, of the same 
kind of eggs, taken artificially, what provision does man 
make for feeding the increase upon nature's methods? A 
farmer would not exercise good judgment should he 
turn 100 cows into a pasture that had food only for ten, 
and it is the same with a fish breeder when he turns more 
fish into a stream than the stream will provide food for. 
Furthermore, a fish breeder should know when he turns 
fish out whether the water has food to sustain the lite of 
the fish just as certainly as a farmer knows when he turns 
his cows out whether they are turned out in grass or a 
ploughed field. Cows will not live on air, neither will a 
fish live on water. 
But this is a subject too great to discuss in a single 
note in this column. Candor compels me to admit that 
Europe has devoted more time and thought, judging 
from results, to rearing natural food for fish than we have 
on this side of the Atlantic, 
In fact, except Superintendent Atkins, of the U. S. 
Fish Commission, I know of no one who has pursued 
the subject systematically beyond experimental stages. 
For several years I was in correspondence with an Aus- 
trian fish breeder who claimed, after thirty years of ex- 
perimenting in rearing natural fish food, to have accom- 
plished such astonishin^r.psults that I have been mentally 
paralyzed at times wLen I have tried to comprehend 
them, and I have tried to paralyze Mr. Atkins at second 
hand. 
Francois Lugrin, of Geneva, Switzerland, is a fish 
breeder, and for twenty-five years, while rearing and sell- 
ing trout fry and yearlings for stocking ponds and 
streams, has investigated and studied the natural food of 
the fish he reared. Unlike my Austrian friend, Mr. Lu- 
grin is not a miracle worker, as I look at it, and what he 
has done in the way of rearing fish food has been 
described in the Bulletin of the U. S. Fish Commission 
and the Proceedings of the American Fisheries Society; 
but how he does it is quite a different matter. 
Mr. G. W. Parkhurst, one of the trustees of the Adiron- 
dack League Club, is now and has been for some time in 
Europe, and he has investigated, so far as he could, M. 
Lugrin's methods on the spot where they are practiced, 
and of his observations he writes to Mr. Boardman, the 
secretary of the club, and I am permitted to quote from 
the letters, which I will do only briefly. Mr. Parkhurst 
says at the outset, "M. Lugrin thinks, and so do I, that he 
has discovered the natural food of the fish, and that such 
food can be raised at the same time and place as the fish." 
I shall not describe the food rearing apparatus, as it has 
already been described in the publication mentioned : "He 
had his man with a net or scoop take from the water in a 
trench, similar to and by the side of those in which the fish 
were kept, samples of the food which he used. The scoop 
brought up a quantity of mud matted with a mossy sub- 
stance which was fairly alive with squirming crevettes 
or tiny prawns, and screvesse or crawfish. He also 
showed us other varieties of living food, living in similar 
conditions with those just named. These last he put into 
a large glasB jar, which he then placed in a square box in 
the sides of which he had large magnifying glasses, 
through which we looked at the kieking, squirming mass. 
The small creatures were daphnia; the others were long 
and very slender worms, not unlike our angle worms. 
All these varieties of food he raised on the spot, and the 
manner of their raising and feeding is his secret, or what 
he calls the 'Precedes Lugrin,' That the 'precede' is suc- 
cessful I have the evidence of my senses. He feeds his 
trout nothing but the above natural food. He has tried 
meat, but discarded it long ago, and said he had lost 
many fish by feeding meat, We saw some beautiful 
specimens of trout in all stages of development, from fry 
up to 31bs. He advises those who are charged with stock- 
ing ponds and streams to give preference to fingerlings 
from 6 months to a year old from the time of the absorp- 
tion of the vesicule in order to get good results." 
Mr. Parkhurst writes in a later letter: "M. Lugrin said 
there were numbers of other piscicultural establishments 
in France cultivating fish for stocking purposes, the pro- 
prietors of which had endeavored to convince the French 
Government that younger fish than yearlings were equally 
valuable for stocking ponds, and in maintenance of his 
belief in using yearlings only had refused to sell younger 
fish to the Government; and now the Government had 
come to his terms and was buying from him. Lugrin 
said nothing in relation to any attempt on the part of the 
French Government to purchase his secret and throw it 
open to the world, as-intimated in the Bulletin of the U. 
S. Fish Commission. He says numbers of people have 
visited him, learned what we have learned and no more, 
and have gone away and experimented on their own 
lines." 
M. Lugrin's plant has a capacity for rearing 100,000 
yearling trout annually, and the food for the fish is car- 
ried from the food basins to the fish basins or troughs; 
but in a new plant he would transfer the fish instead, and 
breed a new stock of food in the basin from which the fish 
were taken. He rears twelve kinds of insects, and all but 
the daphnia are reared in running water, and even the 
daphnia are not reared in stagnant water. This system of 
rearing; natural fish fcoi is applicable not only to hatching 
stations where fish are reared to fingerlings or yearling 
before they are turned out into wild waters, but the in- 
sect food can be reared and transplanted to the wild 
waters to insure an addition to the natural food supply of 
a pond or stream, and this, in my opinion, is quite as im- 
portant as rearing a cheap and nutritious food for the fry 
in a hatchery. 
By feeding natural, live food fish grow faster and they 
must be in better condition in consequence, and evidence 
shows that the mortality is less than when an un- 
natural food is forced upon the fish. A. N. Cheney, 
UNITED STATES FISH COMMISSION. 
Editor Forest and Stream: 
I notice that you are inclined to question the wisdom of 
the appointment of Commander John J, Brice as TJ. S. 
Commissioner of Fish and Fisheries by President Cleve- 
land. Of course, you are actuated by only the best mo- 
tives, but would it not be better to withhold criticism in 
this matter until the new Commissioner has had a chance 
to demonstrate his fitness for the position? 
In view of the past record of the U. S. Fish Commis- 
sion, it would be well enough to wait for future devel- 
opments, in order that a just comparison may be made 
between the old and the new order of things. Hereto- 
fore, as everyone knows who has given the subject any 
consideration at all, the U. S. Fish Commission has been 
in a manner subservient to the Smithsonian Institution 
and TJ. S. National Museum. This was to be expected 
from the fact that the first Commissioner, Prof. Baird, 
was also Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution. In 
consequence of this arrangement the TJ. S. Fish Commis- 
sion has never been, de facto, an independent bureau. 
Thousands of dollars of the Commission's appropria- 
tions have been diverted from their lawful and legitimate 
uses and applied to the technical study of the marine in- 
vertebrates and to bathy metrical observations; which 
work, while deserving of the highest commendation, and 
of great interest to the institutions named and to science 
generally, should not have been paid for by the TJ. S. 
Fish Commission, except by special act of Congress or 
specific appropriations. 
If as much time and money had been spent in studying 
the habits of our food fishes — their food, reproduction, 
migrations, etc.— we would not be so lamentably ignoront 
in this respect as we are at present; and if more attention 
had been devoted to the cultivation of the commercial 
food fishes and less to that of the brook trout and Atlan- 
tic salmon, which should be the work of State commis- 
sions, the interests of the whole people and the intention 
of the law would have been better subserved. 
Even Prof. Baird, for whose memory 1 have the great- 
est respect and veneration, and whose eminent scientific 
attainments gave an enviable and world-wide reputation 
and standing to the TJ. S. Fish Commission, failed to give 
sufficient interest to the fisheries and fishculture from an 
economic standpoint. During the first ten years of the 
Commission thousands of dollars were spent in trans- 
planting California salmon, lake trout, pike-perch and 
other deep or salt water species to the interior and shal- 
low streams of the Mississippi Valley and other equally 
unsuitable waters. But his most unfortunate mistake 
was the introduction of the German carp, a perfectly use- 
less fish, which has now become a positive nuisance, and 
the worst spawn eater we have. Its introduction is on a 
par with that of the English sparrow and Shanghai 
chicken — evils from which we will never fully recover. 
Other, if not equally unfortunate, mistakes have been 
made by his successors. 
I was, with Commander Brice and others, a candidate 
for the position he now holds; and I must believe that 
the President for some good reason preferred him to the 
rest of us. Let us wait, therefore, until the new Com- 
missioner has had an opportunity of putting into practice 
his own views and methods, and not endeavor to thwart 
or forestall him by adverse criticism in advance. 
James A, Henshall. 
Tampa, Fla., April 21. 
THE BIG TROUT OF THE KOOTENAY. 
A Toledo correspondent sends us this extract from a 
letter received from a friend in West Kootenay, British 
Columbia. It was written in August of 1895: 
I tried the "katoodle bugs," and found them vary 
deadly, so much so that I am getting some tied in Van- 
couver. I had three weeks' fishing on Vancouver Island, 
on the Cowichan Lake and river, and had wonderful 
sport. My best day was five salmon of 151ba., 14lbp., 
lllbs., 81bs. and 41bs., taken spinning from the boat, and 
thirty-five trout of 411bs. This was pretty good busint ss, 
but it is absolutely nothing compared with the fishing 
here on the Kootenay Eiver. I hardly like saying any- 
thing about it, as it sounds like exaggeration. I have been 
camping down the river lately, and have got tired of 
catching fish. Below the falls here the fish average be- 
tween 1£ and 2|lbs. We tried our hardest one day to get 
some small ones, as they are so much better eating, but 
we couldn't get any. Such creels as sixty trout of 901bs., 
forty-eight trout of 72lbs., fifteen trout of 311bs. seem 
impossible, but anyone can do it here now. The fact of 
the matter is that they are too easy to catch at present, 
and the river is so broad and swift that only one side is 
fishable, so that it could never get overfished. I never 
had such sport in my life. 
You ought most certainly to come here next season. 
From July 20 on is the best time, and the C. P. R. R. have 
built three neat little wooden shacks at the side of the 
river, and within 50yds. or so of the railway, that would 
accommodate a party of three or four, You can get a 
good Chinaman as cook, and have a rattling nice holiday 
down there, 
I got several big charr in the rapids from 71bs. up- 
ward, spinning with a small gold spoon. They fought 
well in the 20-knot current. I suppose you have a deal 
of fishing at your club. The fault of Kootenay ia that 
you have only got to flop a string of flies into the water 
to catch a fish, and if it is evening fishing it is any odds 
you will get a 2 -pounder on each fly, and then the fun 
begins. Many thanks for the photograph of your Cas- 
talia Club. 
Maine Fish Commission. 
Lekoy T. Carleton has been appointed Commissioner 
of Inland Fisheries and Game, succeeding Thomas H. 
Went worth. 
