FOREST AND STREAM. 
[Oct. 31, 1896. 
and came to me and said "Au-gua-kwet?" I answered: 
"Au-gua-kwet is over behind the pa-que-shi-gun," but in 
my mixture of English he failed to understand the last 
word to mean wheat flour, bread or anything else. That 
kind of talk did first rate with Antoine, but the Raccoon 
did not understand his own language. .That was very 
queer. 
The light in the cabin was very dim when the fire was 
not bright, for our "windows" consisted of two holes, one 
in the door and one opposite, over which were stretched 
the dried "caul," or what surgeons know as the penton- 
eiim, of a deer. When the fire was not bright this gave 
"a dim religious light," such as steals into some silent 
crypt through stained glass in an old cathedral, and my 
eyes improved daily. After some days I could get about 
the room and do a few things, such as washing out my 
rifle and oiling it, and it was a surprise to see the Indian 
eat and sleep. He would rouse up and get wood to cook. 
The provisions were unlimited, as part of the bear was 
left, and Antoine had buried a deer in the snow. So it 
was a picnic for our friend, and he did not even have to 
hunt nor fish. 
When Antoine came he whittled a huge pair of spec- 
tacles for me out of dry spruce. They were solid except 
a small longitudinal slit for each eye, through which one 
could see all that was necessary and all lights from points 
outside the range of vision were excluded. They were 
fitted to my eyes with exactness, and where glasses would 
be in ordinary spectacles there were hollows which were 
blackened with charcoal, and with these I could venture 
out even in strong sunlight, and next day I ran my line 
of traps with them, seeing perfectly everything that I 
wished to see, unharmed by the light on the snow. The 
only unusual event on this trip was seeing where several 
deer had crossed my trail on the jump, followed by some 
wolves, as shown in the snow. As the deer were yarded 
up during such deep snow, the wolves must have stam- 
peded some of them; but we had not seen nor heard a wolf 
in our part of the woods all winter. 
Returning to the cabin the day afterward, Antoine said: 
"I'll tole you, Chris'mas he come to-morrer and we stop 
home an' heat good Chris'mas dinner; what you say, hey?" 
and he showed me where he had kept a record of the days 
on a stick. I had not given a thought to the matter further 
than to note that it was midwinter by the sun being at its 
southern limit, but my partner was a more devout man 
and told his beads at proper times, kept count of the days, 
and knew that this was Christmas eve. And so it was 
settled that we should not hunt nor fish on the morrow, 
but would observe the day in a civilized manner, just as 
the folks at home were doing. Antoine had hung some 
evergreens over the fireplace and over the bed, and with 
thoughts of those at home we crawled under our blankets, 
and morning came. Feed Mather. 
Words from Old Friends. 
PoTOSi, Wi9., Oct. 19,— Editor Forest and stream: The 
sketch of Charles Guy on, formerly of this place, was 
much appreciated here, where he was well known, and it 
is a subject of comment in this small place; the few copies 
taken here were soon worn out and others brought from 
Dubuque and Galena. Judge Saaton has read aU the 
stories of "Men I Have Fished With," and we have talked 
them over, for we both knew the author in years gone by 
when he was a youth seeking adventure, I believe the 
Judge has kept up an occasional correspondence with 
Major Fred since he left here, and has followed his wan- 
derings in Kansas and his career in the army and in the 
more peaceful field of fishculture. 
John Lyons remembers the boy whose arm was lacerat- 
ed by the hog which Mr. Mather shot; his name was 
Marquette. John also saw Charley Guyon's leg after it 
was torn by the hogs on the island, as related in the story. 
As the author of these sketches spent a good part of three 
years in this place, and hunted and fished with many of 
the men and boys who are well known here, we are won- 
dering who comes next. He trapped one winter with old 
Antome Gardapee, and the next winter he went with a 
surveying party with James McBride, now living in 
Washington, D. C. ; Henry Neaville, who was killed at 
Antietam; and Thomas Davies, who now lives in the 
adjoining village of British Hollow, No doubt he will tell 
of all these trips. 
Since writing the above the last Fokest and Stream 
has come, with the admirable sketch of Henry and Frank 
Neaville. It is even better than the other. D. 
A Record Bass for Kentucky. 
Somerset, Ky., Oat. 21 —Editor Forest and Stream: In 
order that your readers may know something regarding 
the fine bass fishing which abounds in this immediate 
vicinity, I give you the result of four days' angling last 
w^eek by a club of four gentlemen from this city. The 
entire catch was made in the Cumberland River, seven 
miles distant from Somerset: On the first day they caught 
34, second day 38, third day 6i, fourth day 17; total 153. 
This gives an average catch of 38^ fish to each man. 
These fish run in weight from l^lbs, to 71bs, l^oz, , very 
many of them weighing from 3 to SJ^lbs. 
Col. R. H. Bartells caught the big bass, and was four- 
teen minutes engaged with him before he was landed. 
He made a terrific fight, but he was in the hg,ndliDg of 
an expert angler and escape was impossible. Col. Bar- 
tells is naturally very proud of the catch, as well he may 
be, for it is the largest black bass ever caught by any 
angler in these waters. The fact is, I never heard of 
a larger black bass being taken from any running stream 
in Kentucky or elsewhere. The fish can now be seen 
alive and swimming in Col. Bartells's aquarium, this 
city. S. M, Boone, Sr. 
k CHAINED 
^Ss»t\ Business? '" 
^^^^^M Can't go Shooting? 
^^^^^^ Do the next best things 
jj^S^^lL- Read Hie 
^^^^ff Forest anH Streatfb. 
ANGLING NOTES. 
Habits of Salmon. 
It was a great pleasure to me to receive a letter from 
my old friend Mr. John Mowat, in which he tells me of 
the prospects of his restoration to health. I have told 
in this column of the serious accident which happened 
to Mr, Mowat on the Restigouche River as he was re- 
turning from salmon fishing and stopped to visit with 
Mr, Archibald Mitchell, since which time Mr, Mowat's 
recovery has been slow, but since a visit to Montreal for 
a consultation with physicians he feels that by another 
season he may be able to kill a salmon on bis favorite 
river. 
I am not alone in thinking Mr, Mowat to be the best- 
informed man in this country regarding the habits of 
the sea salmon in Canadian rivers, for I recently heard 
this opinion given of him in filontreal by a well-known 
salmon fisherman, and what he knows about the fish was 
acquired on the rivers and not from books. 
With his personal letter Mr. Mowat sends me the fol- 
lowing for publication in Forest and Stream: 
"The Glens Falls Sunday Republican contains an inter- 
esting account of salmon fishing, written by Mr, Eugene 
McCarthy, from his experience on the St, Anne desMonts 
River (Mr. Hogan's), on the south shoreof theSt, Lawrence. 
The article is good, and well describes the fishing from 
the point of view of a novice, who no doubt believed a 
good deal of what his guides may have told him. 
"I may be in error in correcting some of the state- 
ments made by Mr. McCarthy, but my experience of 
sixty years entitles me to opinions respecting the habits 
of salmon which I cannot get over. Mr. McCarthy says 
the salmon spends ten months in salt water, the other 
two months of the year in fresli water spawning; there- 
fore the salmon is a salt-water fish. Now we know that 
a salmon will ripen its ova in salt or nearly salt water, 
but it must have fresh water to deposit the eggs in. 
Why, sir, only for this peculiarity we would never see a 
salmon, and the necessity for having fresh water in 
which to spawn brings every fish back to its own river, 
another wise provision; for if the fish took the first fresh- 
water stream they came to, many rivers would be 
crowded with fish and other rivers would have none. 
Salmon run in June, less in July, few in August in our 
north Atlantic rivers. 
"Our climate, ice-bound streams for six months, do not 
permit of autumn fish, 'stragglers' such as they have in 
the Tweed and Tay in September and October. They 
are just late fish running up to spawn, almost at the 
gravid stage. Now the salmon, irrespective of the 
time of their entering the river, spawn in a week, gen- 
erally the last week in October, so a June fish 
is five months in the river getting ready to spawn. In 
the Restigouche jthis June fish will be probably 150 miles 
above salt water at spawning time, and here he will re- 
main until next June, when he makes his way to sea, 
meeting the new spring fish going up as he goes down- 
He is then a good-looking kelt, bright as a dollar, but a 
little lanky; takes the fly weU, and shows good fight. I 
have laA^ded as many as twelve in a day early in June — of 
course liberating them. Now, sir, from all experiments 
I have made, those fish do not return that year; keep 
them, if you wish, in salt water for six months and there 
will be no signs of ova, only a sediment will appear. 
There may be a few fish that will return after spawning 
to sea; they may return, but there is no certainty of their 
doing so. No salmon ever leaves a river until after 
spawning, and you can't prevent him from going up. 
Nets, falls, rapids or rocks will not stop him; but our 
rivers generally are so easy of ascent that the fish sustains 
little or no injury. This fact, along with artificial propa- 
gation, has made the Restigouche the very best salmon 
river for sport on this continent. Just think of 100 rods 
on seventy miles of angling water (the branches reserved 
for breeding grounds), with average scores of 60, 70, 100 
and 130 fish to a rod, I am glad to say the clubs here 
have restricted their members to eight fish per day. Our 
grilse here never run over 41bs. I think an 81b. fish is a 
stunted fish. Some rivers only produce 8 and 101b. fish. 
Many rivers have no grilse, in that case the returning 
fish may be four years old. Another strange fact is 
that any grilse that I have ever seen were males, and 
seemed always ready to perform their share of duty at 
spawning time. 
"I think when Mr. McCarthy goes again he would better 
give his fish a little more butt; anything fairly hooked 
should come to gaff in twenty-five minutes, even with a 
31bs. strain. Always remember to never let your fish get 
below you; make him fight your rod and the current, 
with no resting behind rocks. I trust Mr. McCarthy will 
not take amiss my views ott the noblest of sports — ^fad, if 
you will — the feel of a 30-pounder when he strikes." 
The "Island Pool." 
When I started, the very last of August, this year, for 
Lake St. John, with the intention of fishing the Metabet- 
chouan River for ouananiche, I recalled to memory a de- 
scription I had read of the road to the Island Pool. My 
companion, Mr. Rathbone, said the description was given 
by Dr. Van Dyke in his book "Little Rivers," but I was 
obliged to confess that I had not read the book, so I did 
not get my idea of the road from that, and I could not 
tell where I had read it or heard of it until this morning. 
I was looking at the file of Forest and Stream for 
something a correspondent referred me to when my eye 
caught the note of my friend Chambers in the same issue, 
Aug, 29, and there it was. Mr. Chambers writes: "In Dr. 
Van Dyke's 'Little Rivers' is a description of a somewhat 
diflicult route by which he reached the pool, driving by 
buckboard for nine miles from St. Jerome over an ex- 
ceedingly rough and hilly road, and then scrambling 
down a steep hillside 500ft. high." 
If Dr. Van Dyke or Mr. Chambers could know how we 
pictured that road in our minds, from what one had 
written and the other had quoted, they would give us 
credit for some courage for undertaking it, particularly 
when Mr. Beemer wired from Roberval to Quebec that 
the ouananiche were not yet running up the river and 
our visit to the Island Pool would in all probability be 
fruitless of fish. I was not going to the pool for pleasure 
alone, for I wished to find out something about the fish 
and their habits at spawning time, and I voted to go if we 
had to walk. Perhaps that road has been improved since 
it was described, or perhaps I do not know a bad roao. 
when I see it, but I found it to be a very decent road, an 
for fear some one will get the idea of it that I had before 
I tried it I wish to say that we dined at Roberval and the 
same evening went by train to the mouth of the Metabet- 
chouan and slept at the house of the guardian of the 
river. The next morning Maurice Boivin, the guardian, 
secured a buckboard attached to a horse a size larger than 
a sheep, with a driver to take us to the pool. In a little 
more than two hours' time the little horse hauled three 
men and the luggage to the shanty where we were to 
stay, just above the pool. True, the road is hilly, and the 
last mile or so after leaving the highway it is rough, but it 
is not a road to be dreaded in the least. I was expecting 
to find a road after the pattern of some of the log roads 
in the North Woods of this State, that are deemed extra 
hazardous in ipsurance policies, instead of which the 
road was very good, and returning to St. Jerome with a 
larger horse we were less than two hours on the road, in- 
cluding a stop to mend the buckboard. 
The scramble down the 500ft. to the pool, and more 
particularly the long haul up, is another matter, and my 
pen cannot do it justice. One thing is certain: no one 
with heart trouble should attempt it until a derrick is 
erected to lift the angler up from the pool. One can get 
down all right enough, for one has only to let go and he 
will land at the bottom fast enough, but it is getting back 
that tests the bellows and the joints. It was raining 
when I first went down to the pool, and the first time I 
fell I went down a good part of the way on my back. 
There is one thing about the pool which gives the descent 
a redeeming quality, rough and steep as it is, and that is 
if the ouananiche are there and feeding the angler has no 
desire to climb back. 
Our guides followed the trail up the river and were at 
the pool when we reached it, and the guides were the 
guardian and his son. I made the mistake of taking an 
Indian and a birch canoe from Roberval to the river, but 
he knew nothing about the stream and I sent him back 
with his birch before we started up the river. There is a 
boat on each of the three pools in the river, and the 
guardian and his sons are the best guides to be obtained. 
Ouananiche Flies. 
When I was putting my flies on my leader Maurice told 
me they were too small, and took from his hat what he 
considered a fly of proper size. His fly was a Jock Scott 
on a No. 1 hook, and mine were a Jock Scott, silver- 
doctor, and a fly I got in Quebec under the name of 
fairy, but which was really an Alexandra, all on No. 10 
hooks. I was satisfied that my flies were rather small, 
but they were the only silver- doctors and Jock Scotts I 
had except salmon flies as large as those Maurice showed 
me, and I did not wish to put such flies on a fine leader. 
We killed fourteen ouananiche that averaged 31bs. in 
weight and returned half a dozen or so of small fish to the 
water. We fished the afternoon of Sept, 1 in the Island 
Pool, the next day in the Second Pool, and the morning 
of Sept. 3 in the Island, or Third Pool. Sept. 1 and 2 
every fish but one was killed on a silver-doctor, whether 
on Rathbone's rod or my own. The exception was a 
3Jlb. ouananiche on an improved Alexandra. The third 
day every fish was killed on a Jock Scott. Rathbone and 
I both tried various other flies, and except for a small fish 
on the alleged fairy which I returned to the water aU 
were taken as I have stated. 
There was a brown drake rising on the water and I put 
on its counterpart, but the fish would not notice it. I 
caught but one trout in the river and that was on the 
fairy, and Rathbone caught none. The ouananiche had 
May fly (drake) larvse in their stomachs, though they 
would not touch the fly. Twice I lost flies, or rather the 
points from them, by the fish taking one of the upper 
flies and dragging the lower files around the pool over the 
rocks, and another time I would not use more than two 
flies on my cast, 
JumpinK Ouananiche. 
The first ouananiche I hooked, a 2^1b, fish, did not 
jump once or show above the surface of the water. I 
knew it was a ouananiche from its play, but it was my 
first experience with one that did not leap when hooked. 
The next morning when fishing the second pool Maurice 
told me of a fish caught there the year before that 
jumped fourteen times. In the afternoon I hooked a 
ouananiche of 3|lbs. in the pool that jumped fairly above 
the water twelve times. Mr, Rathbone and his guide 
were below me, and each counted the leaps, one counting 
aloud in English and the other in French. Besides the 
clean jumps the fish rolled out of water two or three 
times. Within half an hour Rathbone hooked a fish of 
3^1bs. in the rapids and it did not jump once. 
Temperature. 
On my first visit to Lake St. John for ouananiche I sat- 
isfied myself that the fish remained in shallow water or 
at the surface, because the water was cold and they were 
not driven to the depths by warm surface water, I had 
no thermometer, but I judged from putting my hand in 
it that it was not above 54°. Mr. Chambers has quoted in 
his book, "The Ouananiche and its Canadian Environ- 
ment," what I said of it at the time. This was at the 
Grand Discharge the last of August. This year on Sept. 
I I tried the water in the Island Pool at noon, and it was 
55°, while the air temperature was 50°. While I was 
testing the water and air a hailstorm passed over, and it 
was not a fair test of the air, for two hours later it was 
54°; but 55° was correct for the water during our stay. 
The fish that we killed had hard roe and milt, and would 
not have spawned under six or seven weeks at the least. 
Mending a Fly. 
After the ouananiche had broken the point of one of 
my flies by dragging it round the pool behind him, and 
the fish was netted, I took off the broken fly and threw it 
on the ground. It was a new fly, but the point of the 
hook was gone. Maurice picked up the fly and put it in 
his hat, saying that he would mend it. I asked how 
such a fly could be mended to be of service, and he took 
a mended fly from his hat to show me. The broken hook 
was filed off just above the bend, leaving a small piece of 
the shank exposed below the body, another hook of the 
same size was placed along the fly and the end of the 
shank whipped with waxed thread to the end of the shank 
of the broken fly, and again the hooks were whipped to- 
gether just below the body. It made a strong, serviceable 
fly, and the fact that a bare hook was lashed on alongside 
the broken fly was not at first discernable. The thing 
was new to'me, but well worth knowing when an angler 
