190 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
LMarch 6, 1897, 
MEN I HAVE FISHED WITH. 
XXXIV.-Charles F. Bell. 
Ohakles was almost like a son to me. One of tlie 
dreams or desires of early life was tliat I might have a son 
of vay own, hut it never came to pass. In imagination I 
would show him the secrets of angling, and be sure not to 
spoil him hy sparing the rod, whether of ash or lancewood 
or split hamboo ; yet a real son might not have cared for 
these things as the dream son did. My fondness for a boy 
naturally led to the companionship of the sons of other 
men, and Charley Bell was with roe constantly for some 
eleven years, from childhood to man's estate. lie grew up 
under my care and we were great friends. It all happened 
in this way: 
Bobert H. Bell was a wood carver in Albany, and was 
also foreman of one of the old volunteer fire companies. 1 
made his acquaintance in 1862, when he was a captain in 
the regiment in which I served. He was then a man nearly 
fifty years old, and while we were in the forts about Wash- 
ington he brought his family there, a wife and two sons. 
The eldest, and subject of this sketch, was then nearly ten 
years old. When we were sent to the front, in May, 1864, 
Captain IJell was wounded, and died a mouth later. It was 
in .Tuly of the next year that we took Charles ou'that pirati- 
cal cruise with Shaw, and although only twelve years old he 
could sing very fair bass — a very strange voice for that age. 
Then he wanted to go fishing with me down the old Pop- 
skinny, and I longed once again to forget all about spear- 
ing and shooting; fish, as learned in the West, and even to 
drop all ideas about fly- casting, which I had learned from 
Charles Hallock, and sit on the bank and pull 'em in hand 
under hand, in good old boy fashion. In the third one of 
these sketches it is related how .John Atwood sneered at 
fishing with a pole by saying: "There ain't no fun in it, for 
you h'ist 'em out too quick with a pole. Throw that away 
and take olf your float; rig yer sinker below the hooks, and 
when you get a fish haul 'em in hand over hand, and feel 
'em wriggle all the way in ; that's sport!" 
Writing of this brings a desire to fish that way once more. 
Bait the hooks with good-sized worms, spit on the bait for 
luck, whirl the sinker three times by the right side and let 
it go just on the upward start to plunk in the water at the 
proper distance, running out the neatly coiled line at your 
feet, and then, taking in all slack, wait for a bite. Nibble 
and strike, nibble and strike; "I've got him!" And then 
haul in fast, with the fish sending electric thrills up the line, 
and all the while you are nerved up by wonder as to the 
kind of fish and its prcbable size. An eel of 31bs. makes 
you think you've got the bitrgest perch that ever swam, and 
your heart beats fast until you see what it is, and then, with 
all your care, the beast puts knots in the line in a minute 
that will take you a long while to untangle, and you knock 
satisfaction out of him with your heel. Verily, looking 
back upon my life as an angler, there seems to have been 
no sport like this. Of course, you will say that the high 
strung animal which we call a boy enjoyed things which he 
would not care for half a century later, when he is a man 
and blase. So be it. Have your own way, only let me enjoy 
the recollections. Our pleasures are in the past or are to 
come. "The good old days" are gone, but the boy of to- 
day will look back at the closing days of this century with 
regret in 1950, 
Of course, no man could be about that island creek in 
those days without meeting with old Port Tyler, The 
bayou was only some six miles long, cutting in below 
Douw's Point, a mile or so below Greenbush, and coming 
out again above Castleton, and Port ranged it for fin, fur 
and feather most of the year. Summer was at its height. 
Pond lilies bloomed in bends where the current was not 
strong, elderberries were ripening and the milkweed pods 
were almost ready to burst. It was near noon; the fish 
were taking a rest, and Bell had wandered off after black- 
berries, while 1 lay in the shade of a willow and slept. 
The early start, the generous snack, with the pleasant 
odor of the mud flats at low tide, had a Efoothing effect. If 
my dreams were peaceful it was because of the surround- 
ings. If they suddenly changed to bursting shells and the 
cheers of charging hosts it was because Bell rushed in on 
me, calling out: "Get up and run; there's a wild man down 
there in the brush and he's got a gun!" 
"What did he do? Did he say anything to you?" 
"ISTo, he only looked at me; but I saw the gun. He's a 
wild man sure, for he's got white whiskers under his chin. 
Oh, come on, let's go." 
"Did he point his gun at you, or threaten jqy. in any way 
with his whiskers?" 
"No; but I was picking blackberries in the brush, and 
when I looked up he was on the other side of the bush with 
his face close to mine, and I never heard him coming, His 
eyes were like coals of fire and he was going to grab me, but 
I ran away." 
The description was amusing, and while enjoying the 
boy's fright and lazily thinking what to say to him the 
"wild man" came to the willows where 1 lay and BsU bolt- 
ed for the open field. 1 told Porter how he had scared my 
boy, and he laughed in that silent way usual to men who 
live with nature and said : "I was comin' up the crick and 
stopped to pick a few blackberries, when tae boy came to 
the sanae bush. I on'y stood still and looked at him, an' 
was goin' to speak, when he seed me an' away he goes like 
a cottontail." 
After a while Bell made a reconnoissance, and found the 
enemy smoking the pipe of peace under the willow, and he 
came in with some misgivings, but with an eye on those 
Horace Greeley whiskers. In his short life there had been 
nothing like those "lace curtains," as he afterward called 
them, seen in either military or civil life. It was this slight 
frame to the human countenance which had alarmed him. 
He crawled up and listened to the talk, which was upon 
the culinary excellence of young quawks, of which Porter 
had three, and Bell looked them over with great curiosity. 
In the immature plumage they resembled the adult poke, 
but Porter pointed out the fact that the young night herons 
had no daik patch on the side of the neck, nor buff stripes 
on the throat, although they were spotted with bro"wn like 
their day-feeding relatives. 
"Now these here birds is nieht feeders," said the old 
trapper, pleased to find one who took interest in questions 
which to him exceeded all others, "an' in order to help 'em 
get fish on dark nights — ^fur they've got to feed no matter 
how dark or stormy it may be — and when you can't see yer 
hand afore yer face they've got to see a fist in the water. 
Jess look at his long shanks with no feathers on 'em to get 
wet . That's so's he can wade out where he can watch f er 
fish, an' his long neck and bill lets him get down after 'em 
y;f\)Sn he strikes. Ye see, he can stand up as high as a tur- 
key, while his body ain't bigger nor a pa'tridge. His wings 
are big, and that makes him fly easy ; but the p'int is how 
he kin see a fish in the water on a pitch-dark night. These 
here yaller patches o' down does it; thev gives out a light 
like a bit o' fox-fire, and many a night I've thought it was 
fox-fire,* but when I've put the boat in to'ards 'em a quawk 
allers got up. But before he got up the light went out 
Now ye can see that when he stands in the water an' sort o' 
opens his wings— get down, here comes a shitepoke." He 
shot, picked up the bird, showed the ditt'erence between 
the species, remarked that he didn't care to eat a poke, and 
settled down to his pipe, after his very long lecture on biolo- 
gy, although he would not have known what the word 
meant if he heard it. After he left us the boy said: "Mr, 
iporter krows a whole lot about birds, doesn't he?" 
"Tes, Charley, he knows a whole lot about ev'ry living 
thing that he sees He would be a treasure to a closet natu- 
ralist. Tell me, what made you afraid of him when you 
saw him at the blackberry bush?" 
"I dunno; he was so still. I was picking berries, and 
when I lifted my eyes there he was a-lookin' at me; and 
then he was so different from the men in the city, I can't 
tell you how it was." 
In the fall it had been arranged that Porter and I should 
have a day with the ducks, snipe, yellow-legs, rail and 
sandpipers. Charley had a hint that he was not wanted, 
but when Porter and 1 met at the old barn in the evening, 
and had talked ourselves out before going to sleep in the 
hay, the boy turned up. 
"Charley," said 1, "what did you come down here for? 
You know you should be in school to-morrow. Are you 
sure that you asked your mother if you coidd come down?" 
"Yes, sir, I have permission; and as to-morrow will be 
Saturday there is no school. I thought I'd be lonesome and 
I did want to see you shoot. Please let me go. I'll promise 
not to be in the yfay, and will keep back and not be a nui- 
sance." 
I was for sending him home in the morning, but Porter 
said: "Let the boy stay; he can take care of the boat an' set 
us ashore or across, an' it'll save us a walk back to the boat, 
if he'll on'y watch wheie we go an' keep well behind." 
That settled it Porter had taken a fancj- to the boy be- 
cause of his interest in living things and a desire to know 
more than how to kill them. Looking back upon it, there 
seems no other reason for my liking him, outside the senti- 
mental ones connected with his fathers death and the fact 
that his open, honest way was attractive. There was a bit 
of water, then known as Dead Creek, which ran from the 
river up into the island, and we got our boat over into that 
and Charley pushed Porter among the rushes, where the 
rail congregated, while I looked for yellow legs and other 
shore birds. Porter said that the boy soon understood every 
signal, and his bag of rail was evidence of the success of the 
trip 
In April, 1867, I got my first ideas of fish brer ding from 
Port Tyler by seeing the strings of eggs of yellow perch 
hanging in the air on twigs when the spring frtshets sub- 
sided. Porter said : "When the perch lays these eggs there 
ain't nothin' in 'em, but the he one comes along an' fills 'em 
up an' they hatch." Bell was greatly interested when I 
took some strings of eggs which had not dried, and he saw 
the fish move in the egg. We put a lot in a box and saw the 
fish swimming next day. A year later we fertihzed some 
eggs and hatched them in the State Geological Rooms in 
Albany, f 
This very bright and good bov had become my familiar, 
and when, in 1868, I bought a farm in western New York 
to engage in trout breeding he went with me. He was then 
fifteen years old and helped me make ponds, and in his en- 
thusiasm brought in a great number of spawning trout from 
the adjoining brook. He went through the public schools 
and wanted more. I sent him to the academy at Brock- 
port, N. Y., where he graduated in two years, and then 
wanted to study medicine. In the report of the American 
Fishculturists' Association, held in New York in 1873, will 
be found a paper by Charles Bell on the fecundation of fish 
eggs, in which he denies that the spermatozoa are distin- 
guishable as independent organisms, instead of being merely 
free-moving cells. He attacked some of my theories, but he 
was my own boy and I admired his dash and his learning. 
We all remember how Lord Byion hated Lord Castel- 
raugh, and, when the latter cut his throat, the poet quoted 
from the reports: "'He severed the carotid artery,' my 
blessings on their learning. ' In this spirit I read Bell's 
learned discourse on independent organisms andfi ee-moving 
cells without giving an order to my hatter to enlarge my hat 
block; but there remained that personal pride which we take 
in the foot -ball team from our school, and which after all is 
only a personal pride — the team or the boy is part of our own 
personality, which, by the way, is the greatest thing on 
earth. 
We lived a mile west of the village of Honeoye Falls, 
some sixteen miles south of Rochester, N. Y., and Caarles 
studied with Dr. Brayton for a while and then got the notion 
that he would go to Albany to finish up, for, said he, "If 
I'm going to be a medical Johnny I've got to get where 
there is a chance to see the big medical Johnnies operate and 
hear them lecture. My studies so far are only preparatory 
to serious study, just the A B C of the business. There's 
nothing more to be learned here." 
"At the Brockport Academy do the boys speak as disre- 
spectfully of all the learned professions as you have now. 
done of one which you hope to follow?" 
"Yes, they've got names for all of them; you know that 
boys are not overburdened with reverence. What can you 
do to get me a job in Albany that will help pay for my 
schooling?" 
I gave him letters and he went to the stock yards at West 
Albany and weighed cattle for some time, but in 1874 he 
learned that I was going to Germany with young shad and 
he wanted to go. My assistant had been selected by Prof. 
James W. Milner, then in charge of the shad work of the 
IT. S. Fish Commission, and I begged to have Bell substi- 
tuted. The other man I had never met, but as it was care- 
ful work, for the success of which I was partly responsible, 
I urged that I should name my assistant. Mr, Milner was 
with me, but the man had thrown up his business at his re- 
* This is the name given to wood when it is in that state of dry r©t 
which gives a phosphorescent light. Only those who have been in 
the woods at night, and have found a portion of a stump which has 
been protected from moisture, have seen fox-fire; but the writer has 
seen pieces ■which came as near being ''light enough to read by'' as 
he ever saw moonlight. He has read of brilliant moons, but never 
could read by one. 
+ An account of this will be found in the reports of the American 
Fisheries Society, and perhaps in the United States and the State re- 
ports, The volumes are not at hand as I write. 
quest and Bell did not go to Germany. Knowing his enthu- 
siasm and care of all details, he was my choice. It would, " 
however, have made no di:fference in the result. Mr. An- 
derson was as faithful and attentive as a man could be, but 
the young fish starved to death because they needed food 
which to-day we cannot supply. 
Throughout the next winter the boy's letters to me showed 
a desire to get back on the trout farm, to go with me in the 
shad work and travel. There was less said about ambition 
to be a "medical Johnny," and reading between the lines it 
was plain that his ideals had changed. This is. a very com- 
mon thing with boys, as I have studied them, and myself. 
Reading Marryat's novels and Cooper's sea tales, I struggled 
to like plug tobacco, but failed. Robinson Crusoe seemed 
to live the right kind of life until "The Life of Charles XIL, 
of Sweden," came in my way, and then the career of a sol- 
dier seemed to be the only desirable one. This in turn was 
knocked out by Cooper's "Leatherstocking Tales," and 1 can 
at this late day understand how ahoy just entering manhood 
may be undecided between several ideals The story of 
Whittington and his cat, or the yarn of Ben. Franklin 
walking Philadelphia streets, had the slightest inducement 
to emulate them. Few boys know their minds from year to 
year; why should I expect Charley to be an exception? 
Somehow he wanted to get back, I wanted him back, and 
he came. 
In the spring of 1875 PVof. Baird wished me to naake ex- 
periments in retarding the hatching of shad eggs, with a 
view to hatching them e7i route to Germany. Prof. Milner 
had met Bell, as I had taken him as an assistant to Des 
Moines, Iowa, with shad fry from the Hudson, and he as- 
signed him to help me in experiments on the Delaware 
River,* but we did not feel satisfied with the trials when 
Mr. Milner telegraphed that two other men were ready to go 
with their apparatus. They went and failed. They knew 
of our experiments and hurried to get ahead, but we agreed 
to stay. The result was the "Bell and Mather Hatching 
Cone," which was the first thing that hatched fish eggs in 
bulk without the use of screens for layers of eggs, and the 
original is now in the National Museum. 
After showing the new cone to Milner, Clark, Chase and 
other fishculturists who were hatching shad at South Hadley 
Palls, Mass., Milner asked if it was or would be patented. 
When we told him that it would not be patented because 
we had a prejudice against patents, having used the product 
of other men's brains in almost everything we handled, he 
said: "Well, you've solved the problem of hatching fish eggs 
in bulk." Bell had gone on with me and 1 was anxious to 
push him, so I gave him all the praise and credit possible; I 
didn't need any. 
We had taken a lot of quinnat salmon from Niles, Mich. , 
to Austin, Tex., in baggage cars, a long and tiresome trip, 
but the boy liked it, and when at the close of the shad 
hatching season of '75 I was sent to Tickfaw, La., with a 
lot nf fry for the Natalbany River, and to collect the fishes 
of that region. Bell went to assist. Later in the year he was 
sent to Austin, Tex., to put up troughs and hatch quinnat 
salmon in a tributary of the Colorado. His last letter said: 
"The workmen here are slow. I've been working up to my 
waist in water and have a severe cold." The next known of 
him was when he staggered into the house of Prof. Milner, 
at Waukegan, 111 , on Nov. 30, delirious with typhoid fever, 
where he died four days later, aged twenty-two years. He 
lies in the Rural Cemetery at Albany, N. Y , his native city. 
Feed Mathek. 
■ * See Reports U. S. Fish Comniission for that year. 
Penobscot Salmon. 
Mr. E. a. Buck, of Bangor, Me., the man who makes 
the moccasms for Uncle Sam's red men, as well as hunting 
shoes of all kinds for sportsmen, is a dyed-in-the-wool salmon 
fisher. 
The other day he talked of fish and flies and wound up by 
asking me if I had ever seen a "singed cat," I had seen a 
singed cat, but I failed to see what that had to do with sal- 
mon fishing till Mr. Buck kindly explained that he referred 
to a nondescript fly that had proved successful in the Ban- 
gor pool where others failed to get a rise. A singed cat is a 
dusky drab-colored fly that does not belie i s name, and a 
salmon must be in a pessimistic mood when he favors this 
diet. 
Last year was a great year for salmon at Bangor Mr. 
Buck said they came up the river in myriads, and probably 
twice as many were causht as dm-lng any other season in re- 
cent years. He thinks that the latter pat t of the run were 
cultivated fish, with which the river has been stocked. They 
were all young fish, averaging olbs. Itsain weight ihan the 
usual fish, and of a different shape and characterized by 
blunter snouts. 
Mr. Buck caught his first salmon April 27 and his last 
June 18. The week from May 22 to 37 he took ten fish. On 
the 2.5th he took four. It was full moon and the time of 
big tides, He was out on the river on the last of the ebb, a3 
soon as it was light enough to see, and at .o:30 stopped fish- 
ing, having landed three salmon that weighed 45!b3. After 
supper that day he went out again and look one 201b. fish. 
The pool is about five minutes' walk from Mr Buck's 
house and only a little further from his place of business. Is 
any such sport to be found so close to civilization at any 
other place in the known world ? J, B. B. 
Pike-Perch in Missouri Waters. 
St. Lonis, Mo., Feb. 22. — Anglers in Missouri wei'e 
treated last week to a genuine sensation in a press dispatch 
from St. Joseph, Mo , where there is located a State fish 
hatchery. The dispatch stated that some public-spirited 
citizens were to contribute funds, and that the Fish Commis- 
sioner at St. Joseph was going to hatch wall eyed pike for 
introduction into the lakes and rivers in Missouri. The wall- 
eyed pike were to be obtained from Minnesota, and the con- 
sent of the Governor of that State and the Pish Commissioner 
were to be obtained to seine some Minnesota waters to secure 
the fish When one considers that there is no more abun- 
dant game fish in the waters of Missouri than wall-eyed pike, 
or as is commonly called "jack salmon," it is readily seen 
where the sensation comes m. Perhaps the Fish Commis- 
sioner at St. Joseph does not know that the jack salmon and 
the wall-eyed pike are the same fish, and that the proper 
name for it is the pike perch. Anglers of Missouri are to be 
congratulated that politics have no consideration in choosing 
Fish Commissioners in this State, but that they are selected 
for their knowledge of fish and fi-hculture. Aberdeen. 
"Angling Talks." 
We have a very few copies of George Dawson's "Angling Talks," a 
series of chapters of entertaining chat about men, fishermen, nsh, 
fishing and fishing places. Cloth, 50 cents. Forest and Stream Pub- 
lishing Co, 
