890 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
LMat 15, 1891 
to accomplish an object they generally do it in such a man- 
ner as to make glad the hearts of those who are privileged to 
take part in it, no matter wliat it may be, and I know that 
Commissioner Whitaker intends that the coming meeting 
shall be a red-letter one in the annals of the American 
Fisheries Society. 
Color of Trout Flesh. 
Col. "William L. Stone, of Mount Yernon, N. Y., in writ- 
ing me concerning an article I prepared for the report of the 
Fisheries, Game and Forest Commissioners of New York, 
says: 
"I was much interested in 'jrour admirable article in the 
report, but will you allow me to ask one or two questions. 
When you speak of the red tinge given to the trout by living 
on crayfish, how will you account for this fact? That in 
both the Upper and Lower Beaver lakes (in the Adirondacks) 
the male trout (or Dice mrsa, I do not remember which) is 
deeply marked with a deep red while the female is white. 
Certainly one sex dres not feed on crayfish to the exclusion 
of the other; yet this is a fact and I know you would like to 
have us tell you about these things, hence this Istter," I as- 
sume that Col. Stone refers to the color of the^^sA of the 
trout, not the color of the skin, for it was about the flesh of 
the trout, not its skin, that I referred to as being affected by 
a diet, not of crayfish, but of other Crustacea, gaimnarus, 
dapTinia and cy clops. I know, as all fishermen must know, 
that at the breeding season the male trout are of a red tinge 
outwardly, and the female are white on the body ; but why 
the flesh of one sex should be red and the other white I can- 
not understand, as this is the first time that I have heard 
anything of the kind. The flesh of different trout in the 
same pond will vary greatly in color, from white to salmon 
color or deep red, but this is accounted for by the food —the 
more crustacean food the more coloring matter, and the 
deeper-colored the flesh. The more I think over Col. Stone's 
letter the more I am inclined to believe he refers to external 
coloring, and not to the flesh of the fish, for it scarcely seems 
probable that all female trout should have flesh of one color 
and all male trout flesh of another color ; but external color 
in the sexes is quite a different matter, and not a matter of 
absorbing pigment from a diet of crustaceans. 
"When the Ice Goes Out." 
As I have had occasion to remark annually for a number 
of years, the fishing season in a region in northern New York 
seems to depend, in a measure, upon the time when the ice 
goes out of Lake George. (In April an Albany newspaper 
stated that the ice in Lake George would probably sink in a 
few days.) The season is earlj^ or late, depending upon the 
time when the ice disappears. The interest in this event is 
more than local, for the fishermen who visit the lake for the 
fishing come from various parts of the State and from other 
States. 
Great is the preparation for the first day of May, when 
the fishing season opens legally, and whether the trout 
will be "up" or "down" is a momentous question. This 
year the ice went out on the 13th, five days earlier than 
last year, and the information was sent far and wide. The 
first day of May was an ideal day for trout trolling, as ths 
lake was still and the air fairly warm. There are a few fish- 
ermen who try to think that the lake trout in this lake have 
diminished in numbers until the fishing is very poor, but 
that is because their thinking machinery is in need of repairs. 
When the season opened this year the trout were seen ' 'boil- 
ing" at the surface in every direction. It is true that the 
big catches of a few years ago, when any one who put out a 
troll got trout, are not as common as formerly ; but the trout 
are there, for all that. Two years ago it was said that the 
fishing was poor in the lake. I was there with Harry Brown, 
of the New York Herald, and Ed. Mott, the Old Settler of 
the New York Stm, and we saw enough trout at the surface 
to load a train of cars; but few of them, comparatively, 
would take a bait. My first fish weighed 131bs., and was a 
"hoodoo," for the next went down to 71bs, We were not fish- 
ing for market or to have the fish photographed, and so 
got all the trout we wanted. The trouble wa% and is, 
that the lake is full of food, and the trout have no 
trouble to fill their stomachs wiihout taking in many bait- 
fish loaded with hooks. The lake fairly swarms with white- 
fish, and they are not netted, and so increase beyond the 
fondest dream of the whitefish breeder, and it makes Lake 
George a fine body of water in which to plant the various 
species of Salmonidm 
Two carloads of yearling ouananiche have been planted, 
and another carload will be planted next fall; and when 
grown to adult size they will find food awaiting them in 
abundance. Forty-two adult Sunapee saibling or golden 
trout were planted by the State in the lake last year, and 
young whitefish will prove a delicacy for them. 
On the opening day two men caught 751bs. of trout, a,nd 
three of the fish weighed 15, 13 and 121bs., respectively. 
The veteran Capt. Elias Harris, of the steamer Horican, and 
Mr. E. R. Willerton, Asst. Gen. Pass. Agent of the D &H. 
R, R,, caught five trout weighing 311bs., and other good 
scores were made from one end of the lake to the other. 
The trout are fast enough if the fishermen can only catch 
them. 
As aii old railroad conductor said, "railroading and fish- 
ing is a very particular business." One year fishmg in l^ake 
George with my old friend Judge Ranger, he caught ten 
trout weighing 671bs., and I caught five trout weighing 
30^-1 bs. We were there about a week. Two friends who 
fished near us did not get a strike in ten days' fishing. 
Another year- there were four in our party at Ranger 
Island for about ten days. On what proved to be the best 
day of the entire time 1 did not fish, and at night was jeered 
most energetically for not going out, and thus missing the 
• best day in years. On that day (the only day he fished) Billy 
Ranger caught four trout weighing BSlbs. The next day 
was raw, cold and windy, and I had to listen to what had 
been done on the day before. At the end of our stay Judge 
Ranger had caught fifteen trout of 601bs., Mitchell fifteen 
trout of 71lbs., and I had caught fourteen trout of 781bs., in 
spite of missing the best day. If it were not for the uncer- 
tainties of fishing it would lose much of its charm. 
I have a note from the Sunapee Lake fishing. Snow- 
drifts 4Et. deep in the woods on the 1st, but the first ouan- 
aniche was caught on that day from a wharf, and weighed 
81bs. 
Fly Fishers. 
At the annual dinner of the Fly Fisher's Club, Lon- 
don, Mr. Basil Field, the retiring President, who retired 
upon the election of Mr. R. B. Marston to the chair, told 
in Ms speech about joining the Club: "I had been given to 
understand that the Club consisted exclusively of a body 
of experts, each and everyone of whom could at will — 
when kneeling, sitting or even lying prostrate beneath 
the pendent and interlacing branches of a weeping willow 
tree, we will say— cast a fly in the teeth of a hurricane 
and place it lightly, and delicately cocked, in the circum- 
ference of a wine-glass at any given spot within a range of 
from 30 to 40 yards. This, in the privacy of self confes- 
sion, I was constrained to admit, was rather beyond my 
form. But if I could not shine among the lights I could 
at le^st keep dark. I could, I thought, keep my ears open 
to the words, and my mouth shut to the words of folly, 
and thus pass muster without detection, so I joined the 
Club." Mr. Field was soon in trouble, for he confesses 
that although information flowed in a large stream within 
the Club that the past master of the art of fly-fishing gave 
advice that differed diametrically, and he was at sea as to 
which professor to follow. Then he found that the lead- 
ing lights were not so narrow and bigoted as he had been 
led to suppose, for one of the masters admitted that he 
had seen a man fishing with two dry flies at one time and 
had not thrown the man into the river. The mention of 
this heresy within the orthodox walls of the Fly Fishers' 
Club came as a sweet balm to his senses and he breathed 
more freely. But it was not until the close of the season 
last year "that the perfect knowledge of the all-embracing 
sympathy of some of our typical dry-fly men for fishmg in 
its lower and, as some purists might say, in its less legiti- 
mate forms, was vouchsafed to me." He wandered, on a 
peaceful afternoon, to the river, seeking his friends near 
the Old Town Mill House, but there was no sign of them 
until he heard a loud chorus of excited voices at the bath- 
ing pool behind the mill. "What could they be doing in 
that sacred spot, tabooed to us by general consent, and re- 
served for visitors only arriving by the evening train, too 
late to don brogue and wander further afield? 
"I will tell you in confidence what I saw at that pool. I 
saw Southwest, of the Field newspaper (that is Major Car- 
lisle), float-fishing for trout, with a live minnow for bait. 
He was, at the moment of my arrival, attempting, unsuc- 
cessfully I am glad to say, to land a lightly hooked and 
apparently undersized fish, acting under the confident, but 
contradictory, directions of an advisory committee, con- 
sisting of the angling editor of the Field newspaper (Mr. 
Senior); Detached Badger, of the Field newspaper (Fred- 
eric M. Halford, author of 'Dry-Fly Fishing in Theory and 
Practice,' 'Floating Flies and How to Dress Them,' and 
other works upon" high class fly-fishing); Flycatcher, also 
a contributor to the Field newspaper, and a fourth gentle- 
man, an ardent angler, but nevertheless not absolutely 
dissociated from Truth. All four of them, mark you, lead- 
ing lights of the committee of the Fly-Pishers' Club ! The 
moral is obvious. Should any visitor feel tempted to join 
our Club,'let him be deterred by no idle fears that its mem- 
bers look with contempt on all fishing other than the 
flotation of fur and feathers on the surface of the water. 
Let him remember the object lesson of that peaceful after- 
noon. Let him take heart of grace and enter our brother- 
hood in perfect faith that, be he jurist or be he poacher, he 
will find kindred spirits in the fold." 
Mr. Field's joke on the eminent fly-fishermen of the 
Fly-Fishers' Club was greeted with laughter and applause, 
as was to be expected; in fact, I laughed heartily over it in 
the cold type of the club's Annual. But, all joking aside, 
those who fish only with the fly (and I know a very few 
men who never would catch a. fish if it could not be done 
with the fly) lose a lot of fun in this life. Any one who 
has ever fished with the fly will doubtless ever after pre- 
fer that method to bait-fishing; but that is no evidence 
that it does not require skill of no ordinary kind to be a 
successful bait-flsher for the species of fishes that are con- 
sidered fly-fishes. There are times when fish will not rise 
to the fly and when they will take bait, and then it is a 
good thing to know how to use bait successfully. Most all 
fly-fishermen were first bait-fishermen, for that is 
the first step in the ladder by which a man 
mounts to become a finished angler. A man may 
discard bait fishing because, as he grows older, his time is 
limited and he prefers to occupy it in fly-fishing, and, 
therefore, selects the time and season where he can gratify 
his preference. I doubt if la country-bred man, who first 
began fishing perhaps with a cut pole on an alder-grown 
trout brook, where a fly of any sort would have no chance 
whatever, entirely loses his fondness for bait fishing, al- 
though he may gratify- it only in retrospective fancy, but 
he never despises the days "of small things and if it be- 
comes necessary to use bait he knows how to do it to ob- 
tain the best results. Who .has not heard some man de- 
claiming that he never, never uses bait, that he catches all 
his fish with the fly? I am always suspicious that this 
man is not the genuine article, particularly when he de- 
claims in a street car or other public place, and if I should 
meet him fishing and happened to be out of earth worms 
I would ask him for enough to bait a hook and expect to 
get them, if he had not exhausted his own supply, and 
was at all generous. The man who really fishes with 
nothing but the fly is as mum as an oyster about it, unless 
you dig into him with a corkscrew or something of that 
sort, for he does not proclaim it from the housetops, and as 
a rule he does not denounce other methods of fishing, for 
he is satisfied with his method and is willing that others 
should do as they like. 
Fish Matters In Finland. 
Mr. Alex. Hintze, publisher of the only angling and 
shooting journal in Finland, printed at Helsingfors, sends 
me a copy of the journal containing a colored plate of 
our rainbow trout. It may be a hitle strange, but with 
the exception only of the rainbow trout in colors in the 
Fisheries, Game an.i Pcrest Commission report it is the 
best illustration of the rainbow trout I have seen. The 
shape, the markings and general characteristics are perfect, 
and the coloring is excellent as well, failing only in the band 
of color along the side, and this may have been lacking in 
the example the artist used for a model. 
A, "N. Cheney. 
Stocking the St. liawrence. 
The Anglers' Association of the St. Lawrence River de- 
posited 4,000,000 wall-eyed pike fry in the river last week. 
Clayton and Alexandria Bay were the points selected. The 
fry were from the Clayton hatchery. 
Wisconsin Fishinig. 
Three Lakes, Wis., May 3,— The season is now open for 
fishing, which is good. The season is much earher than 
last. All inquiries answered, F. R. French. 
CHICAGO AND THE WEST. 
The "Forest and Stream" Sarsaparilla. 
Chicago, 111, May 8.— This week I was out in the coun- 
try a little way on a brief railroad journey, and very beauti- 
ful the Country seemed too. in its brave new coat of green. 
The trees are budding out and the grass is spreading a fine 
soft carpet and the waters are clearing up, in evidence of 
bass soon to follow the suckers on the run. On all hands lay 
displayed the testimonials of spring. If one needed further 
proof of the genuineness of the season, beyond even the 
balmy and consoling air, he might have found it in the many 
and variegated signs displayed om barns, fences and bulletin 
boards, advertising not only one but many "best medicines 
for the spring time" — as though m the spring one needed any 
medicine but spring itself Among these many boons to 
humanity emerging from hibernation were divers brands of 
sarsaparilla, each guaranteed to be the best and only remedy 
for ills of the flesh. Each of the^e was the beat sarsaparilla 
on earth and the "best medicine for sprine." Yet they did 
not in the entire list include the remedy of all others most to 
be depended upon for cure and comfort, that medicine pre- 
scribed by FoKEST AND STREAM these many years— the 
medicine of the open air. If my neighbor be sick lei him go 
afishing, so shall he be whole again. Indeed, how can one 
escape the beckoning of the saving hand, this week of all 
weeks, the inaugural of May, when after many months of 
despair, life again begins to be worth the living. There are 
many fields, many streams, many green woods now wherein 
and in each of which may be found the herb counseled wisely 
ia the practice of Forest and Stream, the one best medi- 
cine in spring. Doth it not now behoove all men to shake 
the bottle and to try a bit of the Forest and Stream sar- 
saparilla? 
Waters Receding. 
The present season has been one of extreme high water all 
over the West, and on that account the fishing will be far 
better this year than usual As soon as the streams have fal- 
len to their usual levels the sport will be ready for the 
anglers, and even now the waters have receded so much that 
we should have good fishing in any one of a dozen streams 
near here within a week or so provided that anglers would 
care to go out so early after bass. The spawning season is 
now on band, and while the fishing is at that time always 
good, it is to be regretted that such undue advantage is 
sometimes taken of the fact. Thus at the old, tished-out, 
restricted water of Cedar Lake, right at the edge of Chicago, 
as one might say, there have been within the last week many 
heavy catches of bass made. One man was around this 
week boasting that he had caught over 200ibs. of bass in one 
day, and another said he had taken sixty bass at Cedar Lake 
in one day. To unthinking mmds this seems like great 
sport, but not all anglers would care to put it so. River 
fishing is not so destructive to the spawning fish as that car- 
ried on over the visible spawning beds about the edges of the 
lakes, where the bass come in out of the deep water to 
spawn. 
Fox River will be a good stream this year, and it is now 
only sliffhtlv too high to cfftr sport, though I think the big 
run of fish has now about passed on up 
The Kanfeakee this spring is all out ever the marsh, and 
the local fishermen predict a great lot of bass for this sum- 
mer. 
Fishing for bass will not be legal in Wisconsin until May 
25, and by that time it should be especially good this year in 
the lower part of ihat State. 
Out in Iowa the anglers are again jubilant over the pros- 
pect of a little fishing m stn ams which were once good, but 
which have been ruined in the times of low water. The old 
Skunk River has been on a rampage this spring, and already 
tDe result begins to be visible. Out on the high prairie near 
Mitcuellville, in Ja<^per county, along a little creek which 
cresses the cornfields some half dtzen miles from the river, 
and which would seem to be only a little trickle of water 
from the tide ditches, the farmers have been finding bull- 
heads by hundreds. In some places the creek has fallen so 
rapidly as to cut oft" the bullheads and leave them stranded 
fairly out in the middle of the cornfields, on what in ordinary 
years is hi^h, dry ground. If the water in Skunk River 
continues high enough to foil the efiorts of the dynamite 
fiends, thfre will be hook and line fishing of good sort before 
long. Some years ago this once famous stream became very 
low, breaking up into a series of pools. Coal miners and 
others dynamited it for miles, and destroyed nearly all the 
fish in it, aggregating many tons. This ruined the stream, 
of course, but it is possible that it may now regain a trifle of 
its prestige. 
Mr. Robt. Ainsley, of Westville, Ind., called at this oflice 
this week, and says that the fishu^g near that point will be 
fine this year, and that the bass are already biting. I men- 
tioned last summer the peculiar and interesting features of 
the region around Westville, which is full of lakes and 
streams where bass grow big, and which has other things to 
make it pleasant beside the mere amount of fish one can 
take. I got wind last summer of a certain preserved trout 
stream, and it troubles me when 1 think of the havoc those 
trout may now be making with the native fish and insects; 
a havoc which none the less might be mitigated could I pre- 
vail upon a certain gentleman to enlist my aid, which I 
promise him gladly. 
Fish at the Tennessee Exposition. 
Everyone remembers the famous Fisheries building at the 
World's Fair, and the part which the Forest and Stream 
played in adding to its attractions. Now we are having 
another fair, down in Tennessee, and it seems there is a 
good fisheries exhibit there also. Some 18.000 gallons of 
sea water have been shipped in for this work, and there are 
two long rows of aquaria in a fine large grotto. The Fish 
Commission will show there, as at the World's Fair, models 
of fishing craft and miniature flsh hatcheries. The native 
fishes will have a good showing, and in all there should be , 
yet another of those extended object lessons, which serve to ' 
show the people the interest and value of the fish they own. 
What the Value Is. 
What the value of the fish product of a State may be can 
be witnessed by the statement of the veteran fishculturist, 
S. P. Bartlett, who is welcomed back on the Illinois State 
Fish Commission by many friends who knew him in the ' 
past during his incumbency on that board. Mr. Bartlett, in 
a recently published press dispatch, stated that he considers ' 
the annual catch of food fish on the Illinois River alone (one 
stream among many others), to amount to $1,000,000. 'This 
is equal to one-sixth of the value of the entiie cattle industry 
of the State. 
This week there was a case of drowning in one of the lakes ' 
