July 11, 1897.] 
from Ooawa Lake, and -was taken by L, W. Lawlon. 
Onawa Like is above Moosehead. on the Canadian Pacific, 
and with Buxton's camps there,, makes a fly-fishing resort 
■where excellent sport is being had this year. The resort is 
reported to be comparatively new. 
The salmon fishing season is on in fall blast, and it would 
seem that the interest is unusually great. Boston and New 
Eogland salmon fishermen are on their rivers or about start- 
iug. Mr. George von Meyer, of the Restigouche Club, is at 
the preserve. JVIr Louis Curtis has returned from the same 
waters. Mr. L. R. Howe, of Boston, goes to his salmon 
waters on the Restigouche River to moriow. Mr. Herbert 
Damaresq and Mr. T. R. Hoyet will accompany him. Mr. 
W. A. Ross goes to Miramichi early this month for salmon 
fishing. Mr. E. R. Hortoc, of Boston and Newport, R I., 
is at his salmon waters on the Northeast Branch of the St. 
Marguerite. Mr. Francis Damaresq, of Boston, will be his 
guest. Mr. E. A. Hitchcock, of St. Louis, starts about the 
fifth of this month lor the Nipisquit. 
The Kangeley and Moosehead sportsmen are not yet all 
done. M. C. W. Varney. of Lynn, left Saturday for the 
Rangeleys. Mr. Sumner Wright, with Mrs. Wright, started 
for the Birches, Lake Mooselucmagimtic, yesterday. They 
will be absent two or three weeks. Good reports of the fly- 
fishing there are cvn-rent. iVtr. H. W. Clark, of Watertown. 
Mass,, is credited with a trout of 6+lbs. and three salmon at 
Rangeley last week. J. T. Louter, of Boston, is reported to 
have taken a salmon of 7^lbs. at the same waters the other 
day. Fish and Game Commissioner C. E. Oak is credited 
with taking a 51b. salmon on the fly there. His wife took a 
41b. trout. Commissioner Stanley took a 4^1b. trout at the 
same place. Mrs D. E. Parlin, of Lewiston, is mentioned 
as taking a 741 b salmoQ at Pleasant Hours camps last week. 
Last of all, there is a report at the tackle stores here of a 
salmon of Tllbs. taken at Rangeley Lake. If true, this beats 
the record there. Special. 
EATING HABITS OF SALMON. 
Editor Forest and Stream: 
I'j' is difiicult to eradicate erroneous impressions which 
purely speculative writers have stamped upon the popular 
mind, and which even the best informed ichthyologists have 
inadvertently implanted. Habits of fish can only be learned 
by direct and continuous observations covering every period 
of their life history; and where their range of habitat is as 
great as that of the sea salmon, involving such extraordinary 
vicissitudes and requisite adaptions thereto, the study in- 
volves not only great practice, but the faculty of discern- 
ment and the logical adjustment of phenomena to actual bi- 
ological conditions. j 
Close observers like John Mowatt, of the Restigouche, 
who was born beside a salmon pool andUved the full allotted 
period of human life in constant contact and association 
with the fiih he marketed, may well be pardoned for his 
obstinate belief in the widespread notion that sea salmon do 
not feed when running up fresh-water streams to their 
spawning beds; but the astute fishculturist who watches 
their development from the egg to maturity knows differ- 
ently, and when we have the testimony of experts like Mr. G. 
G. Armistead, in an official bulletin, to the effect that '-every- 
one who is acquainted with the life history of Sahno salar is 
well aware that they not only feed, but feed voraciously, in 
our rivers at times," we must believe. (See bulletin U.' S, 
Fish Commission for 1893, pp. 93 and 95.) "But sometimes 
tliey take bat little food, as, for instance, when spawning, 
when the temperature is very low, and when on migration! 
It is quite possible, for these' reasons, to get plenty of'salmon 
with nothing in their stomachs; and, as their digestion is 
very rapid even after a good meal, little trace of it might 
be found in a few hours." And he adds, Hudibrastically: 
"The idea seems to exist in many minds that the huge bodies 
of the salmon (weighing in some instances 701bs. and up- 
ward) are developed by a very indefinite something which 
the fish manage somehow or other to obtaia by a process 
which they call «uctiou; and this, as a recent writer very 
aptly remarked, points to something rather like microscopic 
supplies." 
la further confirmation of his position, he says in another 
place: "Salmon have been kept in fresh water from the 
time of their birth to maturity, and after the absorption of 
the umbilical sac have fed and continued to feed very much 
in the same way that other members of the family are known 
to do." 
This is now demonstrated every year at Brussels, France, 
where Dr Jourret de Bellesme is cultivating the Salmo quin- 
nat artificially in pond?, and the same facts were learned at 
Siormont field ponds in Scotland, thirty years ago, and were 
reiterated by myself in my earlier publications on the habits 
of Salmonidm, especially in the Fishing Tourist, published 
by Harper & Brothers in 1873, where 1 likened the feeding 
of spawning salmon to the practice of setting hens, which 
come off their nests at intervals for the provender necessary 
to sustain life. For a quarter of a century my published 
writings will show that 1 have held my position almost 
single-handed against the scientific field, obtaining conces- 
sions from time to time from accepted authorities like Profs. 
Goode, Gill and Gordon, and 1 think from Beau as well, and 
X am seeking a further endorsement from FoREsr'AKD 
Stuea.\i, whose dictum is alway-i accepted as oracular. 
Neither fowls nor fish can live on air, and when I see great 
bodies, of whatever genus or kind, gravid with young, I 
know that nature must provide' them with that means' of 
procreation which is best afforded by a generous diet and 
ample food. 
la my latest work, the "Salmon Fisher" (Forest and 
Stream Publishing Co.), the life history of the salmon of 
both the Atlantic and Pacific coasts is delineated with pains- 
taking care to the fullest endorsements of the best authorities in 
England and America, and I think those of your readers, 
who have not met with it, may be pleased to examine its 
pages now. Charles Hallock. 
Salmon in the Penobscot. 
Mr. Gegr&e a. Boardm.^n sends us this note from a 
Calais paper relative to fishing in the St, Croix River: 
" This has been an ofl: week at the Union Mills pools. 
Although there appear to be plenty of salmon in the river 
Ihey have been slow to rise to the flies cast by a few rods- 
men, and only eight fish can be added to the record. Tnie 
brings the total score from 97, reported last week, to 105, 
Interest in the sport has so far abated, and the season is so 
far advanced, that this record will not probably be much 
increased." 
The pool is in the center of the town and the fish are all 
large sea salmon. 
FOREST AND " STREAM. 
Some Minnesota FiEhing^. 
Geneva Beach, AlexandriaP O , Douglas County, Minn., 
June 39. — Four 51b. small-mouthed black bass is the score to 
G. D. Antis, of St. Louis, and T. L. Blood, of St. Paul, 
for a quiet turn up the beach yesterday afternoon, casting 
with minnows from a boat within view of the hotel piazza. 
These are all they turned in as their catch. There is no 
available record of what else they caught or retiu'ned to the 
water. While large fish are no*^, to my taste, as sweetly 
edible as S-pounders, or even smaller, these serve very wed 
as a sample of what can be done in Geneva, as well as illus- 
trating the honors which pertain to the saints. There is n j 
difliculty in catching all the fish one wants right here, cither 
croppies, pike, perch or bass, and later on some heavj mas- 
calonge are sure to come in. One old gentleman, seventy- 
four years oldT devotes his exclusive attention to cropoies nt 
this season, and from one bed he has taken out some 250 fish 
in the aggregate. He never misses a two hours' sit if the 
weather be favorable. St. Paul and St. Louis furnish a 
heavy contingent of guests, and the Hotel Alexandria has 
been even full ever since June 1. I have never struck 
a place where fish are better or more abundant, and 
whenever I stand on the wagon bridge which spans the 
creek connecting Geneva and Victoria lakes, I am certain to 
see heavy bass sculling leisurely about over the tops of the 
weeds. I like to stand and watch them play and feed. Of 
food there is variety and abundance, not counting frogs and 
minnows. 
No less than five varieties of flies have swarmed since 
Jnne 1, fairly covering the lake margin and the foliage. 
The most killing of these are the shad flies, or June flies, so- 
called. Besides these the maple caterpillar has swarmed all 
over the country in localities, denuding the forests until the 
limbs were as bare as in winter. Their period was some- 
thing over three weeks in duration, and the trees are now 
putting out a second growth of leaves, having the appear- 
ance of early May foliage. 
There is no end of fishing water in this part of Minnesota, 
Douglas county alone having 200 lakes. The hotel is com- 
fortable and the table excellent. Your correspondent. Col. 
Jas. A. B. Van Cleave, of Chicago, has a cottage on Lake 
Miltona, quite near, and there are club houses in all direc- 
tions. Many of the lakes connect, and one can make a 
sixty-mile trip without covering the same water and be 
within reach of supplies and railroad transportation all the 
time. It is one of those rare locations which a few are en- 
joying all the more because the crowd has not yet found its 
way here. Our house closes Sept. 1, when those who elect 
to remain for the chicken and duck shooting will adjourn 
to the Letson House, in Alexandria, two miles away, which 
is kept by the proprietor of the Hotel Alexandria. The 
duck shooting here in the fall is hard to beat. 
C. Hallock. 
New Jersey Coast Fishing. 
Asbury Park, July 10. — I have visited some of the most 
noted fishing grounds of Barnegat during the present week 
and found the existing conditions very much as reported in 
my last letter to Forest and Stream. The blueflsh are 
very abundant, and while they are not taking the squid as 
fully as the angler might wish for, still, chumming with 
menhaden gives good results. The bay is literally alive with 
the menhaden; this, of course, accounts for the presence of 
the blueflsh. Unmitigated butcher that he is, no mercy is 
shown the menhaden ; he rushes through schools, snapping 
right and left, and rarely failing to take in half the object of 
his pursuit. None who have not witnessed the scene can 
form any conception of the awful slaughter. I have fre- 
quently been where acres of blueflsh had the defenseless 
menhaden surrounded, and I have witnessed the mad frenzy 
with which the blueflsh strikes his quarry, and his appar- 
ently earnest endeavor to allow none to escape. A chapter 
of deepest interest could well be written on the subject, 
covering the habits of the blueflsh and his destruction of the 
bait fishes of the coast. 
Weakfishing we found good, although none of the small- 
school fish were in evidence. Nothing but large fish, what 
are known as tide runners, were taken, and all fine, well- 
conditioned fish. 
The surf, too, has given some very good results the pres- 
ent week in the way of kingfish and striped bass. A most 
peculiar condition of affairs exists in relation to the latter 
variety. Only a single specimen has been taken from either 
of our piers here, although the water and other conditions 
appear to be all right; all have been taken to the northward, 
at or in tbe vicinity of Deal Beach, The largest for the 
week was to the credit of the following: W. H, Moynan 
18-24ilbs., L. P. Streeter IS+lbs., Chas. Hurley 19lbs., N. M. 
Nichols 21ilbs,, Chas. A. Toland 8-21^1bs., Mr. Comegys 
lOlbs. Two black drum have been hooked, but owing to the 
peculiar formation of the beach the landing of this most 
stubborn of fighters is a most ditficult feat, in consequence of 
which both were lost. The very cold weather has beld the 
fishing back, so that now we are having about what June 20 
usually produces. 
The experience of the pound fishermen has induced them 
to set but few nets in this vicinity, &nd in consequence the 
future looks bright for the angling fraternity. 
Leonard Hulit. 
liake Champlain Fishiog^. 
Esses, N. Y,, July 5 — Ediior Forest and Stream; The 
fishing in Lake Champlain just now is extremely good. Perch 
are large and unusually plentiful. Many of them run over 
ilb. in weight. 
To day 1 caught seventeen perch and two black baas in 
about two hours' fishing, and with the water perfectly still. 
The perch may be seen lying in schools, with their backs in 
some cases out of the water." Many of these fish will not bite, 
but there are enough that will to give fair sport. The bass 
were caught off Split Rock Point, and two more were hooked 
but lost. This is an ideal place for casting, but for some 
reason the bass do not seem to be very plentiful. 
I also caught several fish, locally called "chub," which are 
very likely what are known further south as ' 'fall fish " These 
fish are fast swimmers, and dart at the bait like a true game 
fish. They also readily take the fly, If I am not mistaken 
they are the same fish that I caught two years ago in the 
upper Delaware River while trolling for bass. On that oc- 
casion we used large phantom minnows, and at times fish 
would strike that were not more than twice the size of the 
bait, showing them to be thoroughly fearless. In Lake 
Champlain, the largest of these "chub" that I heard of 
weighed 21b8, ,j, 
49 
The Maine Guide License System, 
Greenville, Moosehead Lake, July ti— Editor Forest 
and Stream: The first arrest under the new guides' law oc- 
curred at Kineo the 2d inst. Joe La Crosse was taken iu 
charge by Game Warden C. C, Nichols, of Foxcroft, \^ 
guiding without a license. He was arraigned before a justice 
at Dora, and settled by paying a fine of $50. He then took 
out a license, and claimed that his violation of the law arose 
from ignorance of its requirements rather than a disposition 
to resist it. 
Th3re is much dissatisfaction in this locality regarding the 
issuing of licenses by the State Game Commissioners, not- 
ably so in the case of an Adirondack guide named Darrotv, 
who is a stranger here, and totally unacquainted with this 
region. Yet he was granted a license, in the face of the as- 
sertion from the Commissioners that one of the prime objects 
ot the guides' law was to keep out unqualified men. In 
another instance a French-Canadian was licensed, despite the 
earnest protest of the guides' representative, on the ground 
that he had been discourteous to a lady member of a party 
he had guided, and T^jfas addicted to the use of liquor to 
excess. With such an application of the law our good men 
are asking Avhere the benefit is to be derived from its opera- 
tion. Moose and deer are more plentiful here tli,an for years 
past. Four moose were seen at the lake shore last week, and 
a big bull came out in a field in this village last Tuesday. 
Echo. 
Sacramento Salmon Increase. 
United States Reservation, Baird, Shasta County, 
Cal., July .'i, — Editor Forest and Stream: The profitable re- 
sults of flshculture have again been strikingly shown in the 
great increase of salmon in the Sacramento River this year. 
Active operations in hatching salmon eggs at Baird" Sta- 
tion, of the United States Fish Commission, on the McCloud 
River, a tributary of the Sacramento, were resumed byCom- 
mifsioner McDonald in 1888. After a reasonable time sub- 
sequent to that date, the salmon in the Sacramento began to 
increase, and this year there are more salmon in the Sacra- 
mento than ever before since 1878, when 14,000,000 eggs 
were taken at Baird Station. The McCloud River also seems 
to be full of salmon this year, ani the harvest of eggs at 
Baird Station will this year probably exceed that of any pre- 
vious year, unless it be that of the year just mentioned, viz,, 
1878, Livingston Stone. 
FIXTURES. ' 
FIELD TRIALS. 
Sept. 1.— Continental Field Trials Club's chiclien trials, Morris, Man. 
Sept. 6. - Manitoba Field Trials Club, lAlorris, Man. 
Sept. —.—Northwestern Field Trial Club's Champion Stake, Morris, 
Man. 
Oct. 25.— Brunswick Pur CInb's ninth annual trials. 
Nov. 1.— Dixie Red Fox Club's third annual meet, Waverly, Miss. 
Nov. 1.— New England Beagle Club's trials. Oxford, Mass. 
Nov. 2,— Monongahela Valley Game and Fish Protective Associ- 
ation's trials, Greene county. Pa. 
Nov. 8.— Union Field Trials Club's trials, Carlisle, Ind. 
Nov. !>.— Central Beagle Club's trials, Sbarpsburg, Pa. 
Nov. 15.— E^ F. T. Club's trials, Newton. N. C. 
Nov. 16.— International Field Trials Club's eighth annual trials, 
Chatham, Out. - * 
Nov. 22.— U. S. F. T. Club's autumn trials. 
1898. 
Jan. 10.— U. S. F. T. Club's winter trials, "West Point, Miss. 
Jan. ir,— Continental F. T. Club's trials, New Albany, Miss. 
AS TO THE JUDGES. 
Mr. T. T. AsnFQ-RD, of Birmingham, Ala., having pat- 
ronized field trials with intermittent enthusiasm and discrim- 
inating thriftiness in the past, has announced that he will 
abandon them "until the judging conditions change," and 
that he will use his influence M-itn his friends who are pointer 
men to withhold their support also. To the end that the 
world may know the causes which have impelled him thu& 
to inflict such punishment, he has published that, as the 
pointers are judged by setter men, they are unjustly discrim- 
ated against and deprived of their just deserts, presumably 
much against the peace, dignity, increment and good repute 
of their dogs; for there are few things which detract so much 
from a judge's good fame as his inability to give every dog 
a prize. 
Mr. Ashford's assertion that the pointers are discriminated 
against by setter judges contains nothing in the wayof speci- 
ticalion other than the vaguest generalization, and nothing but 
assei^tion is advanced as proof. On these flimsy grounds the 
public is asked to believe that the judges are prejudiced 
against the pointers. Moreover, Mr. Ashford has a personal 
grievance in reference to the judging of Von Gull last winter; 
which, of itself, may be sufficient authority, from his point of 
view, to attack the integrity of the judges whose prejudice 
is proven by the fact that Von Gull failed to win. There 
are some aggrieved setter men who prove their cases on pre- 
cisely the same grounds. Mr. Ashford has had similar 
grievances before, with similar action by way of showing 
resentment and withholding support, yet field trials flourished 
in spite of the shock. 
There are pointer men who are sterling sportsmen, who 
take victory or defeat with equal and true graciousness, and 
for such he cannot possibly assume to speak. One can 
suspect a spasm of public reform which has its origin in a 
personal grievance, and this in particular when the method 
of»reform finds expression iu a boycott. And this, alas! is 
to be the case "until the judging conditions change." Isn't 
this rather an ambiguous condition? Change to what'/ If 
no pointers were to run there would be no pointer interests 
to consider, so that from his point of view there would, 
therefore, be no incentive to change, granting for the sake of 
argument that any is needed or desired. As a matter of fact, 
there is no need whatever of any change which has reference 
to the length of a dog's coat. 
Let us now consider a few facts to be found in the records 
of many past years, and therefore free from the vagaries of 
imaginations whose sense of equity is measured by personal 
interests, and whose feeling ot grievance must have a cause 
in the corruptness of others. In past years a number of the 
field trial clubs of this country ran sepfirrate pointer stakes, 
both All-Age and Derby, to afford them protection from 
setter competition, and thus to enable pointer owners and 
breeders to fully and freely develop their favorites to the 
utmost degree possible. Then pointer men frankly admitted 
