FOREST AND STREAM. 7 
BIG-MOUTH CRAI'l'lK (FoUlOXVS fimiuhjlis). 
July 2, 1898.] 
one of the sudden gales which appear on this lake, and 
were wind-bound the rest of the day, and arrived home 
at 4 o'clock the next morning. 
Manistique Lake will be a paradise for fishing and 
hunting for years to come, and for camping-out parties 
it is certainly perfect. Mr. Helmar, at Helmar P. O., as 
I said before, can accommodate one or two, but he would 
prefer to have you bring along a camping outfit and 
make your headquarters at the store. In going or com- 
ing from a fishing trip one will find it a great pleasure 
to remain over a day at Soo St. Marie, both regarding 
trout fishing in the rapids, shooting the rapids with the 
Indians in their canoes, and examining the magnificent 
locks in the canals, both on the Canadian and American 
sides. E. O. Lancaster. 
Fresh- Water Angling. 
No, IX. — The Two Crappies. 
BY FRED MATHER. 
{Concluded from f>age 5 IT.) 
Fishing in Tree Tops, 
Here a short rod, say 8ft., is long enough, and the line 
should not be much longer than the rod. A reel is 
not needed, because the fish should not be allowed more 
line, even if it were able to take it and wind it about 
a limb, where you would be in chancery. The boat 
should be so placed that a fish can be led away from the 
limbs, if possible, but often there is a desirable opening, 
like a well, into which the hook is dropped, and then one 
must take chances of being fouled, and try to keep the 
fish in the middle of the hole as it is brought up. The 
uncertainty of landing a fish in such a place constitutes 
the sport of tree-top fishing. 
In my early crappie fishing days we used Limerick 
hooks as large as No. 2, but in later years, when I 
fished in Southern waters and had come to the belief 
which I hold to-day, that the smallest hook which is 
practicable, is the best, I used hooks as small as No. 6. 
To-day I would select the Pennel Limerick with turned- 
down eye, not larger than 4, nor smaller than 6, but 
these hooks are a late invention and are of spring steel, 
a thing unknown twenty years ago, A foot or two 
of gut between line and hook is always desirable. Angle 
worms, grubs and small minnows are good baits. Unless 
there is a current through the tree top a sinker is not 
necessary when worms or grubs are used, but if the bait 
be a live minnow it must be weighted in order to prevent 
it from wandering among the branches; then use a 
half ounce sinker and attach the gut to the sinker and 
shorten it to a foot, thus giving the minnow a weight 
to drag. In such angling one can usually see the fish 
take the hook and can then check its rushes to a thicket 
of limbs. In "Much Ado About Nothing" Ursula says: 
"The pleasant'st angling is to see the fish 
Cut with her golden oars the silver stream, 
And greedily devour the treacherous bait." 
If that be true, then fishing for crappies in a tree top, in 
clear water, should be the highest form of angling; but 
it is not true, for the angler would prefer to leave the 
size and species which takes his bait entirely to his 
imagination while he is bringing it in. This is one of 
the charms of bait fishing, you don't know what you 
have on your line until it comes to the landing net. 
While fishing in a tree top in one of the sloos near 
Potosi, Wis., I saw a crappie take my hook and im- 
mediately put the strain of the rod on the fish, but there 
was an unusual resistance, and there was danger of tear- 
ing the mouth out of the struggling crappie, whose every 
movement sent a thrill up the line and rod. The fish 
had not fouled my line, for I had seen every motion. 
Henry Neaville was in the other end of the boat and 
said: "Keep still; the fish has another line in its mouth," 
and Henry lashed his pocket knife to his rod and ran it 
down and cut another line which was wound around a 
limb, and I landed the fish. The coarse hook and cheap 
line told the sfory; the fish had been hooked a day or 
more ago, and had taken a turn or two around a limb, 
and the angler, probably a boy, had strained his line to 
the breaking point, leaving the fish fast and hungry 
enough to take the next bait. 
Trolling for Crappies. 
While trolling a small spoon in southern Louisiana, 
for any fish that might incline to that sort of food, I 
took several of the big-mouth crappies in the still waters 
of the bayous. I did not get the other species there, al- 
though Jordan, "Manual of the Vertebrates," gives its 
Southern range as in that State. It was a small spoon 
made of abalone shell, and about ij^in. long. I do not 
know the cizes of spoon hooks, because I seldom use 
them, but have an impression that each maker numbers 
his wares to suit himself. The spoon was an old one, 
without feathers, but it spun well, and its exquisite pear- 
ly tints were attractive. 
I had other spoons, of many designs and sizes, as 
well as most known devices for taking fish, including 
gill nets, for I was collecting fishes for the Smithsonian 
Institution and the U. S. Fish Commission, and wanted 
to gather every species that inhabited those waters, even 
if it never grew to be over an inch in length. And I 
was not forbidden to enjoy the sport. 
The first crappie taken on the spoon was thought 
to be one of those accidents which occur to anglers, but 
after taking a dozen or more it was evident that the 
crappie would afford sport when offered a small spoon. 
When I changed to a big silver spoon, some 3m. long, 
no crappies were taken. They knew the capacity of their 
mouths, and would not rise at the larger one. Here I 
took the largest crappie I ever saw; it might have 
weighed 2lbs.; Jordan gives the extreme weight as 3lbs. 
Fly-Fishtng for Crappies. 
It was in Bistineau Lake, in northwest Louisiana 
some twenty years ago, that I took my first crappie with 
a fly. I had a colored boatman to whom my light rods 
and fly-book were curiosities which were looked at 
with considerable skepticism, until I took some very 
large black bass with them, and then he was profuse 
in his admiration of "dat yah leetle pole no stouter 'an a 
coach whip, an' dem leetle hooks wid fedders on em 
w'ich 'pears like mi'ty dry fodder for trout." By "trout" 
he meant "black bass," and when I took a crappie with 
a red ibis he said: "Dem ah little fedders is good for 
de sacalay [sac-a-lait] too; golly, I 'spec's dey's good fo' 
all de fish in de lake, 'cept de ole gahs an' de catties. 
You don' 'spect a catty he come up to de top fo' yo' 
fedders, does yo'?" 
"No, Gus, not here in this deep water, but a catty has 
been taken with a fly in shallow water. We call these 
things flies, not feathers; don't you see that they imitate 
the insects on the water?" 
"No, sah, nebber see no flies like w'at vou got in yo' 
book, nevah did, fo' a fac'." 
And no other man ever did. The imagination neces- 
sary to recognize a so-called artificial fly as an imitation 
of any living thing is not possessed by every man. This 
ignorant Afro-American did not have it, and L who was 
trying to educate him to see a resemblance to nature, was 
totally lacking in that- same quality of imagination. 
Verilv it was a case of the blind leading the blind, but 
I only wanted my pupil to see that my flies were only 
theoretical imitations of things which might or might 
not exist, but for such theories his brain was not suffi- 
ciently advanced. He saw that a little hook covered 
with "fedders" would take fish, that had been demon- 
strated, but that these things should be considered to be 
"flies" was another thing. 
I found the crappie a fairly good riser to the fly, and 
took many in Lake Bistineau. No doubt they can be 
so taken in other places. They do not put up as stiff 
a. fight as a yellow perch or a white oerch, but with 
light tackle they afford sport. We neglect many good 
fishes, in this land of good fishes, because they have 
not been faithfully written up, and we have no tradi- 
tions referring to them. 
European and American Fishes, 
We have a wealth of game fishes which are not only 
unknown to Europeans, but also to American anglers. 
The reason for this is because there has been no one to 
write them up. American angling literature is only 
thirty-four years old, that of England is several cen- 
turies old. There is no other angling literature worth 
mentioning. Early American writers copied English 
works until Norris wrote his "American Angler's Book" 
in 1864, and corrected subsequent editions. There were 
English works before Walton, 1653, whose latest edi- 
tions, published during the present decade, number over 
a hundred. 
The trouble with the early compilers of English works 
for the American market was the fact that they were 
apparently ignorant that they were dealing with a . fish 
fauna which had so few members in common that it 
might be considered distinct. The only fishes which in- 
habited Great Britain and North America in common 
were the salmon, the yellow perch and the pike. The 
salmon of our Atlantic coast is identical with that of 
the west coast of Europe; our "yellow perch" is com- 
mon throughout Europe, and so is our pike, and by this 
term I mean our great fish, Esox lucius, which grows to 
4olbs. weight, the only fish which has a right to bear the 
name of; pike. 
In case some one should think that the American 
trout is neglected in the list, I will rise to say that Amer- 
ica had no true trout east of the Rocky Mountains un- 
til the brown trout of Europe and the rainbow trout from 
the West were brought here. Our so-called "trout" 
are known as. "chars" in Europe, a higher form of trout, 
if you will, with finer scales, higher colors, etc.. which 
cannot be detailed here and are only mentioned to show 
that the trout had not been forgotten. 
European Game Fishes. 
Leaving out salmon, trout, char, perch and pike, there 
are a lot of species which English anglers know as 
"coarse fishes." They are: Bream, barbel, chub, dace, 
roach and other soft-finned fishes. On the continent 
there is the zander, which is a close relative of our 
"wall-eye," which the Germans breed as a food fish, but 
do not angle for, and there the list ends. Outside the 
trout, salmon, pike and perch there is not a fish in 
Great Britain which an American angler would waste 
his time on. 
The chubs of Europe are superior in size to ours, 
growing up to 5lbs., while our largest species seldom get 
to be more than half that weight; and while I have had 
fair sport taking our large chubs, Semotilis, with a fly, 
the}' are not generally angled for, and on this side of 
the frog pond we do not think any soft-finned fishes, 
except the salmon and pike families, worth our atten- 
tion; we have a wealth of hard-finned game fishes that 
are unknown in Europe, and the two crappies may be 
placed in the list. 
Of course their promiscuous introduction into Europe 
might disarrange the fish fauna there, but fish are more 
circumscribed than are rabbits in Australia, and 
European sparrows in America. No man can foresee 
what good or evil may result in introducing a new 
species of beast, bird or fish to a new country. The 
Californian who wished to see the dandelion with its 
beautiful yellow blossom sent to Massachusetts for the 
seed, and the men who have lawns on the Pacific Coast 
are cursing him as we are cursing the introducer of the 
European sparrow, and the Australian is anathematizing 
the man who set rabbits free in a land where there were 
no owls, hawks nor foxes. The fauna of each continent 
is complete, and the introduction of a foreign form of 
life upsets the balance. By reason of their restricted 
range the fishes do the least damage. 
American Game Fishes. 
We have a wealth of game fishes which would have 
delighted Izaak Walton, but many of them have not 
been treated as such by our writers, who have mainly 
confined their articles to the salmon, the trout and 
the several members of the pike family. For years our 
anglers took black bass without giving it the high rank 
it now holds, until Henshall wrote the fish up and told 
them that "pound for pound it is the gamiest fish that 
swims." The quotation is from memory and may not be 
exact. 
So it is with many other neglected fishes, among them 
the two crappies, and some other fishes which we will 
consider in the future. 
"We may reprove the tendency of our men of leisure 
to copy rather than emulate our English brethren in 
dress and deportment, but it is undoubtedly to them we 
owe our love for outdoor sports, and it is this, spreading 
marvelously even within the past few years, which has 
improved the breed of men and changed the character of 
their clothes. The dandy no longer trips in dainty shoes 
and shuns exertion, but is proud of his square shoulders 
and deep chest, and his dress is distinguished not more 
by its simplicity, comfort and serviceability."— American 
Wool and Cotton Grower. 
