FOREST AND STREAM. 
because it is like no living thing. The charge is true, 
but the trout take it at times, and who is to say them 
nay? For Long Island have these flies dressed on 
sproat hooks, Nos. 8 to lo. With this outfit you have 
an assortment of colors to fall back on in case the trout 
do not care for your first ofTering. Three of each 
kind will be enough for a week if you take care of them 
and do not snap them off or hang them up in the bushes 
beside the stream, which are ever hungry for flies and 
take them more freely than the trout will. 
For the Adirondack's in June take sproat hooks, but 
larger, say 4 to 6, and the following flies: Alder, brown 
heni, coachman, royal coachman, Rtibe Wood, cow- 
dung, gray drake, Montreal, professor, queen of the 
water, white miller, yellow Sally, oak fly, the hackles and 
the red ibis. ■V\Tien you select your flies pay for good 
ones, Take the ibis, for example; a white feather dyed 
red is as good as anj^ in the shop; but one day's fishing 
and drying in the sun and the color is gone. The natural 
feather does not fade with a wetting, but it will cost 
more. Tackle dealers must keep cheap stuff for people 
who want it; but if you go to a reliable house and if 
you do not know just what you need, tell them so and 
trust them to fit you out. A novice cannot tell whether 
a lot of flies are worth $3 a dozen or only half a dollar, 
because he is not a judge of workmanship nor of the 
value of the materials. 
Therefore I say to "Novice," keep away from depart- 
ment stores and Bowery pawn shops when you buy 
fishing tackle, and go to some dealer who makes that 
his business, He understands his trade, and is not cater- 
ing to those who want split bamboo rods for $1 nor 
flies at 25 cents per dozen, for he knows that no man 
can make reliable goods at these prices. 
If "Novice" should hook a good trout on a cheap fly 
and have the thing come apart after journeying to a 
trout stream, he would find that it was not always econ- 
omy to buy low-priced stuff; yet there is a demand for 
such trash, and the supply naturally comes; but, when 
a fellow pays carfare and hotel bills for a few days' fish- 
ing, it is the wildest kind of extravagance to buy a lot 
of low-priced — not cheap — rubbish to bring him disap- 
pointment just at the supreme moment which he has 
dreamed of, and for which he has expended lime and 
mony. 
My Fishing Bicycle. 
Editor Forest and Sfrcarn: 
It is not intended to intimate by this caption that my 
bicycle ever fishes. Toledo has one man whose pisca- 
torial tales are told with the especial purpose of seducing 
the credulous and unwary', but this narrative is not in 
that category. What I wish to remark, however, is that 
as a part of the outfit of the stream fisherman, at least 
in the semi-civilized portions of the country, the bicycle 
is certainly a most valuable auxiliary, and it seems 
strange that its utility in this respect is not more gen- 
erally recognized in the current fishing literature. 
Toledo has two excellent streams available for small 
mouth bass-fishing, the Maumee, whose nearest accessi- 
ble point for fishing purposes is about twelve miles above 
the city, and the Raisin, which empties into Lake Erie 
some twenty miles to the north, running approximately 
eastward for a distance of twenty miles above its mouth. 
Both these streams are reached by rail at the distances 
named, and both have six or eight miles of good fishing 
water above the villages of Maumee and Monroe re- 
spectively. The Raisin is also intersected by a railroad 
from Toledo, which crosses it at Dundee, some fifteen 
miles abova the mouth (land measure), while there is 
still about thirty miles of river between the town last 
mentioned and the lake. Hence, it needs no diagram to 
show that from either of the three villages named the 
bicycle affords a quick and easy means of communica- 
tion with many a stretch of good fishing water, which 
in the rapids of these streams can only be worked by 
wading. My own experience with a fishing bicycle has 
been quite enjoyable during the two past seasons, partic- 
ularly on the Raisin, It has been quite pra-ticable to 
leave Toledo any morning on an early train for either 
Monroe or Dundee, and on arrival at those places, by 
a ride of six or eight miles awheel reach water that gave 
very satisfactory sport, and was far enough away from 
the more accessible portions of the stream to insure 
little or not interruption. This arrangement permitted 
a good day's fishing in waters comparatively undisturbed, 
and a return home the same evening, a thing that would 
be possible without the wheel only at a considerable 
expense. 
And this brings me to say that having demonstrated, 
to my own saMsfaction at least, the desirability of the 
bicycle as a fishing companion, I have just completed a 
contract with one of the big Toledo factories for a wheel 
designed especiallv for cross-country riding, such as is 
usually found on the majority of the country roads which 
lead to fishing waters in this locality. The brief de- 
scription which is here appended is submitted with the 
thought that possibly it might afford a suggestion for 
some reader of the paper who is making plans for his 
spring and summer campaigns. Mv new fishing bicycle 
will have,3oin. wheels, fitted with i^^in- tires. The sprock- 
ets are of ten and twenty-eight teeth, giving a gear of 
eighty-four, which is high enough for all practical pur- 
poses. The cranks measure 7in. and are equipped with 
swinginsr pedals. The frame is 24in., and has a drop of 
.•^J^in. The saddle is open in the center, padded with 
iiair. covered with black calfskin, and mounted on a flat 
steei spring, which is capable of sustaining a weight of 
200]bs. The rear wheel is covered with a permanent 
wooden mud guard, and the entire machine will weigh 
in the neighborhood of 281bs. Its advantages will doubt- 
less suggest themselves. The large tires will enable the 
wheels to travel easily through mud and sand where 
a narrower tire wonld sink more deeply; the low frame 
and the drop given bring the rider near the ground, so 
that he sits little, if an^-. higher than on an ordinary 
28in. wheel; the spring saddle permits of riding in comfort 
and with moderate exertion over roads that are rough 
and uneven, while the swinging pedals greatly facilitate 
hill climbing. I shall be quite impatient when the spring 
fishing begins till i have given the new fishing bicycle 
a thorough test, _ _ Jay Beebe. 
ToLiSDO, O.,', March 16, 
Fishing Up and Down the Potomac* 
Rivefton. 
What magic in a name! Poor Jixhet's argurnent was 
intended only to deceive herself, for the mind is a 
mutascope, and a name is the nickel in the slot that 
sets before us the moving pictures of memory and 
imagination. 
At a sale of the personal effects of Samuel J. Tilden, 
Hon. Wm. Scott, of Erie, purchased some of the wine, 
among which was a rare vintage of Johannisbergcr that 
brought $36 a bottle. A friend who afterward at a 
luncheon helped spoil a bottle, still recalls with dreamy 
delight the suggestion of nectar — that liquid sun- 
shine. How much would it have brought nnnamed, 
or how long remembered? 
As the name Klondike stands for gold and cold, so 
Riverton, to the angler who has been there under favor- 
able conditions, stands for beauty and bass. 
To reach it one may go west to Harper's Ferry and 
take the Shenandoah Valley road, or go south to the 
battlefield of Manassas and take a branch that makes 
straight for the Blue Ridge and climbing its steep side 
by the winding stair of a little mountain brook go 
through Manassas Gap into the Shenandoah Valley. 
Along this route j'ou get glimpses of the higher peaks 
of the nearby Blue Ridge, Buck's Mountain, Rattle- 
snake, High Knob and others, and then from the 
summit of the Gap, npar Linden, descend quickly to the 
river. 
Riverton is a little country village, though a crossing 
of two important railroads. It is nestled in the hills, just 
where the North and South Forks of the Shenandoah 
River join their waters, while the Massanutten Range, 
like a tired giant has made his bed between. 
Each river is damned a few hundred yards above the 
confluence; and each has its turbine driven mill. We 
have come to fish the North Fork, for our July holiday, 
and tlie landlord, who has been wired instructions as to 
boats and men, informs us he has both ready. 
The thermometer ,was at 107 when we left^town, and 
it was 105 when we reached the hotel; a hot wave that 
in a few hours is gone, and as we catch the grateful 
evening breezes down the valleys, we wonder how 
people will live in New York when that blast reaches 
them. 
The village night is noisy, for patriotism is exuberant 
as well in the woods as between walls, but fireworks are 
exhausted early, and quiet reigns save for some cur 
across the river suft'ering witli insomnia, which re- 
calls that long ago, when "the watch-dog bayed beyond 
the yellow Tiber," and one cannot but sleepily regret 
his ancestor had not died, that we might have peace. 
The boatmen are waiting at the door next morning 
as we come out from an early breakfast, and they take 
our traps to the dam, where the boats are tied. 
We saunter along behind, enjojdng the cool air, and 
our morning smoke, for neither is a believer in the 
dawn hour for fishing. 
Lying in the dust of the main street is a sign of civ- 
.-ilization — our own, the modern cestus — a pair of iron 
knuckles, some belligerent, bloodthirsty, cowardly and 
careless hand has dropped in the throng of the night 
before; it is rude of manufacture, evidently forged at 
some rural smithy, but it is a reHc at least, as interesting 
as a cast horseshoe, and is appropriated to hang upon 
the wall of our den as a souvenix", as strangely out of 
place in this peaceful valley as would be a stone arrow- 
head on the city pavement. 
We reach the water and find it green and cloudy; not 
fit for the fly or anything else, but our exclamations 
of disappointment and disgust are checked by the boat- 
men, who declare it is all right; that the pool is that 
way every morning from the emptied duck pond; that 
it will soon run down, and that we are to fish above the 
source of trouble anyway. 
As we finish our smoke, going up the long pool, where 
it is useless to cast, they tell us of an incubating duckery 
nearby, with artificial ponds, sluices, etc.. and numerous 
feathers on the surface confirm their story, as does a 
barrel and a box of duck eggs we see later in the 
water — mute, but loud — that would be the better for 
embalming, so much are they like the offense of Hamlet's 
uncle. And this water goes to Washington. But pres- 
ently we reach a cascade, struggle up over the rocks, and 
the fun begins. The water is fine and bright, and fish 
in plenty. We make no record-breaking catch, but 
the hour is perfect. A broad stream, with rocks and 
grass-puds and bass; quiet pools and raging little rapids 
and bass; little coves of backwater, dead and warm, 
teeming with the red-bellied sunfish, whose fatal ambition 
leads them to tackle a bass fly wherever they see one. 
Of course a No. 4 fly is too large for them, but, though 
many miss, it is not uncommon to get twenty-five or 
thirty in a day's fishing for bass; but they always go 
back, unless the boatman wants a mess, And getting 
the sunfish, it is difficult to make them understand why 
they cannot as well have the small bass, which the 
angler returns to the water. 
Thomas W. Woodward, of South Carolina, seems to 
have been the first to attempt to raise bass. His efforts 
were dated as early as 1857, and are graphically de- 
scribed in an article in the De Bow Review (Vol. XXV., 
p. 442). In this same article he pays an interesting tribute 
to the red-bellied sunfish, and evidently considered them 
an object of sport to amply repay the trouble of stock- 
ing ponds with them. He also tells of the warmouth 
perch; he calls it ' mormouth, though this may^ have 
been a printer's error. The boatman calls attention to 
a bunch of basket willow, which pushes a tangled mass 
of roots out from the bank, and an eddy making behind 
it, shoots a strong current around the point that drops 
over the rocks in a long riffle to a pool below. 
Approaching it quietly, a fly is dropped above to bait 
the edge of the tangle, but as it reaches the water the head 
and broad shoulders of a bass appears and— vanish the 
fly. It is a bigger fish than this rod has ever saved; its 
record is sHlbs., and hope and triumph sing a 
paean as the big fish rushes out from cover, and head 
down, goes over the falls with his first rush. The boat 
cannot follow, but the angler thinks he can, and hastily 
rises for a jump. There are but 30yds. of line, and be- 
fore we get to shallow water, the bg.ss has reached the 
end, made one tantalizing leap in the air, as if to exhibit 
his liberal proportions, in "the altogether," and 
broke. Hope and triumph disappear, and sorrow broods 
over the silence unbroken, except by a miscellaneous 
assortment of language as the limp tackle comes trailing 
in. 
Of course it was thfe leader parted, and two lessons are 
to be learned over that have been committed many times 
before. 
First, that with small fish and still water 25yds. of 
line are enough for a fly-rod, but if there is a chance 
of a good fish, and there is rough water, less than 50yds. 
will sometimes lose a fish. 
Second, that with small fish and quiet water nearly 
any leader is good enough, the finer the better, but with 
a big fish and broken water, the best is not too good. 
For perch we have been using for a trace two 3ft. 
leaders that cost 20 cents a dozen. They are thin, but 
with 3 or .40Z. of rod and not miich heavier fish they 
serve the purpose. We have tried making our own 
leaders, but there is little advantage we find. Gut 
can be purchased in strands at $2 or $3 per hundred, 
but to get round, selected gut that is reliable costs 
from $5 to $ro, and as the heaviest is the shortest, one 
only gets 8 or gin. out of a length, and a 6ft. leader 
, becomes expensive. Of course good leaders can be 
purchased ready tied, but they cost 75 cents and up- 
ward, and economy prompts the use of the cheaper 
leader imtil some disaster like the loss of this fish 
shows how expensive is the habit of poor materials, for 
monster bass are like Gratiano's reasons, in the pro- 
portion of two grains of wheat in two bushels of chaft', 
and you seek many days till you fasten one, and you 
had best be ready then or chagrin and self-reproach 
will be your bitter portion. 
The historj'- of the use of silk worm gut for casting 
lines is not an old one, but its origin is buried in the mists. 
One of the earliest allusions which points to its use for 
this purpose is in Pepy's Diary for March, 18, 1667: 
"This day Mr. Cjesar told me a pretty experiment of 
his, of angling with a minnikin, a gut-string varnished 
over, which keeps it from swelling, and is beyond any 
hair for strength and smallness. The secret I like might- 
ily." The "gut-string varnished" was probably the silk 
worm, and its first use as a trace for a phantom minnow. 
Dr. Henshall tells of some interesting experiments 
Avith one of our' native silk-producing moths, in which 
gut was secured three or four times the length of that 
from the silk worm and of good strength, but the en- 
terprise seems to have passed the experiment stage. 
The new process of making artificial silk from woodpulp 
or celluloid, producing a gum exactly like the natural 
silk seems to promise that we may yet have a casting 
line of any length, and any strength, of any shade and 
without a knot. Hasten the time. When the easy South- 
ern winter's here, not this one, fails to kill the season's 
slime in the river, that hideous sign and result of pol- 
lution, at low Water in the next year every stone is 
covered, and there streams from some, strands of waving 
green, j-ards long. like the hair of Berenice. When the 
leader strikes it, every knot gathers its load of dis- 
gustingly dirty thread, that weight the leader and spoil 
the cast. It makes a splash on quiet water that rivals 
that of the fly, and not infrequently invites the attack 
of some careless fish, though for the most part the 
effect of such a bombardment is to frighten to cover 
every self-respecting and wary bass. 
Henry Talbott. 
The Illinois Seining Question. 
Editor Forest and Stream: 
Relative to proposed legislation to abolish seining in Illi- 
nois public waters, much of interest arises. If you bait 
your hook with a few sharp questions you will make a 
catch or two as to existing practices that you hardly 
expect. One thing is sure: The few large seiners are 
hungry as sharks for seining to continue. But any man 
who knows a catfish when he sees it understands that 
thousands of smaller fishermen's rights are swallowed up 
in the privileges enjoyed and taken by a few men who 
happen to be more fortunate in having a little more cap- , 
ital. The waters and fish being public property, this 
should not be allowed. 
A petition against seines and drag-nets, signed by 
3,000 Peoria citizens and by 2,000 from towns in the 
adjoining part of the State, was recently presented to 
the sub-committee on fish and game; since then the 
large seiners have appeared before the sub-committee 
with a counter-petition of 300 names from Havana to 
Chillicothe. It is our position that these "big" seiners 
wish to continue the use of seines. Why shouldn't they? 
The pirate lumberman would not wish to be driven by 
others from stripping timber from public lands, though 
the forests be ruined. One man might wish to occupy 
a common to the exclusion of others. It might be com- 
fortable to him; but the people of the State who own the 
public waters and the fish therein have something to say, 
and with their attention drawn to the matter they woulcl 
the State over stand against destructive seining in a 
greater ratio than 5,000 to 300 on the petitions. 
If you will take these big seiners, you will find that 
they sweep the rivers and lakes of fish to the practical 
exclusion of all other people Lom a profitable business; 
besides the coarse fish, they take the black bass and 
game fish in the summer, or by early September, and 
these go to markets and "salmon" canning factories in 
the East with the carp and buffalo, and at the same 
'cheap prices. They all use illegal seines, in that the 
meshes are iH to i§^in. square instead of at le_st 2, as 
required by present laws. These facts are generally ac- 
knowledged; and if you catch a seiner by the gills, give 
him no time to wriggle off, but whop him on deck and 
make him open his mouth, you will very soon get such 
facts out of him. and manv others that throw a flood 
of light on the destruction of fish and the wrongs of 
those fishermen who would obey the law. 
These seiners, knowing the present outrage on the 
laws is becoming notorious, have the brass to urge not 
only that their seines (now often from 1,000yds. to some- 
times a mile long) be not limited in length by statute, 
but also that any size mesh be allowed! Do they fear 
now that the present laws may be enforced, and that des- 
perate efforts only will save their monopoly? 
