370 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
[May 13, 1809. 
the stfeam, with its borders of hemlock and balsam, beech 
and basswood, that ever permitted the free use of the fly. 
Heavier and heavier grew our creels, and when we 
stopped for lunch on a broad rock their weight was very 
substantial. A short rest and smoke, and we resumed 
our sport. It continued as fast as in the morning, so 
at 2:30 we quit. The condition of my creel resembled 
that of the famous rattlesanke skin of Miles Standish when 
he returned it to the Indians, and the strap was cutting 
my shoulder sorely, while my partner had the same re- 
port to make. A -full half of the fish we caught had been 
returned to the stream, and toward the end we became 
ver.v exacting as to size. Our largest fish was precisely 
ift. long, weighing i or 2oz. under lib.; but 9, 10 and iiin. 
fish were common. 
Dressing our catch, we broke camp and swung off down 
stream for Perkins', where we arrived in full time for sup- 
per. The next morning, lashing our basket of trout be- 
hind the buckboard, we started homeward, arriving at 
noon. 
On this trip I used a fly exclusively, while Hank pinned 
his faith to the worm. It may be of interest to the 
brotherhood to note that this occasion was one when the 
fly decisively defeated bait in point of size of fish killed. 
. -Letters from the mountains tell me there are still 3ft. 
of snow m the woods, and the lakes and streams are ice- 
bound, yet I know the dark Avater is gurgling and'bub- 
bling beneath eager to burst forth from its barriers in 
laughing cadences, and tlie knowledge rouses a fever of 
unrest in my blood. Shall it be lulled? Quien sabe? 
"It is there that we are going, with our "rods aiid reels and traces 
To a silent, smoky Indian that we know — 
To a couch of new-pulled hemloelt, with the starlight on our faces 
For the red gods .cill lis out and we must go." 
'" - ZUE^S. 
Fishing Up and Down the Potomac. 
Sbenaadoah City. 
Shenandoah River, the principal tributary of the 
Potomac, like the main stream, is stocked with bass from 
end to end, and has lor thirty years been favorite ground 
for the angler. 
At Harper's Ferry, the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad 
sends a branch line south along its west bank about 
three miles to Milldale, where it makes a horse-shoe 
curve,- and leaving the river, cHmbs the grade through the 
valley of a little brook, Flowing Run, and goes on to 
Charlestown. This first two or three miles from its 
•mouth has furnished much sport, as frequently when the 
Potomac comes down mudd}', the bass crowd over into 
the clearer water of the Shenandoah, and besides, it i? 
comparatively easy of access to strolling anglers. 
Getting a team at the Ferry, we drive out past the 
charred ruins of an old flouring mill, burned during the 
war by the military authorities, on a charge of furnish- 
ing supplies to the enemy; past a modern pulp mill, with 
its pool and sluice full of pulp timber. 
These paper mills, useful and necessary and profitabb 
as they are, furnishing employment in localities near for- 
ests where for the most part there is little enough oppor- 
tunity for steady work; which should command the re- 
spect and gratitude of every angler who reads, for they 
have wonderfuly cheapened the dissemination of knowl- 
edge, and are doing much for the intellectual develop- 
ment of the world, yet seem to have no other effect than 
to rouse a mild fury in the bosom of the average angler, 
which gets him disliked in the neighborhood of mills, as 
interfering with a legitimate business Avithout a better 
cause than a blind prejudice. 
The constant tendency is thus to array against each 
other a good and necessar\f industry, with the local sen- 
timent of the employees on one side, and a lot of strolling 
idlers, hunting for a time-killing amusement on the other, 
in which the latter have not much show either in argu- 
ment or verdict; and if only the fishing was affected by 
the debris the angler might have long ago given up in 
despair. But this is the pulp mill's case. The true sit- 
uation is tliat the mills arc an object of curiosity and ad- 
miration to the angler. There is not the slightest preju- 
dice among them against the business, though careless 
argument would sometimes seem to imply as much. But 
the angler is indignant at the individual who is responsi- 
ble for disposing of the waste by dumping it into the 
river, and the individual cannot be reached, so the mill 
stands to take the blame for the useless and baneful pollu- 
tion. If the refuse was filtered, so as to be harmless, as 
by law it must be in many places, there would be no an- 
tagonism- But when the acids are thrown into the river, 
and the shavings and pulp waste, to cover spawn beds, 
choke out riparian vegetation, filling the fish haunts un- 
der the stones with putrefying masses, altering the normal 
plankton to a degree we can only guess, is bad for the 
young fry, for our scientific experts tell us nothing about 
it; when they do all this, and then get angry at feeble 
protests, instead of curing the whole trouble by dis- 
posing of their wastes in some other way than unloading 
them into the river to contaminate it for miles below, 
the angler gets careless of disastrous results, forgets the 
community and its good, and the blessing of cheap paper, 
and finds himself enjoying a sense of relief at the infor- 
mation that the mill is to close down. It is all wrong. 
The shutting down of a paper mill is a national calam- 
ity, whether by a trust, or exhaustion of raw material, 
or any cause, and a hard blow for the locality that has 
come to depend on the employment and trade it has 
created; and it is no credit or service to the angler, be- 
'cause it establishes no principle or precedent, increases 
friction and helps nothing in securing what is demanded, 
what he is striving for, the clarifying of the refuse. 
This mill has just given notice that it will close down 
when its present stock of materiar is worked up. B'.it 
when it rfioves to some other locality, which will wel- 
come it with open arms, it simply does the same thing 
over again and poisons some other stream. 
The Potomac will some day be cleared of all pollution 
so far as practicable, not on account of restoring the 
finest bass stream in the world, but because the National 
Capitol- stands on its banks and the city must use its 
waters. • 
The Hydrographic Office of th? Geological Survey col- 
lected samples of the Potomac waters from many locali- 
ties above Great Falls, and these were examined by the 
microscopists of the Marine Hospital Service and found 
in almost every instance to contain the microbes of dis- 
ease, and the physicians of the District of Columbia as a 
body denounced the condition of the water that is brought 
to the city for drinking purposes as unfit and dangerous. 
This is the lever on which the angler must depend for 
assistance in ridding the river of fish-killing wastes. But 
the poorest way of effecting this is by closing mills. 
Destroy the refuse. 
To cleanse the river does not imply a threat to a sin- 
gle establishment. "Clarify the debris," that is all. Half 
a dozen States are now working hard to redeem the pur- 
ity of their streams and incidentally restore their fish- 
eries so wantonly destroyed, and their proposed legisla- 
tion does not menace an institution. "Filter the wastes" 
and give the country an object lesson in cleanliiiess that 
is sore needed. Tj'phoid, one of the most dangerous and 
easily disseminated maladies that threaten health and life, 
is one of the easiest stamped out and prevented. It is 
one of the few whose germs are familiar; whose birth, 
propagation and spread are fairly well known, and whose 
destruction is simple. But it is river-carried, and quar- 
antining a locality is no protection, unless the- river is 
quarantined. 
Washington has already suffered an epidemic, brought 
here by the Potomac from Cumberland, and her average 
death rate from this cause brings her well up to the head 
of the class of the great cities of the country, and there 
are other diseases carried and spread the same way. 
There seems to be a misapprehension of the extent of 
an owner's rights who reaches a river bank, whether 
an individual or a municipality. That proximity confers 
ovvnership exclusive in the stream. This is only true to 
the extent of the use of such water as reaches him, and 
by no means gives him a right of sewerage in the chan- 
nel. The right of pure water to which he is entitled 
is just as sacred to the man or settlement below, and 
the stream must be passed on in the same condition it 
reaches him. No city deserves the right to pure water 
from above, which sweeps its dirt into the stream to 
poison the waters below. 
"Destroy the filth." The pulp mill which will do this 
will, by its example, confer a blessing on mankind. 
Our regrets go with this one that is to be shut down. 
Only harm has been done, whether it is a move of a 
syndicate or the fear of prosecution. No lesson can 
be learned from its removal except perhaps in the di- 
rection of recognition, that resistance to material pol- 
lution in any considerable volume, has grown serious 
enough to hamper the offending industry. 
A couple of miles beyond this pulp mill brings us 
to a long, low dam, diagonally crossing the river. This 
is Shenandoah City. There is nothing of it but the 
ruins of a couple of ancient flour mills and the name. 
Here if one brings his own boat or has previously ar- 
ranged to have one ready, he may cover a great field 
of first-rate fly water. If he is to try his fortune afoot 
he crosses the dam to the east side and finds plenty 
of opportunity to test his skill. 
The water of the Shenandoah has two distinct colors 
and a million shades between. In flood it is a brownish 
yellow, and as ugly as any puddle to the fly-fisherman. 
When at its clearest it is a deep oak green, and with 
appreciably more color than any of the neighboring 
streams, giving to the stranger an impression of lack 
of transparency; but, while this may lead him to care- 
lessness in the matter of exposure and shadow, he 
quickly learns that it is no bar to the visions of the fish. 
This vernal hue we have found to prevail as far as we 
have fished, up its 200 miles, and often liken the color 
of occasional pools in other neighborhoods, where trees 
or depth lends something of a like shade, to the "Shen- 
andoah tinge." 
Just below the long dam on this side is a foamy 
pool, where on one of our trips one of the part3'^ took 
his first bass with a fly, and the incident will never be 
forgotten. He was already middle-aged and had spent 
most of his life in the field, and was full of woods 
lore; he knew the haunts and habits, and was better 
than any of us, but he had not taken any kind of a fish 
on a fly since as a boy he had poached for trout, in a 
little Irish burn. When he fastened at his first easy cast 
under the apron to a pound and a half bass his excite- 
ment was intense. Hope and fear played tag with 
his emotions so fast, neither was it for long, but, like 
the lightning, was gone before one could say "it is." 
But he saved his fish, and another devotee of the fly 
was initiated into the fraternity, and a welcome one. 
Many a time since fie has joined us in our days up and 
down the Potomac: none more earnest, none more 
faithful, satisfied with light strings, jubilant over big 
ones, and out of his long experience in the open, with 
always something to add to our little stock of knowl- 
edge of the woods, the waters, or the life that makes these 
interesting. 
Fishing from the shore for a distance above the dam 
on the east side is somewhat tantalizing, as there are 
few places where one may get good casts over favor- 
able water, free of the brush which comes well down 
on the bank: but a half-mile up is a long, narrow 
wooded island, separated by a winding stream at 
medium stages of water, a torrent in flood. 
Here the fishing in hot weather is delightful and profit- 
able. Great rocks block the chute at intervals, rising 
high above the waters, which must find their way ground 
in little falls and rapids, from pool to pool. Plenty of 
shade and grass beds, and everywhere the water is over 
a foot in depth, gives promise of a response. 
When the sun is beating down on a still day, too hot 
for comfort, in the narrow A^alley of the rocky river 
bed outside, to lounge through this damp, cool covert, 
and creeping up the face of one of the great rounded 
piles drop a fly in a rift on the other side or in a . 
grassy bowl, where a little riAailet trickles down, sure 
that somewhere thereabouts a big fellow is lurking, and 
to have such easy effort rewarded, is the luxury of fly- 
fi.shing. _ - _ _ 
For three consecutive seasons my friend, who used 
to spend his annual vacations here, had the coincident 
fortune to take seventeen good fish from the uoper half 
of this chute in an evening's fishing, and Still calls {X 
Uhni No. i7t ^ - 
On the outside of the island a series of -long irregular 
ledges cross the river diagonall}^ over which the river 
tumbles in a broken cataract, called Bull Falls, and here 
at times the pools yield big catches. 
The best season here is the late fall, when the water 
is low and clear, and one may cover almost the 
width of the river dryshod; but as one must take his holi- 
day when he can, many a day is spent in vain effort 
to coax the fish from pools too deep or troubled, or 
the water side reached when a yellow flood is on and the 
fishing off. 
But your enthusiastic angler does not count these days 
as wasted, but any day as found, spent any time under 
the sky. 
In an article on British fishermen in St. Pauls (Vol. 
2, p. 346), speaking of seasons, the writer says: "Sorne 
anglers hold that their year does not commence till 
May; that they cannot fish till they find the May-fly 
upon the water, while others, more determined for 
sport, are^ on the river side early in April, and keen 
salmon fishers will have a pull at the monarch of the 
brook in February. Again there are enthusiasts who 
will be at work before the end of January. 
"These are like the gouty man in the well-known en- 
graving. They would angle in a tub in their dining 
room rather than not fish." 
But there be other ends to fishing than the two oft 
quoted, a fool and a worm. Where one can feel his 
flaccid muscles swell and harden under the hard work 
of pleasant days and summer suns; can lose that listless 
habit that grows upon the sedentary man, who has no 
hobby, pursued by the harpies of business cares that sap 
his life, these holidays are a foretaste of joys eternal. 
To one who feels these days of sunshine and flowers, 
of woodland and waterfalls, have not only added ten years 
to the term of his natural life, but have added to his 
capacity for enjoyment of the present, the pastime h 
looked'on as something more than a diversion, and the 
fish that stands for all these is in gratitude, apotheosize J, 
Henry Talbott. 
Forcing the Season. 
As usual, this spring I started fishing too early, and in 
impossible streams. "A vague unrest" is the cause, I sup- 
pose, for it is certain that a man takes longer chances for 
a fish after a winter of inactivity than when a number of 
excursions have slaked his thirst for the sport. I hope 
that destruction of fish and fishing do not mean the same 
to me, though there was never a man who hated worse to 
come in empty handed. I know a man who revels ify 
the destruction of fish ; he stabs the sluggish sucker and 
catfish in the back and waits around with a shotgun t!0 
catch some bird sitting still and pots it, and all for his 
inappeasable appetite for things untamed. He does not^ 
go fishing in April; there is no chance of his getting' 
enough to gorge himself. I believe he lacks imagination. 
Later on he will foul some fish and pick their bones. He 
is like the fish he pursues, the sucker, the kind of 
fish I take it, Lord Tennyson had in mind when he 
wrote : 
"We are men of ruined blood. 
Therefore comes it we are wise; , 
Fish are we ttiat love the mud. 
Rising to no fancy flies." 
The writer is not so. We rise to the first balmy days 
and getting together our fishing things steal away to the 
fishing grounds, meeting some village mentor who casts 
the cold eye of disapproval on the signs of one of his 
neighbors lapsing again into his thriftless ways. 
We have some early fishing here in the chubs. We 
know them as "horny-heads." They have a lot of red 
about the head, and bead-like excrescences cover the fore- 
head. His general appearance indicates that he has been 
a faithful and consistent user of strong drink for many 
years. This fish heaps up great piles of pebbles of a bushel 
or more at a place. Its flesh is all but worthless, and it 
decays almost as soon as it is taken from the water. ^ 1 
often think of a verse from the old Enghsh poem, "The 
Red Fisherman," by Praed, when, having to' do with this 
fish: 
"The water was as dark- and rank 
As ever a company pumped; ' 
And the fish that was netted and laid on the bank i 
Grew roften while it jumped." 
The most remarkable trait of this fish is its power to 
make a noise like a newly-hatched chicken, and quite as 
loud, when being taken from the hook. This is make- 
believe fishing sure enough. It bites like a trout, but it 
is nothing after you have caught it. A fisherman this 
year, who was forcing the season like myself, caught two 
very fine trout when fishing for chubs in a bass stream. 
Last year I had one day's good luck early fishing. In 
the fall before, when I was walking up the Stilthousc 
Run, I saw a good-sized trout. I went back the follow- 
ing spring and caught a big trout where I had seen this 
one, and a larger one just below. In size they would have 
ranked well with the' largest in a big catch. This year 
I have been more lucky with my early fishing, and I crave 
the indulgence of the reader in going over this evening 
the events of my April fishing. It is far better spinning 
yarns on paper than face to face, for, as you talk to a 
man who understands these things, you see a far-away 
look in his eye, which indicates that he is not thinking 
of the tale you are telling him but of the one he is going 
to tell you. 
April 13 was the second day for months when the air 
became soft. For weeks a chill breeze had been blowing. 
There was not a sign of life in any of the trees. Even the 
scarlet maple, the first to bourgeon in the spring, had not 
put forth buds. . The day before a fisherman had gone to 
Stony Creek and had taken six fine trout. The poor fish 
had been kept on short rations for weeks, and were ready 
to take anything. Stony Creek is an ideal trout stream. 
The cool, clear water foams over miniature falls, and 
eddies in deep pools ; large rack heaps present inviting 
spots for a cast. It lacks but one thing, and that is more 
trout. It has been fished to a standstill. It is too early for 
fly, and T try a worm. I fish up stream for half a mile 
and the fish refuse to respond. As I cast and let the 
line drift down through the ej^e of the pool it is arrested. 
Js it a trout or is it the bottom of the gr^ek? JTqw 
