FOREST AND STREAM. 
should pole «p the rapid and take one try -in the little eddy 
formed by Van Camp's Rock. 
Frank looked at me reproachfully for a moment, but, as 
he is too good natured to mind poling a boat half a mile 
up a rushing, seething torrent, even if it be in compliance 
with a mere whim, he simply said "Come along," so 
forthwith we re-embarked and started up stream. 
Just above the rock there is a curious backset or eddy, 
caused-by the rushing river striking against the barrier, 
which w'hirls a portion of the water back up the stream, 
to properly fish which you must anchor your boat down 
stream and fish up. You lie snugly on the edge of the 
current and cast your line up into this eddy, which is only 
about 30ft. wide and about 150ft. long. The back wash 
carries your bait up stream and then out into the main 
down-river flow, by which it is whirled back to 3'ou again. 
Naturally, as the bottom of the river is a maze of enor- 
mous rocks, one loses a good many hooks, owing to the 
tackle fouling as j^our line comes back to you, and the 
place has a bad name on that account. ■ . 
We started to anchor "bow and stern" across the eddy. 
I was tending the stern killick and my rod was lying 
athwart the boat, with about loft. of line and leader weav- 
ing pendulous in the depths beneath with a beauteous 
blond "stone cattie" at the end thereof. Before I had 
made the anchor rope fast I heard click, click, br-r-r-r-r 
from my reel. Grabbing up the rod. regardless of Frank's 
muttered "Dast ole eel, I reckon," I reeled off several feet 
of line in order to give the fish time to turn and swallow 
the bait, and then struck. 
Up from the depths he shot, a good 2ft. above the 
water, with that bull terrier shake of the head which a 
bass knows will dislodge a hook as no other ruse will, and 
then out into the rushing river. With such a current to 
help him the tussle was a protracted one, but finally I got 
him back into the eddy, the net was slipped imder him 
and the spring balance applied. 
"Three 'n' a half, strong, an' . fatter "n' lard," was 
Frank's comment. 
Then the Iron Chancellor gave a whoop, which the 
General Manager echoed, as they each struck a good fish, 
both of which were finally landed — ^2lbs. to the boy's credit 
and 3lbs. 2oz. to the Chancellor's. 
Then my turn came again, and forthwith there was a fight 
which would have satisfied even such gluttons as Mul- 
vaney and Learoyd. Without a leap he bored out with 
resistless force into the surge, and then with a mad rush 
down stream, down, down, down, until I could see the 
spindle of the reel glinting through the few^ remaining 
turns of looyds of line. Down went my thumb, but slowly 
to avoid a sudden stoppage upon the spool of the reel, 
and I mentally bade farewell to fish and tackle. But the 
line held, and away oft down stream he canJe up into the 
air. 
What Frank and the Chancellor said when they saw 
him I W'ill not repeat, lest the Editor's blue pencil should 
be called into play. Fortunatel}'', as I subsequently found 
by very diplomatic questioning, the boy was too excited 
to notice it. 
Gradually, but with constantly weakening rushes, T 
worked his Majest}' back up stream, the Chancellor per- 
formed most gracefully upon the landing net, and the 
stout old warrior was mine. The scales said Slbs. 2oz. 
The Chancellor said, "T think we should take a drink on 
him." I said nothing, but silently admired. 
To make a long storj^ short, we took that afternoon out 
of that one eddy seventeen bass, and their actual (not 
guessed) weights on scales which had been carefully tested 
were as follows: i^, 2, 21^, 2^, 2j4, 2^, 2^. 3, 3%, 3^^. 
3V2, 4, 4%, 4H< 4H- aVa and 5^. 
I have never seen or heard of such another catch in 
Eastern waters. I know the guides around the boat land- 
ing said that no catch approximating it had ever brought 
in there. 
But doesn't such sport under such adverse circum- 
stances go to prove the truth of the statements of Shan- 
ganoss the wise? Wadleigh Brooke. 
The Pacific Salmon and the Fly* 
"iP: the stream has not been fished out long, since by 
Podgers, Henry P. Wells, Kipling and the rest of them, 
I would like to cast a line over that (in more waj's than 
one) much be-damned Pacific Coast salmon. 
I drifted out here ten years ago and have fished per- 
sistenth^ in season, hien entendu, each succeeding year 
since my arrival. Before coming here I had fished the 
Ristigouche, Nepisiguet, Cascapedia and Charlo for sal- 
mon, and one season in Nova Scotian waters. My 
father, who had been a fly-fisherman for over fifty 
years, and who had to his credit, besides countless years 
of the best salmon fishing in Scotch, Irish, Canadian 
and New Brunswick waters, two seasons on the Wefsen, 
one of the best known Norwegian rivers, preceded me 
here, and _ on my arrival we two determined intsanter 
that we would demolish that hoary-headed fable that the 
Pacific Coast salmon wouldn't rise to a fly. 
Well, we tried for three seasons — at least he did. 
About the third day out each year, an attentive ob- 
server might have noticed a spasmodic groping on my 
part in the' general direction of my coat tails, and if his 
eyesight were very keen, he might have remarked a 
brown paper parcel, and if he looked closer he might 
have seen me extract therefrom a Crangon vulgaris — 
otherwise known as a shrimp. Thereupon, the fishing 
began to pick up on my side of the river. 
Before, however, hauling doAvn my colors as a fly- 
fisherman, I always deemed it my duty to .give these 
untutored savages the choice of the contents of a 'dozen 
fly-books. I wooed them with everything from 
ouarianiche patterns, \Vhich we used on the St. Croix 
in --the seventies, up to Wefsen flies as big as humming- 
birds and even as big as sparrows, flies indescribably 
gorgeous, adorned with $5 worth of the golden pheasant 
top-knots and enough bullion to deck out a drum major 
— and yet I never once caught a Pacific Coast salmon on* 
a fly, "when 1 was fishing for salmon. 
I did, however, just twice in ten years' experience, 
catch a salmon-on a fly, vvheh I was fishing for trout. 
And thus it was : 
In 1894 I was fisliing the mill pond in the Garda 
■River, about 120 miles north of San Francisco, when 
I saw a large fish come up to the surface and "'browse," 
h e„ he stuck his nose out of water and sucked in some 
floating object, probably a dead fly. I took off my cast 
of three small trout flies, and after assuring myself that 
my leader was strong enough to hold him, I rummaged 
through my fly- books and mounted a silver-doctor on a 
No. 4 hook, which I had used seven years before in 
Nova Scotia. I had him the first cast, and after a 
weak fight, lasting probably twelve minutes. I landed 
him. He was a spent fish in very poor condition, and 
his back and side bore the mark of a spear. I did not 
weigh him, because my scales were not large enough, but 
I estimated his weight at 7lbs, and judging by his 
length, I have no hesitation in saying that in good 
condition he would have weighed 10. 
My second salmon was captured four years ago m 
the Lagunitas, a beautiful little brook only twenty miles 
from San Francisco; now, alas, not fished out, but netted 
out, by miscreants who come there each year before the 
season opens and seine every pool, taking even the 
fingeriings. 
This salmon made a grand strike, and seized my 
tail fly, a ro3^1-coachman tied on a No. 10 hook. It 
was at a place locally known as the Pot Holes, and I 
was perched on a rock with sheer sides, 6 or 7ft. above 
the water, with a 40Z. rod, drawn gut leader, no gaff, no 
net and not a blessed foot of ground in sight where even 
a congenial idiot would attempt to land a fish. And 
how he did rip around that pool, and how he sulked, and 
how he sawed that tapered casting line against sunken 
rocks and plunged and lunged and struggled for life and 
liberty ! And how I held on, the sweat of mute agony 
exuding from every pore, for one whole hour and ten 
minutes to boot! Five times I had him on his side, the 
crimson stream from his gills painting the dark water; 
but just so surely as I got him there and started to pros- 
pect around the top of that rock, rip-p-p, away he would 
go again ! Finally I saw that he was as tired as I 
was, so I dropped off into 4ft. of water, reeled him in 
gently to my chest, drew my hunting knife from its 
sheath, chopped him' across the back, and lifting him 
by the gills, waded down stream \mtil I found a place 
where I could get ashore. He >veighed next day 
9li\hs. dressed. 
Both these fish caught by me were salmon, not steel- 
heads, I have caught htmdreds of steelheads with the 
fly. 
My concltision is: That the Pacific Coast salmon does 
occasionaly and under exceptional circumstances take 
the artificial fly. but that they take it so seldom that it 
is not worth while to fish for them with it. 
As to Mr. Wells' suggestion that possibly fishermen 
have not as yet discovered the right fly, I would men- 
tion that in 1890. 1891 and 1892, when my father and my- 
self tried om- experiment, we had a collection of upward 
of 1,500 flies to draw upon, and that this colection in- 
cluded not only all the .standard Norway, Scotch, Irish 
and Canadian salmon patterns, but ouananiche flies, bass 
flies, Moosehead Lake trout flies, etc., and imiumerable 
fancy flies of every conceivable size, shape, color and 
previous condition of servitude. 
I do not wish to be understood as saying that we tried 
every fly we possessed, but. first and last, we experi- 
mented with several hundreds, including, for both of 
us were versed in the act of fly-tying, some especially 
designed confections in feathers, such as any right- 
minded woman would gladly pay her milliner $30 for. 
But thi- Chinook .savages wouldn't have them as a gift. 
Marin. 
Fishing Up and Down the Potomac. 
Angling vs. Malaria. 
"Every man at forty is a physician or a fool." It may 
be added "sometimes both." Washington and the entire 
tide-water region of the Potomac may be classed as 
malarial. Exactly what this means nobody seems to know. 
If Koch's theory proves to be correct, though there is an 
unaccountable lack of enthusiasm among his brother 
scientists, it is mosquitoes, and we shall at least have the 
satisfaction of a certainty regarding the vehicle. 
Until its demonstration, or acceptance, the pests must be 
counted as two, instead of a joint stock affair, and we 
must be content to be bled by the one and poisoned by 
the other, as our forefathers were. They are at least 
associates, and the Potomac has plenty of both, and to 
spare. The mosquitoes are not of the largest, but they are 
a brave race, hunting in packs, and used a long-distance 
weapon before the Mauser was thought of. 
A party of fishermen were caught one night at a little 
station some thirty miles down the river, and found no 
better lodging than the shack of a depot, which gave them 
shelter. It was too warm to smudge and seal the open- 
ings, but they did what was nearly as bad : they retired in 
slickers and rubber boots, and finally, worn out, slept. A 
commotion in the night, and the party awoke to find the 
General sitting bolt upright with his revolver in his hand. 
Demanding an explanation, he poured forth a voluble 
dissertation on mosquitoes, their relation to original sin 
and the doctrine of total depravity, with hopeful proph- 
ecies of their ultimate destination and their function in 
the scheme of eternal punishment. It was not orthodox, 
either from a religious or scientific standpoint, but it 
was interesting, both for its originality and its impassioned 
fervor, as if the speaker felt Avhat and while he spoke, as 
well as for the quaintness of emphasis and gesture, the 
latter indeed so reckless at times as to inspire a dread in 
his audience second only to that occasioned by the in- 
vaders. Roused to a sense of their misery, there was no 
more sleep that night save for one only of the party, who 
was an immune. We have never been able to determine 
whether long exposure had inoculated his system or that 
he was fortified with an antidote that induced D. T. in 
such luckless buzzers as came his way, or if forty years of 
wind and weather had not left him pachydermatous and 
lance-prouf; at any rate, he slept that night and laughed 
.il his companions' mssfottunes in the morning. 
In the older histories, of settlements along the river 
bank, the localities are spoken of as exceedingly healthy, 
except for a month or two in the late summer and early 
fall, when agues and fevers were prevalent. The same 
conditions obtain at the present day, and coincident with 
the decay of the season's rai>k growth, in the river and 
along its borders. Wherever it can be afforded, th« 
dwellers on the river, all the way down, move back into 
the country for a couple of months, sometimes only three 
or four miles, which seems to be the limit to which the 
miasma may be w^afted in dangerous volume. Even the 
cattle are taken back when possible, "to get away from the 
mosquitoes, which make them poor." 
That this is not absolutely necessary is proven by the 
fact that many who cannot afford this expense remain, and 
apparently suffer no more than the nomads. But that there 
is some foundation for the belief seems probable, since it 
has stood for centuries unshaken, as did the behef that "de 
sun do move," 
Since the reclamation of the Flats in front of the city, 
malaria is no more common or deadly in the contiguous 
localities than in any other city in the States. Along the 
Eastern Branch, between the Arsenal and the Congres- 
sional Cemetery, the families in the low-lying districts 
still suffer, and individuals may be seen with the unmistak- 
able jaundiced ague signs, but these flats, too, are about to 
be reclaimed, and when this is done malaria will be driven 
from the borders. That it is not very bad anywhere along 
the Potomac, is amply proved by the anglers and hunters 
of Washington, who do with impunity what would be cer- 
tain to result in great shakes elsewhere. They use, for 
100 miles up and down the river, through all the long 
season and take not the slightest precautions as regards 
exposure. Out in the morning, when the mists hang low 
and heavy on the marshes, waiting before daylight for 
the ducks, or whipping the streams and pools before the 
morning sun has warmed from the air the SAvamp taste, 
that some claim to identify as the fever poison, and late 
into the night the enthusiasts stay, eager for one more 
shot or bite, with never a thought of the danger, which 
cannot be serious, for if pain attended the risk it would 
be avoided. A chill is nearly sure to follow a cold caught 
in the open, by the sedentary, as after a drenching, but the 
system seems generally able to repel the trouble, and a 
coldless trip is rarely followed by any malarial symptoms. 
The fact is that that man is far more likely to be sick 
who is disappointed of his holiday. 
But it is also true that nearly all the anglers here do 
carry certain specifics which they firmly believe the source 
of immunity from ague attacks. It may be only a buck- 
eye or a rabbit's foot, but it is generally quinine in some 
form or combination. 
One has a little bottle of black pills of quinine, strych- 
nine and iron, and he thinks one every night he's out will 
make him live forever. Another substitutes arsenic. 
Some use phenacetin and quinine, some valerianate of 
quinine, and many the ordinai-y sulphate pills or capsules; 
but the very best — that's ours — as a preventive or cure, is 
muriate of quinine and salol. Four-grain capsules, with 
two grains of each, make the standard dose, and its friends 
stand for it as a .specific for any trouble, from congestion 
or grip to neuralgia. The muriate seems to leave less of 
the buzzing effect and deafness than the sulphate, and 
according to the absurd theory of the phj'sician who 
recommended it to us, was much purer than the com- 
mercial sulphate, for the reason that in reducing the 
cinchona bark with sulphuric acid it might be adulterated 
with the cheaper willow bark, and salicylic acid precipi- 
tated with the sulphate, but that muriatic acid would not 
resolve the active principle in the willow, and conse- 
quently the muriate would be found to be pure. Just why 
a reliable firm would not furnish pure sulphate, which 
costs next to nothing, as readily as the muriate, or 
why the muriate might not be as well adulterated after 
precipitation by a dishonest dealer, is not quite clear, but 
the muriate was recommended, and is unanimously in- 
dorsed by those who use it, as, of; course, are the other 
remedies. 
My chum, fifteen years ago, moved to a house on the 
marsh, about three miles below Washington, for the fish- 
ing, and has for every season since that time put in two or 
three hours each day, and sometimes f'ar into the night, 
with his rod, besides sleeping within two rods of the water's 
edge, and suffers no ill consequences from the exposure, 
unless he forgets the muriate and salol, which is on an 
average of once a year, and at that he has never lost a 
day's work that may be charged to malaria, since he 
found this remedy. 
It is not meant to convey the impression that quinine 
forms a part of the regular diet of Washington anglers, 
but that, as nearly everywhere in the United States, it is a 
remedy almost as standard and popular as the spir. fru. 
with which it is usually taken. When one recalls that half 
the deaths in this great world are credited to malaria ; that 
we use one-third of the quinine of the world, and that last 
year we imported above a billion and a half grains, it will 
be seen that our fishermen only get in line with the rest 
of the country when they pin their faith as a chill cure 
to the bitter bark. Henry Talbott. 
Catp Cookery* 
Editor Forest and Stream: 
Mr. Talbott is all right in his defense of the carp. The 
carp is all right if properly cooked. The way to cOok him 
all right is told by Isaak Walton, Give heed : 
"But, first, I will tell you how to make this carp that is 
so curious to be caught, so curious a dish of meat, and 
will make him worth all your labor and patience; and 
though it is not without some trouble and charges, yet 
it will recompense both. 
"Take a carp, alive if possible, scour him, and rub him 
clean with water and salt, but scale him not; then open 
him, and put him, with his blood and his liver, which you 
must save when you open him, into. a small pot or kettle; 
then take sweet marjoram, thyme and parsley, of each 
half a handful, a sprig of rosmary, and another of savorj', 
bind them into two or three small bundles, and put them 
to your carp, with four or five whole onions, twenty pickled 
oysters, and three anchovies. Then pour upon your carp 
as much claret wine as will only cover him, and season 
your claret well with salt, cloves and mace, and the rind? 
ot oranges and lemons ; that done, cover your pot and 
set it on a qtuck fire, till it be sufficiently boiled ; then take 
out the carp, and lay it with the broth in the dish, and 
pour uponit a quarter of a pound of the best fresh butter, 
melted and beaten with half a dozen spoonfuls of the 
broth, the yolks of two or three eggs, and some of the 
herbs shred ; garnish your dish with lemons, and so serve 
k up, and much g<=^'d do you." PotYCARi?. 
