112 
FOREST AND STREAM, 
[Fit. io, 1906. 
ik-necs now, every turn of the fish is anticipated, his line is 
never slack now, and when the fight is over, as he raises 
'ins fish in his landing net and remarks, "That professor 
H.v of mine is the sartinest fly in the mountings" — the 
good old soul doesn't realize it's not the fly, it's he 
IVlay God bless him, and may I see him do it again. 
By the way, I've said a good word for him, and some 
time I am going to tell you a wild turkey story on him. 
Don't forget that it is in this very section of country, 
"weuns in North Carolina" are trying to have the Gov- 
ernment establish a national park and forest reserve. 
Push the Appalachian National Park, 
Chesseetoah. 
Pickerel Fishing. 
Hew York, Feb. 3. — I see in this week's Forest and 
Stream a clipping from the Hartford Courant of Jan. 
23. I agree with Mr. Phelps that some of the catches in 
Connecticut are most remarkable — three or four hundred 
pickerel with an average weight of i pound each. 
On my fishing trip last summer I think my smallest 
pickerel would v/eigh not less than 3J/2 pounds, the largest 
weight Avas 18 pounds, and out of fifteen or twenty I think 
the average weight would be from 5 to 514 pounds. 
I also agree with the writer of the article in the Hart- 
ford Courant that there is little preference between a 
i-pound pickerel and a pin cushion, and would also hate 
to express my opinion of a man who would catch pickerel 
so small. 
In lake trolling I have been more successful with the 
nickel spoon or the copper variety, using the copper on 
bright days and the nickel on dark cloudy days. I 
have always found the largest sizes best even for small 
fish. 
During the months of August and September, when 
the pickerel are on the grass and mud, I use a 6 or 8 
ounce sinker on a leader, letting out just enough line to 
clear the grass, I find one of these ordinary frog spears, 
three tongued, a very handy thing, and a great help to land 
large fish. Give a well-aimed blow in the back and allow 
your fish to run with spear and line, and you are bound to 
get him in a very short time. In landing pickerel of 
from 3 to 7 pounds, nothing is better than your fingers 
between his eyes. 
I wish the two men from Winsted. Conn., who caught 
fifty- two pickerel weighing 38 1-3 pounds would trj' Lake 
George, N. Y., that is, if they know enough to stop when 
they have caught enough, for people up there catch what 
they can eat and leave a few for another day. 
Geo. V. Wakeman, 
Boston, Feb. 5. — The ponds about Bridgton and Harri- 
son are being pretty extensively fished this winter, with 
good catches of pickerel. After Feb. I it is legal to take 
trout and landlocked salmon from the same waters. The 
law specifies that one must be a citizen of the State to 
fish, and take fish for his own use. at his home only. But 
such a law seems to he easily "worked around." for there 
are many Boston fishermen who take occasion to fish in 
Maine waters every February and March. They are in 
charge of citizens of Maine, who o=ten=ibIy do all the 
fishing, while the sportsman from out of the State simply 
stands around and sees the fun go on. Rattlesnake Pond 
is a favorite for Mechanic Falls fishermen, as well as other 
ponds in Oxford and Poland. The week before the cold 
snap some good strings were brought to that village. I 
am constantly being asked where there is decent ice fish- 
ing for pickerel within twenty or thirty miles of Boston. 
This is a hard question to answer, and one feels forced 
to say that such fishing does not exist. By night trains 
more distant waters can be reached, and the return may 
be made in the night; hence, only one day from busi- 
ness. But arrangements must be perfected beforehand, 
and even then much will depend upon the weather. 
Special. 
CHICAGO ^ND THE WEST. 
Chicago Fly-Casting Club. 
The annual meeting of the Chicago Fly-Casting Club 
will be held a week from next Monday evening. There 
is every probability that the following officers will be 
elected: President, Mr. H. W. Perce; secretary, Geo. 
Murrell (re-election) ; captain, E. R. Lettennan. 
The Chicago Fly-Castmg Club will this ^coming sea- 
son depart from its former plan of bi-weekly club tour- 
naments, and will hold only two meets of this class next 
summer, one in early July and one in early August, to 
prepare the members for the big open tournament of 
August, of which mention has already been made. The 
season records will be made up on these two club events, 
but there will be informal meets every Saturday at the 
Garfield North Lagoon, where both bait and fly casting 
will be practiced. Really, this appears to be a very prac- 
tical move. The competitive feature, if pushed too keen- 
ly, destrojrs eventually any purely amateur sport, and it 
is hard to think of anything more purely amateur and 
ir dividual than the art of fly-casting. When forced to 
work off a certain programme at each meet, the club 
members found themselves tied down to score keeping, 
judging, squad hustling, etc., so that the actual time 
each member got for individual practice was much cut 
down. It is likely that more will be learned of the actual 
art and more hours put in at practicing it under this new 
arrangement than was the case under the tournament 
regime. A very pleasant body of enthusiasts, indeed, and 
very skilUul, too. are these folk of the Chicago Fly-Cast- 
ing Club. They will have many guests, next August, 
among these Mr. W. D. Mansfield, of San Francisco, 
with several of the Grand Rapids contingent. 
About Bass and Muscallunge. 
The other morning I was talking with Mr. C. R. 
Brandon, one of the hustling members of the big adver- 
tising machine of Lord & Thomas, this city, and by acci- 
dent'hit upon the fact that he is a very ardent fisherman, 
with a leaning to bait casting, Mr. Brandon told me 
rliat last season he went out fishing twenty-six times, on 
twoiity-six different weeks, and that seems to me a pretty 
rood exan.iple for any city man. to Jollow. (Yet to-day 
1 find this record beaten by Mr. Geo. Schjaiidt, of the 
Chicago Rifle Club, who tells me that one year, not long 
since, Jie went out to the club range just fifty-two times, 
in fifty-two weeks, and sometimes when the thermometer 
was tar below zero. Every man to his hobby.) 
Mr. Brandon has fished the whole Fox Lake chain, 
beginning with the old Camp Lake Ca.sting Club tours; 
has also fished upper Indiana, lower Wisconsin and lower 
Michigan, visiting such points as seemed to offer the best 
sport at bait-castmg. He also has had a very good ex- 
perience with muscallunge, and spoke of a little device 
of his own for muscallunge trolling. "Here," said he, 
"I've got my tackle box here in my office. I never took 
it home when I quit last fall." And verily, he did fish out 
his tackle box from behind his desk — a most seemly thing 
to find in a Chicago man's office. The device is a dou- 
ble hook gear, with a spoon above it, and is made by 
stripping the gang from a No. 8 spoon and snapping this 
appliance on instead. The upper hook is of shorter shank 
than the lower, and this top hook has wired to it an eye, 
which carries with free m_ovement the eye of the longer 
shanked hook below, the two making a flying gang, one 
hook in line with the other and both playing loosely 
below the spoon. On this double hook gang a strip of 
pork is placed, the barbs of the hooks being buried in the 
soft meat, whose whiteness adds to the attractiveness of 
the lure. Thus, there is formed a practically weedless 
hook, which can be trolled over the weed beds where the 
'lunge lie, without fouling, unless the spoon itself should 
get foul. Mr. Brandon says that he has found this de- 
vice a very killing one, and it gives a fish a show for his 
life, as very often he is held by only one of the hooks. 
Mr. Brandon told me of a weird brand of muscallunge, 
which the natives call "tiger 'lunge," and which he re- 
ports to l3e found in Pine Lake, Wis. He says that he 
made a trip up there especially for these fish, and found 
the residents angling for them with a piece of scantling 
for a float, with a wire fastened to the end of it 
and a pound perch for bait. This contrivance they turned 
loose and allowed to do its own work. Presently the 
scantling turned end up, and the fight began, the fish 
towing the heavy beam all over the lake. After a long 
spell of this the men got hold of the float and landed the 
fish by running him up on a shelving beach. This fish 
weighed close to 30 pounds. It was a flatter bodied fish 
than the 'lunge commonly is, with a flatter head. This, 
I thought, meant great Northern pike, but Mr. Brandon 
says the spots run in dark bands up and down across the 
body of the fish, and are not white spots, running along 
the body. This means muscallunge of some sort. Mr. 
Brandon says he tried for some time, and at last killed 
one of these fish on rod and reel, playing it for a long 
time. This fish weighed 15 pounds, and it went out time 
and again, giving him the best fight a 'lunge ever did. 
Pie did not classify this fish as a genuine muscallunge, 
and it remains a sort of angling puzzle in its local variety. 
In fighting powers, these fish remind one of Rolla 
Heikes' giant pike, of Dead Lake, Wis., where the fish- 
ing is customarily done in the same way — still fishing, 
with big perch for bait. _ „ 
E. Hough. 
300 BoYCE Bui-LDiNC, Chicago, 111. 
Rods and Hooks. 
St, Louis, Mo., Jan. 31.— Editor Forest and Stream: 
It has been some time since I inflicted on your readers my 
sporting experiences in the West. Having been "chained 
pretty close for the last couple of years — so close, in fact, 
that I have not had time to wet a line or put ray gun to- 
gethci' for two years; and my only excuse for encroachmg 
on vour space "now is the fact that I may possibly be of 
some assistance to Mr. V. E. Montague, ol Traverse City, 
Mich., who writes in your issue of Jan. 20, anent Ins trials 
and tribulations with his rods and hooks. 
1 am . such a crank on the subject that I have made 
most of my own rods for <x number of years back, and 
have turned out several that will hang a fish fairly well, 
both in split bamboo and solid woods. Of the latter 
variety I like those made of Bethabara best, and would 
suggest that he give that wood a trial by all means. I 
have a number of them now, running from a 4-ounce 
fly rod to a heavy trolling rod of some 12 ounces, the lat- 
ter built after mv trip to Kabekona Camp. I intended it 
for mascalunge,' having had more or less unsatisfactory 
results with those rods that I then possessed. 
Now, in regard to joints getting set out of shape, I have 
found less set in Bethabara than in any other wood. How- 
ever, a set joint is very easily straightened. If Mr. Mon- 
tague will hold the joint over the flame of a gast jet or 
lamp, taking care, of course, not to hold it close^ enough 
to scorch or blister the wood or varnish, he will find that, 
when thoroughlv heated, it can be moulded between the 
fingers very readily, and will retain, when cool, any curve 
h.6 gives it. 
Mr. Montague asks regarding winding a rod spirally. 
That is very good indeed. After breaking joints in- 
numerable. I hit on the idea of doing just that. I now 
take a rod and wind each joint solid from tip to but, lay- 
ing the silk close together. I use white buttonhole twist, 
which takes up the varnish and becomes so transparent 
that the grain of the wood shows through; and with two 
or three coats of varnish on it, no one would ever suspect 
that there was a particle of silk on the rod. Care should 
be taken to lay on the first coat of varnish good and 
heavy, as the silk takes up a lot of it, and if the coating 
is too thin, white spots will show at those places. 
The silk wrapping adds resiliency to the rod as well as 
strength, and an 8 ounce rod, so wrapped has the strength 
without the clmnsiness and weight of a rod of double the 
Vv'eight. . ,r Tvr . 1 
I would like to suggest that Mr. Montague try the 
O'Shaughnessy pattern hook. They are flatted in the 
bend, just where a hook usually breaks. I have never 
had an O'Shaughnessy hook break, though I have had 
that misfortune %vith every other style hook I ever used. 
Aside from the stiflFening given to the bend in the hooks, 
thev are about the same general shape as a^sproat hook. 
If Mr. Montague will wrap his rods with silk, and use 
an O'Shaughnessy hook, I will guarantee that he will have 
no further trouble, and If the Une holds he can handle his 
fish in anv manner he pleases. I might add by way of 
parenthesis that the onlv point of differenrr' between mv 
eld thijui OeoTgp. of whom T have freH^uently writteu in 
years past, and myself, is this very subject of hooks. We 
agree or; all points, from politics to the best brands of 
mtro ponder and iced tea, until it comes to hooks — there 
is the parting of the ways. I swear by the O'Shaughnessy 
and George acknowledges allegiance to the sproat. On 
all other subjects he is amenable to reason; but on hooks 
— well, we have dropped the discussion to save our friend-? 
ship. 
Should Mr, Montague wish to communicate with me, 
you are, of course, at liberty to give him my address, and 
1 shall be pleased to render him any assistance in my 
power. While I do not lay claim to any particular ability 
as an amateur rod maker, I have stumbled on a few wrin- 
kles that may be of service to him. W. R. Hall. 
ANGLING NOTES. 
Frost Fish in Raritan River. 
A CORRESPONDENT in New York city writes me a letter 
containing a query as follows : 
■'Can you tell me what the Raritan River 'frost fish' is? 
It is not the tomcod. It is a fish greatly like the smelt, 
but with firmer and more delicate meat. Those who 
catch them say that when newly caught they have an 
odor like cucumbers, which smelt have not. They are 
esteemed as an especial delicacy, and there is a well-known 
down town restaurant which sends particular notice to a 
few favored patrons of the infrequent consignments of 
frost fish. I send this to you through Forest and Stream 
for answer in its columns." 
This letter I found in my mail on my return from 
Lake Champlain, where I had noticed the fishermen's 
huts in position on the ice ready for the occupants to 
catch "ice fish" when they made their appearance, and 
at once upon reading it I was reminded that I once inade 
a memorandum to write a note upon this very subject, 
for the "frost fish" of the Raritan River and the "ice 
fish" of Lake Champlain are the same fish, and that fish 
is the common smelt. The reason that I made tlie 
memorandum was that I had chanced to open a book con- 
taining Frank Forester's "Memoir on the Smelt of the 
Passaic." He claimed that the smelt of the Raritan and 
Passaic rivers was a different fish from the common 
Eastern smelt, and he prepared specimens to submit them 
to Agassiz for identification, believing that they were 
identical with the smelt of Europe, but his specimens 
never reached the distinguished scientist who would 
have told him, doubtless, as our modern ichthyologists 
liave declared, that we have but one species of smelt in 
Atlantic Coast waters. Forester's conclusions were based 
upon observations, showing that the Passaic smelt was 
inferior in size to the Eastern fish; the brilliant, pearly 
silver coloring and the lack of greenish colored back, and 
"the pecidiar cucumber odor, in the freshly caught fish, 
and the extreme delicacy of the flesh, both of which 
are so far superior in the fish of the Passaic, as to be 
obvious to the least inquisitive observer." 
It may be of interest to quote a paragraph or two from 
Forester's memoir to give in his own words his reasons 
for believing the Passaic smelt to be distinct from the 
common smelt as we now know^ Osmerus mordax: "I 
early suspected this Passaic smelt to be identical with 
the European fish, with which I am very familiar, from 
its being largely taken in the Yorkshire River, the lovely 
and romantic Wharfe, on whose sylvan banks the hap- 
piest of my years were spent. But in the spring of 1852. 
when the run up the Passaic was far above the average, I 
examined above a thousand specimens, made accurate 
drawings of several of the finest, one a fac-siraile, by 
accurate measurement of every part, even to the number 
of fin rays, and dissected at least twenty individuals. 
"In every particular I found the smelt of the Passaic 
to agree with Yarrel's and Richardson's description of 
the European smelt, the form of the opercula, or gill 
covers, the number of rays in every fin, the form and 
system of teeth, the number of scales on the lateral line, 
the length of the intestines, the number- of cajca, and 
above all, the attachment of the sharply toothed tongue 
to the fauces by a short bone margined with small re- 
curved teeth, being precisely the same. 
"T at the same time dissected several of the large 
Eastern fish, procured from Miederst's well-known res- 
taurant in New \''ork, and found them to agree on all the 
distinctive points on which the classification and nomen- 
clature of the American smelt are made to depend, with 
that fish of the American authors, and to differ in all of 
them equally from the British fish of Yarrel and from 
the fish of the Passaic and Raritan." 
mat Scientists Say. 
Jordan and Evermann say of the American smelt: 
"Very close to the European, but the latter has larger 
scales (60), shorter gill rakers and rather weaker teeth." 
There are two varieties of American smelt in Atlantic 
waters, both small, both landlocked in fresh water in 
Kennebec county, Maine. Forester says of the inferior 
size of the New Jersey smelt: "Of five hundred speci- 
mens of this fish, closely examined, and accurately meas- 
ured, whenever one presented itself of magnitude at all 
unusual, but one was found which came up to 10. and only 
five to 9 inches in length; a majority were under 6 inches, 
many not exceeding 5 and even 4 inches, and 7 would 
certainly be above a liberal average. * * * 
"Observe, in this particular, that the Eastern smelts 
which certainlv averages 11 or 12 inches, rarely falls short 
of 9 or 10, and is often found up to 16 and even 18." 
Jordan and Evermann place the maximum length of 
the common or American smelt at 12 inches. I have seen 
smelt from Lake Champlain that would measure 16 
inches, and but a single fish of that length. When some 
of these fish were sent to the National Musev'm they were 
pronounced the largest ever seen in that institution. 
A few years ago I was walking on th° shore of S'uia- 
pee Lake, New Hampshire, with Dr. Jcl-n D. Quacken- 
bos, late in the autumn. There had been a heavy storm 
and the waves had rolled up on the shelving sand 
beach, bringing smelt with them, and some of the fish 
%vere left high and dry as the waves receded. I picked un 
a number of snecimens, and they were of two size"?, eada 
size fairly uniform as to length. The larger fish were 
about A inches long and contained immature eggs that 
would have been cast the following spring. The smaller 
on'^'s wp.re about "3 inches long Cboth of these measure^ 
