Feb. 17, igoal 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
131 
tion he 50 amended -as. to permit the use of eel pots of a 
form to be prescribed by the Commission in any waters, 
as it is in waters inhabited by various members of the 
sahtion family — which includes all trout — that eels do 
the greatest injury by eating the spawn on the spawning 
beds as soon as the eggs are deposited. Take trout spawn 
in the autumn, at night, on shoals, and at such time as 
the trout are on the shoals for the purpose of spawiiihg, 
the eels gather in large numbers and have been seen eating 
the spawn almost as soon as it is deposited and before it 
can be covered with gravel. Eel pots of a form to be 
prescribed by the Commission would not take trout of 
any kind." 
It is a common idea that waters inhabited by trout 
must be hedged about with specific laws guarding the 
fish more carefully than fish of other species are guarded, 
and this law was doubtless conceived in the idea that if 
any engine of destruction is permitted in trout waters to 
take common fish, the trout will suffer. As a rule, this 
is good reasoning, for if permission is given in the law 
to catch perch through the ice of a trout lake, the fisher- 
men avail themselves of the opportunity to catch trout, 
as has been proven over and over in this State, but eel 
pots will take nothing but eels, and there can be no danger 
that the trout will suffer. The eels are doing great in- 
jury in trout waters, more than they can possiblj' do in 
waters inhabited only bj^ coarse fish, and a war must be 
waged against the eel in waters planted with the different 
species of trout, and fishermen will serve their own best 
interests if they desire to protect the trout, to advocate 
this amendment to the eel section. Trout waters have a 
peculiar fascination iot the illegal fisherman, and too 
often it is the case that trout are, or have been, taken 
while the fisherman is ostensibly seeking other ,fish, as,' for 
instance, bait fish with a net, but I fail to see how any 
obection can be urged to the tise of eel pots, particularly 
as there is but one opinion in regard to the injury that 
eels are doing to trout waters. 
"A Censored Address." 
I have received from Hon. Herschel Whitaker, of 
Detroit, a printed pamphlet with the heading I have 
quoted at the beginning of this note, and on the title 
page he prints over his signature this explanation for 
is.s'uing the pamphlet : "At the last meeting of the Amer- 
ican Fishing Society I took part in the discussion of the 
paper read by Mr. F. N. Clark. In the course of my 
remarks * * * X read from a report of Mr. Richard 
Rathburn, a special commissioner appointed by the U. S. 
Government a few years since, to investigate the question 
of the decay of the fisheries. The recommendations made 
in that report had an important bearing on the question 
under discussion, and were opposed to the views of Mr. 
Clark. The portions of the report read and referred to by 
me in my address were furnished afterward to the secre- 
taryj Mr. Boivers, to be printed, but he refused to allow 
them to be printed^ as he differs from me on this question. 
"As this is one of the most important questions that 
has come before the Society, and as I am denied the right 
of freedom of speech, though a member in good stand- 
ing, I am compelled to print my address in full at my 
own expense." 
The italics in the quoted mattef Are my own. As to 
the merits or demerits of the discussion which followed 
the reading of Mr. Clark's paper, or of the views ad- 
vanced by Mr. Clark, I know nothing, as I have not read 
any portion of paper on the discussion which followed, 
but Mr. Whitaker makes a serious charge against Mr. 
Bowers, the recording secretary of the American Fish- 
eries Society, and on this point every member of the 
Society must be interested, for it touches upon the very 
life of the organization, and apparently, unless the secre- 
tary can satisfactorily explain his arrogant action, he 
should resign without loss of time; or, if he should be 
sustained in his position, which I cannot believe, the 
Society has outlived its usefulness and has come to be 
dominated by the opinions of one man. The charge is so 
astounding that I could scarcely believe that I had read it 
aright, but it is plain enough, and in Mr. Whitaker' s well- 
known direct language. Whether Mr. Whitaker, Mr. 
Clark or Dr. Rathbun are right or wrong in their views 
on the decay of the fisheries is of no possible moment in 
comparison with the unwarranted action of the secretary 
in declining to print the address which was part of the 
transaction of the Society. The secretary of the Amer- 
ican Fisheries Society has no more to do with views 
advanced by the members than he has with the direc- 
tion of the Boer war, as he simply sends to the printer 
what the members taking part in a discussion may have 
said. 
When I served as secretary of this Society I carefully 
sent to each speaker at a meeting the notes of his speech 
as taken down by the stenographer and written out long 
hand, for the speaker alone was responsible for his ut- 
terances, and he alone knew whether he was correctly 
reported. In this corrected form each speaker's remarks 
were sent to the printer, and there the duties of the secre- 
tary ended, so far as the speakers were concerned. The 
very object of the meeting is to discuss the views ad- 
vanced by the members present, and scarcely a paper 
is read at a meeting that does not provoke a discussion, 
for if all were of one mind, the transactions when printed 
would be dull reading. The discussion following the 
reading of a paper is frequently of more value than the 
paper itself, for it brings out the views of the members 
from a dozen points of view, instead of from one, and 
the secretai-y has no more to do with these views than 
any other member. If his views do not agree with those 
of any member, he has ample opportunity to combat them 
on the floor, but he cannot by virtue of his office, suppress 
or add to what may be said by others, for the constitution 
gives him no such power, and if he exceeds the power 
reposing in him, the Society, if it wishes to exist, should 
remove him summarily, if he does not previously resign. 
Let no one construe this as an attack upon Mr. Bowers, 
because for the moment he fills the office, my remarks are 
directed against the secretary of the American Fisheries 
Society, whoever he may be. It is the principle of the 
thing which is wrong, and it is that which I protest 
against. If any secretary is permitted, unrebuked, to 
suppress the views of a member, the Society should meet- 
and disband, for it is of no further use on this earth. 
It seems to be up to the secretary to explain why Mr. 
Whitake.r's .address was not printed in the transactions of 
the Society, as all addresses have been, printed since the — 
Society was created, whether they did or did not agree 
with the views of the secretary for the time being. 
Angllag of the Future. 
A friend who writes me as I am preparing these notes 
gives utterance to such opinion in regard to the future of 
sport in this country, that I am tempted to quote from 
his letter : 
"The sportsman as we, in our generation, know him, 
shall soon be merely a reminiscence. Men who love 
sports of the field are destined in the near future to ac- 
quire all of their knowledge in well-stocked preserves and 
streams, where the killing of game and taking of fish may 
be accomplished in a luxurious environment that men 
of our day would have despised as incompatible with the 
ethics of sport. 
"However, each generation has Its distinct ideal, and 
the pleasure that we know that comes from the sur- 
roundings of wild life, will not be acceptable to the 
present breed of sportsmen and anglers. Possibly I may 
be inclined to take too pessemistic a view of the situation. 
I am congratulating you on the skill and earnestness with 
which you are laboring to make angling of any character 
possible." 
My friend does take a very blue, dark blue, view of 
the future of angling in public waters, and really I do 
not thinlc the situation warr.ants it, for a generation or 
two any wa}--, and there is a chance for conditions to im- 
prove instead of growing worse, but it is largely a matter 
of education to bring about improved conditions in 
angling. Fishculture can do much to improve fishing, 
and it has done along certain lines, and fish laws have 
played an important part also, but the people can assist 
both fishculture and the fish laws by discouraging im- 
mediate fishing during the breeding seasons, and by 
realizing that undersized fish are far better alive in the 
water to breed than dead in a creel. The nearest place to 
earthly paradise in a trout country is a beautiful stream 
running through a valley in a sparsely settled farming 
communit3% with enough of nieadow and second growth 
forest to diversify its banks and afford opportunities for 
fly-casting without hanging up the back cast often enough 
to provoke strong language. The trout are not large, but 
they are quick, and it requires a heap of fishing of the 
finer sort to catch them, and they are not numerous or 
large enough to attract many foreign visitors, By com- 
mon consent there was a 6-inch law on the stream before 
there was one in the statutes, and also by common con- 
sent the natives who fished the streams and fished it with 
a fly, too, ceased fishing for the day when they had 
creeled a "mess" of trout for a meal. Public opinion in 
the valley the length of the stream favored decent fishing, 
method and number of fish kille-d, and the stream without 
artificial stocking yielded about the same number of trout 
each year from the natural increase. It was Utopian in a 
large degree, for the trout fisherman who loved moderate 
fishing, and was not actuated by greed, and this state 
of affairs had been brought about by — I was about to 
say self-interest, but that does not seem to be just the 
expression for that hospitable valle}'-, and perhaps it would 
be better to say the eternal fitness of things evolved by 
simple fly-fishers. 
The planting of yearling or fingerling trout is having a 
most beneficial effect on some waters, and the intelligent 
planting of trout fry will bear fruit, too, but education 
must lend a hand and teach the fishermen moderation 
in their fishing. The much maligned pot-fisherman is not 
wholly to blame for decreasing the trout in our streams, 
and the pot-fisherman does not let this fish spoil. Nor 
does the man who nets the streams, but what can be said 
of alleged sportsmen who catch with fair tackle more 
trout than they can eat or properly dispose of and per- 
mit them to spoil. If I were to organize a new fishing 
club, it would be one in which the meml>ers could not, 
under the constitution, bring any trout home from the 
woods to their friends, or for any other purpose. The 
catching of trout to bring home at the end of an outing 
is responsible for the waste of more trout than is some- 
times charged to a pot-fisherman. Take your friends to 
the forests and feed them trout fresh from the water, and 
they \yill never after thank you to bring any home. If 
the friends at home wish fresh fish go to the market and 
buy some sea fish, but do not pay them the poor com- 
pHment of taking to them half-spoiled trout that you 
would not eat yourself. Over and over have I been 
astounded to find that men who posed as sportsmen would 
catch trout where they were plentiful and leave them in 
their camp to rot. This has been done in waters far from 
transportation lines or the fish might have been sent to 
friends. In Canada several years ago some men were in 
camp near me, and one morning I saw them break camp 
and disappear in their canoes, with guides and camp out- 
fit. During the day a friend who was fishing with me 
had occasion to pass the site of their camp and called 
to me to join him. and there festooned on a rude frame 
were trout enough to feed a dozen men several days, 
hung up apparently to be photographed. Then and. there 
I resolved that some fishermen were princes beside some 
men who called themselves sportsmen, and from that day 
to this I have been very careful when writing about pot- 
fishermen for fear I might do them an injustice. On 
previous occasions I have aired my opinion that the 
camera was an engine destructive of fish and injurious 
to fishing, and I am more and more convinced of its 
destructive influences, for if big catches of fish could not 
be hung up and photographed in remote camps there 
would be less temptation to kill the fish and display them. 
If club members and their guests do this sort of thing on 
a club preserve, I think that is the place to inaugurate 
reforms before the case of the pot-fisher in public water 
is considered, for I confess my respect for the pot-fisher 
is increasing. 
This is a good place for a personal explanation. A few 
years ago the newspapers stated that Mr. Wm. L. Rath- 
bone and I killed at the Triton Club, in Canada, twenty- 
five trout weighing 10V/2 pounds. Not long after this 
was printed a friend wrote to me saying he was sur- 
prised that I should be a party to such slaughter, as I 
had always advocated moderation in trout fishing. I 
wrote him a full account of catching the fish, and he 
replied that he had been poking fun at me in his first 
letter. Several times since, that particular catch has been 
referred to, and other friends have thought they were 
— ha-viag-Bome. fun-at-xny expense. The newspapers did not 
tell all the facts in regard to that catch, for together in 
eight days we caught with a fly thirty-five trout weighing 
1173^ pounds, and killed thirty-four of them, and twenty- 
five of them did weigh 101J/2 pounds. We had four guides 
in camp with us, so there were six mouths to feed, and 
we had lost our pork and had very little bacon, and was 
obliged to live on trout, for each of three meals per 
day for eight days. With heads, bones and viscera o£ 
the fish removed, we may have had 10 pounds of fishi 
flesh per day for six men. We caught the trout fresh 
for each meal, and when we had enough for a meal we 
ceased to fish. We did return many small fish to the 
water alive, but we fished entirely for large trout, except 
on one day, we were glad to get anything that would 
rise, for it was a pound hog case. All the trout were 
eaten except one, and that had been taken from camp for 
our luncheon on a portage. A guide put it in the bushes 
as we carried around a fall in the river, and at the 
luncheon hour we had no fish, and made the meal of tea, 
marmalade and tobacco. 
Shrimps in Hatching Troughs. 
The last issue of the London Fishing Gazette, just re- 
ceived, has a reprint from a German newspaper, which 
is extremely interesting to those engaged in hatching 
fish eggs in trays or boxes, or on gravel in troughs, and 
here and now I v/ish to thank my friend Marstbn for 
translating and printing it: 
"It may seem strange to make use of the fresh-water 
shrimp in the hatching tray; but it is done. For thfee 
years past they have helped me, and I would not like to be 
without them in future. Formerly, if one of these little 
animals was discovered among the eggs, he was hunted 
down remorselessly under the mistaken idea that he ate 
the eggs. But gradually it dawned on me that the 
shrimps do not attack healthy eggs at all, while, on the 
other hand, they do eat the dead ones. Now thousands of 
shrimps swarm in my egg trays, and when a dead egg 
appears, nine or ten shrimps settle round it, and in a 
very short time only the empty shell remains. But yet 
another and much more important service is rendered by 
the shrimps. Every fish breeder knows how sensitive 
the eggs are before tlie appearance of the embryo, and how 
carefully the uneyed ova must be protected from shocks 
of any kind and rough handling; and that further, even 
with the risk of killing some eggs, it is necessary to 
wash the eggs to get rid of slime deposits. In a hatchery 
tray containing a number of shrimps among the eggs, 
washing or rinsing them is unnecessary. The little 
crustaceans work about continually among the eggs, which 
are thus kept in continual, but hardly noticeable, motion, 
so that no slime deposit can take place. 
"Since Nov. 10 I have had eggs in my hatchery trays. 
In one tray I have about a thousand fresh-water shrimps ; 
in another, none. In the latter I have had to clean the 
eggs of slime at different times, losing some in conse- 
quence. In the tray containing the shrimps the eggs have 
required no attention, and they are as clean and fresh as 
when first spawned. 
"It also seems to me that the gentle motion communi- 
cated to the eggs by the shrimps working about among 
them exerts a favorable influence on their development. It 
must not be supposed that I am printing this as a new 
discovery. * * * All the same, I have not seen any- 
thing in print on this point. In the spring when the young 
brook hatch out, the shrimps, which have bred consider- 
ably, are turned out with them into the rearing ponds as 
food." 
The writer of the quoted article, Herr Schumacher- 
Kruft, suggests that shrimps may exercise a favorable 
influence over fish eggs deposited naturally in wild waters 
by eating dead eggs, and preventing mould growth, etc., 
but, as he says, these suggestions are mere suppositions 
and may be valueless. The introduction of shrimps into 
hatching troughs is, I believe, a new idea, at least I never 
heard of it before, and I spend a good part of my life in 
a field where it would have come under my eye had any- 
thing been printed on the subject. The German fisheries 
paper in which the article first appeared comments upon 
it thus: "Our correspondent's original idea of putting 
shrimp in the egg trays with the eggs is in any case well 
worthy of further trial, especially as high authorities have 
advised against the use of ordinary filtering apparatus 
for purifying water used for hatching eggs." 
The eggs referred to in this article are trout eggs, but 
what is said will apply to all eggs of the salmon family. 
That shrimps are scavengers we all know, and I believe 
that the discovery of the German fish breeder is of con- 
siderable value. Some of our fish breeders on this side 
may read this and pass it by, for it is hard to get out of a 
rut if the rut is very deep and well worn, but there are 
enough of the progressive sort to give the shrimps a trial 
in the hatching boxes, and the turning out of the shrimps 
with the fry into the rearing boxes is a most commend- 
able move if it proves that they in no wise do injury to 
the fry, and fry boxes require scavaging quite as much 
as the hatching trays, if not more, for the fry will not eat 
all the prepared food given to them, and it lodges in the 
rearing boxes, and they have to be cleaned to insure the 
health of the fry. At our breeding establishment that I 
visited last year the owner, for it was a private enterprise, 
was a stickler for clean i-earing boxes, and once each 
day the boxes were scraped, as I thought to the injury of 
the fry, and when I suggested this to the owner, he said : 
"Quite likely, but those that escape will have clean boxes 
to live in." Here is a great field for the shrimp after 
serving time in the hatching house, and the increase of 
the shrimp tribe will furnish food for the trout. Food 
and plenty of it is what makes big, strong trout, and in 
the paper from which I have already quoted, is a. state- 
ment that some rainbow trout which weighed about ^ 
pound each in the spring of 1890, and were fed on 
specially rich food, weighed this winter on an average, 2 
pounds each. A, N, Cheney. 
Take inventory of the good things in this issue of 
Forest and Stream. Recall what a fund was given 
last week. Count on what is to come next week 
Was there ever in all the world a more abundant 
WMkly store of Bportsniea'^ reading? 
