352 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
s» 190a 
CHICAGO AND THE WEST» 
Bass Fishing Has Begun. 
Chicago, 111., April 28.— The early bass fishing for this 
section has been inider way for the past ten clays, and 
within the past week some very good takes have been 
reported, most of them the products of trips made at the 
end of last week, the fishermen returning to the city on 
last Monday and Tuesday. As has been earlier mentioned 
in these columns, the little, circumscribed body of water 
known as Cedar Lake, Ind., the Cedar Lake which is 
situated on the Monon Railroad, is among the very earliest 
bass waters of this vicinity. The first trips, or at least the 
first successful trips, made by Chicago anglers are usually 
to Cedar Lake. It is a peculiarity of this water that the 
bass spawn there early and then quickly retire to deep 
water, where they ofi:er almost no sport at all for the re- 
mainder of the summer. Of course, this is spawn-bed 
fishing, and as such is tiot to be commended. The In- 
diana law, however, protects the streams during the 
spawning season, but leaves the lakes open for hook and 
line fishing. Mr. C. E. Binyon, who lives at Cedar Lake, 
on last Monday killed thirty nice bass. At about the 
same time Messrs. Fred Gardner and Peet, of the Chicago 
Fly-Casting Club, who fished from the same boat, took 
twenty-five bass. Mr. N. E. Soper and his wife, fishmg 
together, also took twenty-five bass. Mr. H. N. Van 
Hoeser is another Chicago angler to make nice takes of 
bass at Cedar Lake, and Mr. H. English, of Von Len- 
gerke & Antoine, had very good sport there. In all, some 
150 to 200 good bass were killed on last Sunday and 
Monday at Cedar Lake; certainly a very good showing for 
so small and bard-fished a water. This early fishing does 
not last very long, and bv June Cedar Lake will not be so 
useful to the bait-caster. The catches above mentioned 
were taken casting bait. , 
Mr. Perce, of the Chicago Fly-Casting Club, made his ; 
first trip last week over into the Lower Peninsula of 
Michigan, and fished the Grand River. He had very good 
luck with pickerel and bass. 
The above mentioned waters are of about the same lati- 
tude as that of Chicago, or a little lower. Fifty miles 
to the north of Chicago the run of bass began but httle 
later ; and for the past week there have been many fishers 
out along the Fox Lake Chain at such points as Long 
Lake. Grass Lake. Channel Lake. Deep Lake, etc. A 
week ago Mr. E. S. Graham, of this city, caught twelve 
nice bass at Long Lake. This is the lake just to the south 
of Fox Lake which emnties into Fox Lake by way of 
Squaw Creek. Mr. J. Maloney within the past week 
came back with twenty-two good bass taken in the Fox 
Lake Chain. His largest fish weighed 4 pounds. 
Illinois Fish Law Broken, 
If State Warden Loveday should send a deputy up to 
the Fox Lake region he would this week probably be able 
to take a number of violators of our fish laws. This 
cluster of lakes is just south of the Wisconsin line, and it 
forms one of the most convenient and most popular play- 
grounds for the swarming population of Chicago. Some 
of our citizens have summer places on lakes in that 
neighborhood. Among these is Mr. S. E. Story, who has 
a place on Long Lake, in Lake county, Illinois. Mr. Story 
tells me this morning that he has word from Mr. W. G. 
Witherell, a justice of the peace at Windmere, Lake 
county, Illinois, which says that hundreds of bass have 
this spring been killed on the spawning beds by persons 
using guns, spears and pitchforks. This carries the in- 
dustry of the early bait-catcher to a still greater extreme, 
and it is illegal as well as destructive. One man at Long 
Lake shot forty bass on the spawning beds ong day this 
past week, and many others have been busy m the same 
manner. Mr. Witherell would be only too glad to try any 
case brought before him., but tlie neighbors all hold back, 
and as yet no complaint has been filed and no testimony 
secured which would insure a conviction. It is confidently 
stated by my informant that this destruction of bass has 
been going on in many different waters of the Fox Lake 
Chain. By the time this shall have reached print, the 
main run of the bass in the shallow water will perhaps 
have been over ; but I hope that before that time we shall 
have been able to do something to stop this sort of thing, 
which is, of course, ruinous to the bass fishing in the 
proper season. 
The Tfoat Season. 
It is timely now for our anglers to turn their attention 
to the trout season, which is at hand. The trout spawn in 
the fall, and for some curious reason but few anglers care 
to pursue trout upon their spawning beds. There is no 
wrong in catching a brook trout in the spring, and it is 
pretty hard to exterminate that fish by legitimate fly- 
fishing. The past week has been one of soft, warm 
weather, and the flies, gnats and insects begin to fill the 
air, which means that the trout will now rise to the fly. 
Som.e few good baskets of trout have alreday been made, 
but the general exodus for trout has not yet begun. 
Mr. John D. McLeod, of the Wisconsin Telephone 
Company, Milwaukee, Wis., has had about the best sport 
of which I hear at this date. Mr. McLeod is so fortunate 
as to own a private stream near Waupaca, Wis., and last 
week in two days he killed 150 fine trout to his own rod 
and on the fly. There are a number of nice little trout 
streams in the Waupaca region, lying ten to fifteen miles 
out of the town. Mr. McLeod's stream is a meadow 
water, and all the casting is done from the bank, without 
any wading. The trout are said to be abundant in this 
water, and' to offer very nice sport indeed. 
I hear from yet further north in Wisconsin, points near 
Merrill, that the trout are beginning to rise; though the 
catches of which I hear were made on bait and not on 
the flv. 
Mr' jf. D. Hawks, President of the Detroit & Mackmac 
■Railroad. Oetrni!, M'ch.. writes me this week that the 
annual hegira of the Turtle Lake Club will take place as 
scheduled earlier in these columns, the party leaving De- 
troit on the evening of April 29. Mr. Hawks says that 
some of the nromi^er? have flunked at the la<^t moment, 
as i= alwavs the ca^e with trout fishermen or bi'-d shooters, 
but he "States that he will go. and some of his friend<?, and 
wi=hp'= tn know if I am to be on hand .sure. Unless I 
.should fall dead in the mpantime f will b° with him. and 
we shall see what the waters of Thunder River can db by 
the way of medicine for people who are trout hungry and 
needful of a day outdoors. 
Several members of the Gaylord Club have gone up this 
week for their early trout fishing. Mr, Cowles, of the 
Chicago Tribune, is going to the Gaylord Club, probably 
to-day. Mr. William Hollabird has already gone up, and 
so has Mr. W. M. Whitehead, both of this city. The tall 
and huskv president of the club, Mr. F. M. Stephenson, 
of Menominee, Mich., is not yet back from old Mexico, 
and the season at Gaylord Club cannot be officially opened 
until he arrives. 
The Carp Nuisance. 
There was never so noticeable in this vicinity as there is 
this spring the growing nuisance of the German carp. 
We are apathetic about this matter, jtist as Americans are 
about everything, leaving most things to take care of them- 
selves and trusting to Providence to straighten it all out 
in some mysterious fashion. It seems difficult for any 
clear-ej^ed sportsman to agree with our Fish Commission 
in the'ir opinion regardmg this imported monstrosity. 
There is every likelhood that this fish will drive out our 
native game fi"shes from the waters all over the West. It 
is quite within' bounds to say that the carp have nearly 
ruined the Kankakee River as a fi.shing water; and many 
of us can personally testify that few better bass waters 
than the Kankakee ever lay out of doors. All last sum- 
mer the Kankakee, naturally a clear stream, was muddy 
and disturbed by this hog-like, so-called fish. This spring 
they are out all over the marsh in still greater numbers. 
The snipe shooters who have tramped the marshes for the 
last week say that they could have killed perhaps a 
dozen snipe in a day, but could easily have killed a hun- 
dred carp a day if they had cared to do so. These beasts 
run out in every little thread of water until their backs 
stick out into the air, and they root and splash and mess 
about until the whole marsh seems to be alive with them. 
I have spoken of the illegal killing of game fish in the 
Fox Lake Chain this spring, yet I believe that the sports- 
men of Illinois would hail with joy a law which would 
permit the killing of the German carp with gun. spear, 
club, brickbat or anything else. When they are running 
out on the marsh they migh offer a little sport to a man 
with a spear or a bow and arrow. After the spring run 
is over and the marsh has dried up. the carp is a nuisance, 
nothing more nor less. He is not fit to eat. He may be fit 
to sell, but he is not fit to eat; and we may successfully 
challenge Dr. Bartlett or President Nat Cohen of the Fish 
Commission to refute this as.'^ertion. It may perhaps be 
possible to concoct a sauce which will di=guise completely 
the flavor of the carp, but we do not believe that Dr. Bart- 
lett or his colleagues have planted any such sauce along 
with the carp. The surrender of our waters to this foreign 
hog is as sad a mistake as the planting of the English 
sparrow, and the consequences are apt to be even more far- 
reaching and disastrous. The=e fish are simply eating up 
the marshes all along the Kankakee River, the Fox River 
and Fox Lake Chain. They are disgusting creatures, and 
so far as any one has been able to discover, are worse than 
AVorthless to any one. The natives of the Kankakee River 
will not eat them. They will eat skunks, muskrats and 
that sort of thing, but they draw the line at carp; and 
if you want tojnsult a regular river dweller, you just tell 
him that he eats carp. Then you will have to either fight 
or run. It is the same way as to us and the carp. We 
will either have to fight or run, for he cheerfully awnoances 
by his multifold presence that he has come to stay. 
It seems that the carp is a condition and not a theory 
far un into Wisconsin, as well as Indiana and Illinois. 
The Representative, of Fox Lake, Wis., has the following 
to say : 
"The carp have been running up from the pond the 
oast week, and the farmers have been having a great 
time spearing them. The fish are so plenty at times that 
it is no , trick at all to get a wheat bag full in a few 
minutes, and a whole Avagon box full of them is a com- 
mon sight. They are mostly caught down by the old dam. 
The farmers salt them dowm and thev say they make a 
very good table fish that way. Some of them feed them to 
their "hogs. The carp arc very plenty, and there never 
seems to be any let-up in the supply, no matter how many 
are taken out. Thev are a coarse-grained fish, fat and oily 
and not very palatable fresh." 
Again, the same paper comments on carp spearing as 
follows: "It would have done your eves good to see the 
clergvman down spearing earn the other day. He was 
as interested as any of the farmer-; and proved to be a 
mighty handy man with the snear, frequently nailing his 
fish clear across the creek." While one cannot encourage 
the breaking of any game or fish law, it i'^ to be regretted 
that it is not legal all over the Linited States to shoot a 
carp on sight, upon the ground that he is detected m the 
act of committing a felony. 
Seiners Caught. 
Deputy Warden Sites last week arrested and convicted 
five fishermen for illegal use of seines on the Salt Fork. 
Hearing that illegal fishing is going on at Meredosia, he 
has gone to that point 
i Grayling, 
We still hear occasional reports which go to prove the 
assertion that the grayling is not altogether extinct in 
the Lower Peninsula of Michigan. Mr. John S. Mott. of 
Michigan City, Ind., tells me that last summer he made a 
trip in the Au Sable waters, going to a stream some forty 
miles from Roscommon, Mich., and during his trip he 
caught twelve grayling. He says there are no little 
grayling left, and he hardly took one under a foot in 
length, som'e 2 inches longer than that- As to the future 
of the fish, he does not express much hope, but he thinks 
that one might, if luck-j', be able to get a grayling this 
summer in some of the Au Sable streams, or perhaps 
some of the upper waters of the Big Manistee, near 
Kalkaska. 
By the way, Mr. Mott is going to extend his wide and 
diversified travels into the Rocky Mountain region this 
coming fall. He will probably go to Mr. William Wells' 
place, in Uinta cotmty, Wvo.. taking his ^on with him, 
starting about Sent. i. Mr. Mott is a fisherman and a 
canoeist, and now he wishes to get a head or two of big 
crame, and incid-^ntally to see the white-topned Rockies. f 
desrest of all ^i^hts to the American sportsman. j-i 
Mr. W. S. Phillips— El Comanche— is apparfently going| 
to be unable to fulfil! our earlier contract to tackle the bass 
of Westville, Ind., this summer. He is just in from . 
Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi, and leaves again to- j 
day for Mississippi and .A.labama ; yet it would seem to 1 
be hard fortune if he did not find some fishing in his ] 
travels in those fishful localities. 
Chicago Fly-Casting Club. 
The Chicago Fly-Casting Club puts out in compact and 
tasty form the following card, announcing the programme ■ 
for the coming summer: 
"For the summer of 1900 there will be two club con- 
tests, to be held at the North Lagoon in Garfield Park, 
upon the following Saturday afternoons : July 14, Aug. 4. , 
"In addition there will be regular practice days as fol- 
lows: May 19, June 3, June 16, June 30. July 28, Aug. ir. ■ 
"On all these days the. club tackle will be on the grounds 
for the use of any members, an instructor to assist those 
wishing same. 
"A tournament open to the world will be held under 
the auspices of this c'ub on Uieir grounds on Friday and 
Saturday, Aug. 17 and 18. 
"E. R. Letterman, Captain." 
From Egypt. 
Mr. Warren Powel lives at Taylorville, Ill.,_ which is in I 
Egypt. This fact Mr. Powel indignantly denies, but says 
that Egypt is always just over in the next county, no 
matter where you go in Illinois. Egypt is the term 'of de- . 
scription given to the portion of this State where corn 
grows exceedingly tall, and everybody takes a drink of 
whisky before breakfast — though come to think of it, I 
don't believe Mr. Powel does that. Anyway, Mr. Powel 
writes me and begs with tears in his eyes that I shall not 
write to him again unless I use a typewriter. I take his ; 
own letter to mean that the bass fishing is good, and that 
the .snipe and plover were not all gone when he wrote, and 
that the quail and chicken crop nromises very well. He j 
says that two gentlemen — Messrs. C. E. Smith and J. W. 
Parrish — on last Thursday caught thirty nice bass at 
Torrence's Dam on the South Fork. Later in the summer 
the fishing on the Sangamon for channel catfish is very 
good. He suggests I come down again, and try catfishing 
with him. to nass the time between now and the quail 
season. I wish I could. When I get rich I am going to ' 
fish for catfish or something all the time I am not shooting 
quail or something. Perhaps this may be next year. ■ 
Mr. Powel reports the stern-wheel duck doing very 
well at the old stand, and he has three more mallards 
added to his flock of live decoys. E. Hough. 
300 BoYCE Building, Chicago, 111. 
Penn^v Ivania Ft rea ms. 
Sayke, Pa. — The brook trout season 'has riot developed 
overflowing creels thus far. In northern = Pennsylvania 
and southern New York the streams are. as a rule high ' 
and roily and not at all to the liking of experienced trout 
anglers. 1 
The best catch I have he'drd reported comes from a j 
party in Waverly, N. Y., who spent one day last week ate 
Harford iVIills, on the Southern Central branch of the 
Lehigh Valley R.R. system, and canie.home with twenty-, 
three trout of good size. " 
Geo. Crispin, of Wav.erly, went to the vicinity of Mon-i 
roeton. Pa., one day this week, and after the hardest kind ' 
of fishing succeeded in taking eleven small trout. Cris-' 
pin went to Towanda and then took a ten-mile drive over . 
the country due west. The stream fished is fairly lost ' 
under and within a riotous tangle of criss-crossing logs, , 
snarled vines and sprawling vegetation of every sort. The, 
angling is best done with a rather heavy rod and a 6 or 1 
8 inch length of line. Crispin found snow and ice still 
plentiful in the _stream, but prophesies that a little later 
on some fine trout will be taken from this and a number 
of neighboring streams. He also brings information 
which may not possibly belong to the angling department, ' 
but which, nevertheless, will be pleasant news to a good , 
many angling readers. He avows this particular section . 
of country, reaching out twelve or fifteen miles west of . 
Towanda, to be heavily stocked with ruffed grouse, rab- 
bits and hares. Should the nesting season prove favor- 
able there should be some glorious grouse shooting in ■ 
that neck of timber next fall. ' 
Just prior to his visit there a wild cat that weighed 55) 
pounds was shot by a farmer. The cat was treed near to 
the house by the farmer's dog, and the first shot failing, 
to kill the feline, it promptly sprang from the tree upon^ 
the back of the dog. Then ensued a heart-breaking race 
for the farm house, and before the cat was dispatched it' 
had given the dog an unmerciful drubbing and cutting 
up. Either the weight of the cat as given by the party 
who shot it is erroneous or it is a phenomenally large 
specimen, if, indeed, it is not a record breaker. 
M. Chill. 
Spruce Cabin Inn, Canadensis, April 25. — ^Notwith- ' 
standing the inclemency of the weather— high winds, rains, 
and all that such discomforts afford — the catches tliis sea- 
son apparently have been more than encouraging to the" 
lovers of pursuit of the gamy trout. , 
All the regular visitors are here this season, and I n6-t 
ticed as I wended my way along several strangers whO' 
have been attracted here in one way and another enjoy- 
ing the comradeship which exists only among anglers and 
other sportsmen and nature lovers. 
Whipping Broadheads Creek up from the Middle 
F3ranch and Levis, I ran across N. F, Hoggson and 
lames Brite, prominent New York men, and genial Dr. 
W, E. Halsey and Kit. Clark.e, perhaps among the most 
prominent and joll;, -.vho come here with creels full and' 
faces agleam with the pleasure and excitement attending" 
a morning's successful catch. W. Granville Smith, so 
well known in art circles; Eugene Smith, of the D., L., 
& W.; W. P. Ketcham, of New York, and George W.' 
Shaw, a shining light in Philadelphia manufacturing cir- 
cles, who told me he had been fishing here for over 
twenty-five years, all returning to the good cheer and hos- 
pitality which mine hosts Price know how to provide so 
, well. Then a smoke after dinner and ad iournment to our 
respective rooms ended a very enjoyable day in thesef 
parts. 
Tlie list df fishermen here includes: From New York— ., 
t 
