B12 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
[Dec. 29, 1900. 
The Pliikdclpliia Game Market. 
Philadelphia, Pa., Dec. w.— Editor Forest and 
Stream ; I read in your paper on Dec. 8 of the banquet at 
Pittsburg, when 1,200 quail were served to the guests. In 
Philadelphia vou can see bunches of quail and pheasants 
lianging out, and they are sold to all who may have the 
price. Men make a business of going from house to 
house with strings of these birds for sale. They are 
served at all first-class restaurants in this city. It would 
seem that there was a good field for a good game warden 
to do some good work if we had such a thing in Penn- 
sylvania. — — ^" ^" ^' 
Notice. 
All communications intended for Forest and Stream should 
always be addressed to the Forest and Stream Publishing Co., and 
not to any individual connected with the paper. 
Proprietors of fishing resorts will find it profitable to advertise 
them in Forest and Stream. 
ANGLING NOTES. 
r- ______ 
Black Bass Fry and Yellow Perch. 
Quite unexpectedly this evening I came across a 
meriiorandum made quite a number of years ago relating 
to what I then believed to be an original observation 
which answers a question tliat is often asked now. as it 
was then. 
Spec al Game Protector William H. Burnett was watch- 
ing some spawning beds of black bass in Lake George, 
N. Y., to determine something about the time that the 
parent fish guarded the bass fry after they were hatched. 
One bed had a very large bass that he was particularly 
interested in, and on one of his visits he found that the 
old bass had disappeared, but by leaning over the side 
of his boat and looking into the clear water he discovered 
that some of the fry. as he supposed, still I'ngered on or 
around the bed. Watching closely to make sure that the 
little fish were black bass fry and not something else, he 
.saw a 3'ellow perch dart at one of the little fish, but it 
dodged and escaped. The perch made another dash at the 
same little bass and again the bass escaped, and this was 
repeated several tipies under Burnett's eyes, until he came 
t(j the conclusion that ])lack bass fry when aboitt two 
weeks old were too quick for ilie predacious yellow perch, 
and tliat more of the little black bass escaped destruction 
from them after tlie parent bass left them to scatter than 
was generally supposed. Of course, there are other fisli 
than yellow percli that prey upon young black bass, but 
if they are quick enough to escape the perch they are 
t(uick enough to escape rock bass and other enemies. 
Red Trout. 
Wlien I reached home this evening I found a letter from 
Fish Commissioner Titcomb, of Vermont, in which he 
says: "I have ordered a pair of red trout sent to Prof. 
Garraan, and also a pair sent direct to you. I should 
infer that these trout started from Louisville yesterday 
.(28th). I sliall be interested to hear from you as to the 
condition they arrive in and whether Prof. Garman con- 
firms statements of • others and my own idea that the 
specin-iens sent are the regular aureolus or saibling, and 
found in Sunapee Lake." 
The fish I also found here, and though ihey were ap- 
parently four days on the road, they arrived in much 
tbe best condition of any that have been sent to me, and 
if in tlie morning they will stand the further journey to 
Wellesley, Mass.. I shall send them on to Denton to be 
mounted. I was at first divided in my opinion whether to 
send them to Prof. Garman to give him more specimens 
or to Denton to niount. 
I shall be surprised if the fish are pronounced to be 
Sunapee saibling, for lioth of the fish I have are unlike the 
Sunapee fish that I have seen at Sunapee Lake. First, 
these fish have a very forked tail, much more so than the 
Sunapee saibling of the same size, and the Sunapee fish 
have a milk white border to their fins which is very 
noticeable at breeding time. ("The fins catch the hue of 
the adjacent parts, and pectoral, ventral, anal and lower 
lobe of caudal are marked with a lustrous white band." — 
Quackenbos.) 
This milk white band is entirely lacking in one of the 
fish sent to me, and in the other it does not show in a 
marked manner. To me the very forked tail is sufficient 
to throw grave doubts on the fish being a Sunapee saibling. 
Quackenbos says of the Sunapee fish, "A square or slight- 
ly emarginate tail." The coloring generally of the Canada 
fish is much like the coloring of the Sunapee saibling, but 
the body of the Canadian fish is more slender than the 
New Hampshire saibling. I mentioned previously that 
Mr. Burhans. who saw and caught the red trout in 
Canada, told me that some of the fish had forked tails and 
.some had square tails. All that have been sent to me, even 
the specimens in the worst condition, had forked, very 
pronouncedly forked, tails. I shall have another look at 
these fish by daylight before I send them away, but the 
tails will not change over night, and that is one thing 
vvhich seems to preclude the possibility of their being 
Sunapee saibling, but there are other differences to 
I'eeoiicilc besides the deeply notched and square tails. 
Protection and Hotels. 
One of the State game and fish protectors was last week 
on a visit to the Adirondacks. He is a modest man. and 
he did not tell any one that he was a game protector, nor 
did he intimate that he was looking for violators of the 
laws of the State which protect fish and game: but in his 
bag, commonly called a grip, he did have sonte papers, 
ordinary blanks used by game protectors on occasions, 
and on them were prinled words such as Forest. Fish and 
Game Connnission, etc. At one point on the edge of the 
wilderness he learned that a party of sportsmen were in 
camp at a certain place, and he thought he wottld go on 
into the woods as far as this camp and make a social 
and see whut luck th^ members of the p^vty Yf?r§ 
having. He left his bag or grip at the hotel in the settle- 
ment at the edge of the wilderness by mistake and had to 
retrace his steps and get it, and then he went on to make 
his call as he had originally planned. When he made 
his call-— mind, he had not told any one where he was 
going — he found that every member of the party in the 
camp was violating the law, as he looked at it, but the 
members of the party protested that it was a coincidence 
and that certain ingredients which were in evidence, and 
which were necessary to constitute a violation, did not 
belong to the party, and they knew trothing. about whom 
they belonged to or where they came from or how they 
happened to be in their vicinity, and so the modest game 
protector went his way, and the party as one man prob- 
ably said, "It is to laugh." The game protector made an- 
other call at 3 A. M., which means very early in the 
forenoon, and then he found the ingredients tied up in 
camp with chainsj and the members of the party prob- 
ably sighed, "It is to settle," for the game protector 
gathered in the whole bunch, with the ingredients which 
constituted a violation of the law. So far there was 
nothing tmusual about the proceedings, for the men were 
ordinary lawbreakers who had been caught in the ordi- 
nary way of game protectors, ^nd tbe^ would have to go 
SHIP FISH. 
C.iught ill 1899 at Miami, Bay BisCayne, Florida. Length 6fl. llin. 
in the ordinary way of such gentry to the bar of justice to 
receive so much of their deserts as the justice' could ad- 
minister under the statutes made and provided. 
The game protector's second call had been made so early 
that he remained for a time, particularly as one of the 
party announced that he had $200 to fight the officer of 
the law in court, and before his companions convinced him 
it would be better to accept the officer's proposition to 
meet him in court later and plead guiltj^ to the charge 
and settle, the mail w^as brought into camp. Finally the 
$200 man was convinced that bis $200 would simply be 
added to his fine in the end, when he balanced his ac- 
count of expenses of the trip, but; by that time it was 
late and the game protector remained in the camp for 
the night. In the evening* the party passed the time by 
playing pedro, and as it was necessar}' to keep a score 
and paper was not abundant in camp, one of the men took 
a letter from his pocket to keep the score on the blank 
side. On the side opposite to the blank side was a letter 
written by the hotel keeper where the game protector 
left his bag, warning the party to look out for a man who 
was going into the woods, and who the hotel keeper stis- 
pected, to be a new game protector: When the game pro- 
tector told me the story yesterday, I wondered, as he did, 
how the hotel keeper had reason to suspect that the man 
whoMvas paying him for meals and lodgings w-as a game 
protector. I also wondered why the hotel keeper thought 
it necessary to send any warning to any one in the woods 
unless he knew where the party in question passed his 
house that thej^ intended to break the law, and so sent 
his letter hoping it would reach the law breakers before 
^9 ia-W officer, That was not the only party (»| §pons-. 
men — God save the mark! — that had passed his house, and 
perhaps paid him for food and lodgings and things^ and 
did he send warnings to them all? Did he take it for 
granted that all the men who passed his house were law- 
breakers, or did he know that they intended to break the 
law? 
People complain that the State game protectors do not 
discover violators of the game laws in the woods only in 
rare instances compared with the number of violations.' 
It is bad enough that thirty-six men have to cover the 
entire State of New York and wage a war against the 
horde of lawbreakers, but now it is known that our 
hotel keepers at one of the gateways to the woods is an 
accomplice of the law breakers and is in league with 
them against the constituted authorities whose business 
it is to enforce the law which protects fish and game and 
brings money to the hotel keepers when it is enforced, to 
a greater degree than when it is violated. When this 
matter is a court record I expect to add a postscript to 
this note in which I shall not deal in generalties, and will 
give the hotel keeper an advertisement that Forest and 
Stream will not expect him to pay for. 
• A. N. Cheney. 
Black Bass in the Moonlight. 
It may be that after reading this you will remark, dis- 
dainfully, "Humph! simply poaching." I, too, had some 
qualms of conscience over it before I tried the sport. 
In July, on Lake Patagansett here, the small-mouth black 
bass were not willing to connect with any known lure. 
I tried everything with the same result. One night, when 
the moon was almost full and the sky almost cloud- 
less. I thought I would find out if the bass were as fond 
of staying out late as I. In this small lake they do not 
rise readily to a fly at any time, and instances of their 
capture in this way are extremely rare. I rigged up my 
spli. bamboo in the house, putting on a Parmachenee- 
Belle fl.v No, i-o, and wound a spare leader with a 
Montreal of the same si?:e round my hat in case of 
trouble. 
My boat is moored always to a stake so that it can 
be run ashore bj^ rope, and lies within casting distance 
of a big rock where usually old Bronze-back hangs out. 
When I cautio.usly drew the boat ashore, and, sittitTg 
dov/n, again ran it out to the stake, the scene was worth 
sitting up all night to see. The dark patches of shadow- 
cast on the water by the surrounding trees were impene- 
trable to the eye, while all else was liquid silver under the 
moonbeams. The stillness was so solemn that I almost 
ieared to break it. The whirr of the reel in drawing off 
line to m,d<:e the fir.st cast sounded like an alarm clock. 
There's a peculiar enchantment in the moonlight. Care- 
fully, deftly and with some trepidation I made the first 
cast. The leader and fly, already well soaked, went out 
easily .md dropped v/ithout a splash. Purposely I made 
three or four casts away from the place I expected to find 
bass, just to get used to the new scheme. Then, gradu- 
ally working around the boat and lengthening my casts, 
I covered the .sp.ot I wanted. TIjc flv vcmijl^cd Int^^ tlic 
black mass of the shadow, and just as it reached the mar- 
gin of the moonbeam I saw an upheaval of the water — a 
splendid head and shoulders visible for an instant — then 
; he sudden tightening of the line — the instinctive stroke 
of hooking, the involuntary momentary tightening of 
the throat that seems invariably to accompany the first 
gicrious sensation of hooking a big one — -all passed more 
laoidly than it can be told, and the leap and plunge that 
fo'lowed showed that the steel had struck home. A deep 
plunge followed by a rush straight toward the boat kept 
the reel busy taking in line until the bass came close to 
the stern.' Then with a mad straight ahead rush he 
went up the channel — making for the outer part of the 
lake. With all the strain I dared to put on he still kept 
going. I wondered if he ever would stop. I had $0 yards 
of line on the reel, and when at last he slacked up only a 
few turns remained in the barrel. Then with several 
leaps he fought doggedly every inch of the way back. 
He got no .slack whatever, and although lily pads and 
roots fringed the channel on either hand, he could not 
p-et into them. Back he came, until he was almost 
within reach of the net. But not yet. The dusky 
monarch of the lake was game for another such fight. ^ 
And so away he went once more, not quite so far this 
time, though, and as he gradually yielded foot after foot 
of line his strength began to waver. At last, in the clear 
moonlight, he came alongside, and, slipping the net 
quickly under him, I laid him in the boat and took off 
my hat to him. 
I did not weigh him until next morning, when he 
scaled 5^ pounds. A handsome fellow, and as plucky 
as handsome. 
I hooked him at 11.30 P. M. and landed him just at 
midnight. The hook was deeply set away back in his 
mouth — so far that I could just reaich it to extract it 
with my fingers. 
It may have been a iriean thing to do, but there was 
an excitement in it all and a peculiar glamour attending 
the moonlight fishing that one cannot w-ell describe. 
All objects of the surrounding landscape, though famil- 
iar as my own home by day, assume a weird and un- 
canny aspect by night. The uncertainty of knowing 
iust where the stumps and pads may lie in those dark 
masses of shadow put great odds on the fish, and in my 
own mind I begin to think it was a sport of the very 
first water. J. J. D. 
Flies Versus Other Ltires for Nipigon Tfoat^ 
Editor Forest and Stream: 
In a recent number of Forest and Stream I re- 
gretted to find a direct statement to the effect that the 
larger trout in the Nipigon are taken with spoons or 
bait, and only the smaller ones are successfully taken with 
the fly. The following week another writer seemed to 
coincide in this view. During the fishing season there 
may be an average of thirty fishermen on the stream 
daily. About twenty-eight men out of the thiity will 
be "duffers on the Nipigon." I do not say this in a very 
disgraceful way. The twenty-eight men may be lovers 
of nature, delightful companions, potent statesmen, suc- 
cessful business men and all that, but I will ask each §uc- 
^.evS,'ifu\ business tn^^l }\nd each potent ^tateman to sta,^^) 
