ISO 
FOREST ~ STREAM. 
[Feb, 15, 1002, 
were called upon to furnish for the Pan-American ex- 
hibit from Niagara county a specimen catch of our brown 
trout, which was done by a few of the active members of 
this club, and in return for our efforts Mr. Conway, the 
gentleman in charge of the Government exhibit, gave us 
all the trout fry hatched at the Pan-American, or nearly 
so, amounting to some 90,000, which we had by going 
after them. Some five different shipments were brought 
here by different members and getting them here safely, 
and the writer many times performed this duty, and they 
were all transported and planted without scarcely a loss 
of a single trout. 
This club in 1899 planted 27,600 lake trout in the fol- 
lowing places : 
At* Youngstown 10,000 
At Wilson 3,600 
At Olcott... ■ • 14,000. 
27,fi00 
1809. Distribution of pike-perch : 
In Eighteen-Mile Creek at Olcott 2,500,000 
In Tonawanda Creek at Pendleton 25,000 
2,525,000 
1899. Distribution of whitefish : 
At Wilson 1,800,000 
At Wilson 2,500,000 
At Olcott 1,875,000 
At Olcott . 3,000,000 
9,175,000 
As shown by this report, the total catch of the net 
fishermen of this county alone in the waters of Niagara 
county was 540,712 fish, valued at $28,773, while a large 
amount of fish must have been caught by Canadian fisher- 
men in American waters of this county but do not find 
their catch and value in this report. 
This brings us to what was done in the brown trout 
line in the past two years, and especially last season, when 
so much was done of benefit to the club. This report 
shows that in 1899 the club received -through its mem- 
bers 10,000 fingerling brown trout, and were placed at 
various points in the county streams. 
On June 10, 1901, we received from the State Fish Com- 
mission 2,000 rainbow trout; July to, 1.500 California 
trout from State Commission; July 20. 2,000 brown trout 
from State Commission ; July 22, 2,000 brown trout from 
State Commission, and on Oct. 2 we received 2,500 brown 
trout from the Commission, thus making a total of 20,000 
trout fingerling which have been planted in Niagara coun- 
ty, and in a very few years we shall have as good trout 
fishing in our own county as can be found in almost any 
country where trout streams are more numerous and 
trout more plenty. 
This club also received this past season of trout fry 
140,000, as follows: 
From U. S. Fish Commission: 
May l . Brown trout fry 80.000 
From Pan-American: 
Tuly 20 Brown trout fry 30,0011 
July 20 Rainbow trout frv 20,000 
tuly 28 Grayling fry ; : 20,000 
'Aug. 27 '...Black-spotted trout fry 10,000 
making a total last season of 140,000. all of which were 
taken care of by the club, and will be transplanted the 
coming season. The readers of this report will notice 
that a great deal of hard work has been done to get and 
care for this vast amount of game fish in one season, and 
you will note the different varieties of trout we have — 
the rainbow, the brown, the black-spotted, the California 
and the grayling, all very game fish, and will afford good 
sport to the anglers. 
Fish and Fishing. 
Trout on Ice* 
It is against the law to take the speckled or brook trout 
(Salvelinus fontinalis) -through the ice in Canada, for the 
close season lasts from Sept. 30 to May 1. Nobody, how- 
ever, is compelled to starve in the woods if he can obtain 
the necessary means of subsistence, and hence it some- 
times happens that trout arc taken through the ice in the 
Province of Quebec by hunting parties who have unex- 
pectedly run short of provisions. One of these parties 
recently returned to town from the Lake St. John coun- 
try with a remarkable fish story. Having failed to ob- 
tain game and having run short of pork, they made a 
hole in the ice of a lake and fished for trout. The fish 
came to the bait, but would not swallow the hook. They 
adroitly removed the bait and left the hook bare. The 
fishers tried to secure the trout by striking more promptly 
and jerking the line with the hook attached from the 
fishing hole. The story told is that a three-pound trout, 
in his dart after the disappearing bait, leaped through the 
opening in the ice and landed upon the frozen covering of 
the lake. 
As a matter of fact, trout are not quite so easily taken 
through the ice as is usually supposed. Complaints hav- 
ing reached me that lumbermen were taking quantities of 
them from certain preserved waters in this Province upon 
which they were operating, I made careful inquiry into 
the circumstances, and found that although considerable 
fishing was being done through the ice of certain lakes 
which were known to contain fontinalis, among other 
kinds of fish, scarcely any of the speckled trout were 
caught. The fish that take bait most greedily in these 
latitudes, under the ice, are the pike-perch, locally known 
as dore, and the namaycush, or large gray trout of the 
Great Lakes. The Montagnais Indians throw a blanket 
over both themselves and the hole in the ice through 
which they fish, and often in the course of half an hour 
will catch half a dozen large pike-perch or wall-eyed 
pike. 
New Brunswick Salmon Rivers. 
Since referring to the approaching auction sale of the 
New Brunswick salmon fishing privileges, I have looked 
into the form of lease employed by the Government of that 
Province. The Government leases, to the highest bidder, 
the lands alongside the banks of the streams "for the 
sole purpose of conveying the fishing rights pertaining 
thereto." Only surface fly-fishing is permitted to the 
lessees, who must bind themselves to give free passage 
over their land to those engaged in lumbering operations, 
(uid, a general right of way along and upon the nym or 
streams leased, for logs, lumber, boats and vessels of all 
kinds. One of the most important clauses in the form of 
lease is that which binds the lessee to keep and maintain, 
at- his own charge and expense, one or more efficient 
guardians, as the Surveyor-General may direct, and for 
such terms as that official deems necessary, for the 
effectual protection of the fisheries; and another wise pro- 
vision is to the effect that lessees "shall be answerable for 
damages done to the lands and timber growing thereon, or 
on adjoining lands, either by himself or his agents, or 
persons under his control, either from waste or from 
want of sufficient precaution in lighting, watching over 
or extinguishing fires; it being incumbent on the lessee, 
in case of damage caused by fire, to prove that such pre- 
caution had been taken, and that such damage was not 
caused by or through his negligence, or that of his agents 
or employes." 
The New Brunswick leasing system is the means of 
placing about sixty-five guardians upon the best rivers of 
the Province, at a cost to the lessees of about $10,000 a 
year, over and above the rental paid by them to the 
Government. The lessee of the Tobique and its tribu- 
taries alone is required to keep at least fifteen guardians 
PACIFIC ISLAND FISHHOOKS. 
upon the streams from June 1 to Oct. 1 in each year, and 
not less than five guardians from Oct. 1 until the ice forms 
upon the streams. The Government thus secures the 
proper guardianship of its valuable salmon fisheries, both 
commercial and angling, which, but for the surveillance 
of these guardians, would, in a comparatively short time, 
be destroyed by those who derive the greatest benefit from 
the protection thus afforded. 
Speaking of the fact that the settlers who live alongside 
and near these rivers have not, as a rule, been satisfied 
with the privilege of taking only the fish required by 
their families for food, Mr. D. G. Smith, the Fishery 
Commissioner of the Province, hits the nail squarely on 
the head when he says, in a recent report : "They have 
lost sight of the fact that the fish belong to all the people, 
just as the lumber on the Crown lands- does." But this 
is a view of the case that it is extremely difficult to im- 
press upon those who live nearest to the waters in 
question. T. T. D. Chambers. 
Photographing the Salmon Leap. 
As all anglers who fished the New Brunswick rivers 
in 1961 know, the season was the record one for low 
water. Streams which, in other years, could be fished 
from canoes only, .were waded almost anywhere ; fords, 
usually crossed knee deep, could be passed over dry shod 
by stone-to-stone stepping; the noise of waterfalls, whose 
welcoming roar in July and August were aforetime heard 
half a mile, reached scarcely a hundred yards off; the 
accustomed July, August and September runs of salmon 
were compelled, in most cases, to school at tide heads 
awaiting a freshet to enable them to ascend to the spawn- 
ing grounds, while the June run, which had gone up, was 
centralized in the deeper pools because most of their 
accustomed haunts had become mere shallows. In the 
main waters of the St. John. Ristigouche. Northwest 
and Southwest Miramichi and the Nepisguit, there were 
exceptions to these conditions, but the distinctive schools 
whose habitat is the tributaries of those rivers, lay in 
the bigger pools only, listless, and in many of the rivers 
only to school there in large numbers awaiting the rise 
in water on which they might ascend, but which did not 
oonits \10til late \\\ October, and then only to put' the 
streams up to ordinary summer level, 
It was, therefore, on the big rivers alone that salmon 
fishing was at all satisfactory during the season <si 1901. 
and even on them the "low-water pools" only yielded 
good sport. The conditions for nearly the whole season 
took the- fly-taking sportiveness out of the salmon, and 
many an eager angler was driven to desperation by the 
lazy listlessness of the king of game fishes. 
It was, however, to the unusually low condition of 
water in August that I was indebted for opportunity to 
obtain some photographic pictures, which I think should 
interest not only anglers, but all who have the capacity for 
admiring natural phenomena, and to whom the grandeur 
and beauty of our forests and streams, in relation to 
their larger game fishes and animals, would be revela- 
tion. h& " ' - 
Most people are familiar with the toothsome salmon, 
but how few know of its migrations between the river 
liars covered by water of only a few inches' depth a 
hundred miles perhaps in the forest, where it begins its 
existence, and the unknown ocean depths which it after- 
ward seeks as it matures, to return periodically during its 
life to the waters of the same river which hatched it? Or, 
how many of those who are acquainted with this phase 
of salmon life know that the mature fish does not eat 
anything for six consecutive months of each year of its 
periodical migration, and that its fasting time is also 
the most vigorously active of its existence? It is one 
of the wonders of nature that a fish of the salmon's size, 
after fasting for months until its stomach has prac- 
tically become congested from apparent disuse, is- capable 
of projecting itself out of seething water into the air to a 
height equal to seven or eight times its own length. Yet 
the salmon has been known to leap to a vertical height of 
sixteen feet. 
Having said thus much of the low water of the past- 
season in New Brunswick and of the salmon, I come to 
what I have to say in connection with the picture I send 
you. 
Among the New Brunswick rivers I visited last sea- 
son was the Sevogle — the second largest branch of the 
Northwest Miramichi. It runs, for the first nine miles, 
through a section of country of diversified formation, the 
chief features being stunted forest, an occasional bit of 
land suited for agricultural purposes, and frowning ledges 
reaching a sometimes overhanging height of fifty to eighty 
feet. At the end of the nine miles, the upward-bound 
voyageur sees straight in front of him two scarred, rocky 
harriers forming a line at right angles to his course and — 
as if resting in their rugged embrace — a white-fronted, 
red-roofed and verandahed anglers' lodge, with a sloping 
grass plot stretching down about seventy-five feet to the 
water in front of it. The stranger in the canoe naturally 
asks why the river ends so abruptly, but as he emerges 
from between the ledges on either hand he finds himself 
in a deep and beautiful basin which receives two streams, 
known as the North and South branches of the Sevogle, 
which join the main river at perfectly right angles to 
it. on either side, through rocky chasms, and. give to the 
spot the name of'the S'ousre Forks of the Sevogle. 
Looking from a point on the ledge about twenty feet 
above this basin at the Forks one day in August last, I 
counted in the pool below twenty-six full-grown salmon 
and scores of grilse, but so low and clear was the water 
that I was able- to lure but one salmon and one grilse 
with the fly in two days' fishing. This pool is only 200 
feet from the camp or lodge— a picture of which, taken 
from a point within a few feet of the river bank, I send 
you. -You will observe that the guardian, George Eastey, 
js proudly holding up the salmon 'just killed "to bring 
him into the picture." 
About 500 yards above the Square Forks there arc 
two ideal salmon pools, 'with a fall of three feet between 
them. All the water of the river drops a little over nine 
feet perpendicularly into the upper pool, into a basin 
which is more than twenty-five feet deep under the falls. 
When the water is at normal summer height, the salmon 
and grilse leap from the basin at the foot of the big 
fall, and if they have come out of the foamy depths below 
in the right, alignment for the top of the falls, and there 
strike .the unbroken water rightly with their powerful 
tails, they successfully make the ascent. Otherwise, they 
miss and fall back, sometimes turning somersaults in 
doing so, and often striking the rocks on the sides of the 
fall in their descent. 
This fall was reduced to less than one-half of its ordi- 
nary width, and perhaps a fifth of its normal summer 
volume in August and September last. It was therefore 
broken much nearer the brink than usual, so that neither 
salmon or grilse succeeded in surmounting it for two 
months. The two pools below, like that at the camp, were 
full of these fish, which were constantly moving abput. 
from one to the other pool, and going up and attempting 
to leaj) the nine-foot fall. I timed the leaps of salmon and 
grilse there one afternoon, and thirty-three were made, 
in forty-five minutes, and not one of them was successful. I 
resolved to get a picture of the salmon leap if possible, 
so I made a second visit — in September — taking with, me 
a 5 by 7 camera and sixteen quick plates. With the aid 
of Guardian Eastey, I made an 18- foot long raft of three 
flatted cedar logs by nailing broad pieces of board across 
them, and on this I set up my camera on its tripod. 
After getting the "rig" fastened about 20 feet from the 
face of the falls, with more than 20 feet of water under 
me. I focussed on the falls, and. with my_ finger on the 
button, which was set like a hair trigger for quick. work, 
I did "my shooting" as each fish essayed the leap. 
After using nine or ten of my plates during two" after- 
noons' sessions, while the guardian sat on the ledge and 
made sundry references to Job and his patience, I felt that 
I had been successful. On developing the results in a 
dark room, I found that I had done Well— some plates 
were spoiled, some of the fish were out of focus,, but on the 
whole I was satisfied. 
I send you one of these photos.. It is .of a salmon which, 
having struck the water near the top of the . falls, the 
wrong way, was tumbled. over and caught by the' camera 
in its descent. ' . " ' 
Perhaps the subject will be of sufficient interest to 
justify you in reproducing the picture, which I know, is 
of a class not easily obtainable, and also its story as I have 
written it. D,. 0. Smith 
Chatham, INew Bnmswiijk, |at\ T 
