72 
FOREST AND STREAM 
[July 26, 1902, 
vantage for this style of fishing. The body of the fly 
can be made much thimier and lighter, and if the hackle 
is not crushed in a book, the fly cocks up and floats much 
better. 
Carry a little bottle of kerosene or a tin pill box of 
vaseline and just touch the wings and legs of the fly, if 
you wish to save yourself labor in drying it. This dodge 
•will, however, ruin the bodies of many flies. I tie floaters 
xvitk quill body usually, and have discovered a quill of 
which I expect great things. I have not tried it yet. 
Hackle flies float very well and are always in the proper 
altitude upon the water. If a soft hackle is tied or wound 
\n front of the cock's hackle, it gives the cf¥ect of wings 
or of a fly just hatching out from the nymphie case. 
No doubt more interest will be taken in entomology, 
and this certainly lends additional inteixst to the art of 
fly-fishing. The flies bred on the trout streams are most 
interesting and beautiful insects, and will some day be 
the subject of a great work fully illustrated in colors. 
The man to undertake it should be an artist as well as 
an entomoiogist. There are some English books 011 this 
subject, but climatic conditions are very different here, 
and !i\y impression is that while we have insects closely 
resembling those found there, we have a greater number 
species, much greater. We have, at least, two early 
browns, for instance, and a host of duns of various 
sizes and shades, which change into spinners of many 
tolors. 
Many stone flies are found, the comrnon Eastern stone 
fly may be seen all through the season when the tem- 
perature is not too high. I have never seen this in great 
quantities, but there is a 5rellow stone fly that hatches 
out in immense numbers on some streams in May. I 
have reason to belicAi-e that this fly, or one like it, is 
found in the West and would like to hear from your 
Western readers on the subject, and, indeed, on that of 
the flics of Western trout streams generally. I think 
that we have many varieties of this species which only 
hatch out at night. One of the stone flies is known lo- 
cally as the "May fly," but we have several true Ephe- 
mera approximating the May fly of Europe. 
I Iiave heard of several American grammarus, but only 
know one well. This rises abundantly in June. 
The Ephemera are probably the most important fam- 
ily, with the stone flies a close second. The case worms 
or caddis, are very abundant of all sizes, with their 
houses of sticks, pebbles, sand and gravel. _ The big 
brown trout take in the big "stick bait," as it is called 
in Western North Carolina and Tennessee, case and all, 
tiie fornier can hardly prove nourishing. One becomes 
very much puzzled as to the life history of many species. 
Even in Europe they are in doubt on many points. The 
Ephemera are probab^^ best understood, as they have 
been more carefully observed. First the egg is dropped 
on the water, sinks to the bottom and finds a lodgment 
among the sand and gravel. In a few weeks it hatches 
into a hungry larva, which feeds voraciously on minute 
organisms or particles of vegetable' matter. Some ob- 
servers say that it changes its shell or covering several 
times as it grows, but this is uncertain. It lives in this 
state from one to two years, then grows wing-cases, 
and is called a nymph. Then, when the temperature of 
the water is suitable and it has passed its allotted time 
as a lower form of life, it swims upward to the surface 
of the stream, splits down the back and appears as an 
imago or dim. Sometimes it takes wings immediately, 
at others it floats jauntily down its native element, until 
its wings dry and gain strength for a flight to the shore, 
where it clings to a leaf or twig. In from three to nine 
days it undergoes anothei' transformation, shedding its 
whole outer covering and becoming a much brighter and 
more beautiful insect. The males may then be seen to- 
ward evening or when the weather is not too warm, 
dancing up and down in small swarms or companies. 
Tbey are in wait for the females which are hidden in 
some leafy retreat, but which fly out from time to time. 
Courtship is not prolonged, and the female soon drops 
her eggs upon the stream, becomes a mere sliell and 
dies. The stone fly drops her eggs in the same way, but 
the larva crawls out upon a ^tone to change its coat; 
then it seems to live under stones and gravel until its 
wings are fully developed, and does not undergo a sec- 
ond transformation. 
There is so much to learn that we are discouraged 
sometimes, but I advise' any one who has the oppor- 
tunity or time to make such studies as he can. If the 
water is shut oft from a race and he turns over the 
stones, he will be astonished at the numbers of larvae of 
all colors and sizes (principally yellow, olive and brown). 
The caddis are very abundant in June. Duns of the 
Ephemera will be seen as early as March on some 
waters, and appear all through the season when the 
weather is sufficiently cool. They seem to be very hardy, 
and the early broods are the largest and darkest in 
color, though some of a dark brown and lead color 
appear later. I have seen large liatclies of small duns 
with light blue and also with orange bodies as late as 
July, the former on pleasant days with cool breezes, and 
the latter on blustery days with gusts of wind and rat- 
tling showers. 
1 could go on for hours with my random and doubt- 
less often inaccurate remarks, but will have mercy upon 
those who have been brave enough to follow me thus 
far. I would be glad to correspond with any who are 
interested in the subject of the flies that feed the trout, 
and means and ways of imitating them successfully, 
I am particularly curious in regard to natural flies 
found in trout waters in the West. Some species seem 
to be quite local in their habitat, while others are com- 
moii to all or nearly all, although you will find some 
large flies on small brooks. As a general rule,_ the big- 
ger the water the larger the flies. Yet, agairij piany 
of the smaller flies will be found on the large streams. 
Now to conclude, tell your brother anglers what inter- 
ests you, .it will probably interest them, I am taking 
great chances. Relate your curious or rare experiences. 
Talk about flies is eagerly read by many anglers, I think. 
As a class they are as full of theories and fads as an 
egg is full of meat. 
A fisherman I know caught and returned to the water, 
in one day. 300 black bass, iti the presence of two wit- 
nesses. That must have been a wonderful experience. 
Many of our friends have at least booked one of the 
}mm§n3^ ^T^^y^^ trout "^ow found in some of our rivers. 
The stories of these fights with light tackle, often 4- 
ounce rods and No. 10 or No. 12 flies, would be quite 
exciting. I know that the actual experience is very. 
Large salmon have been landed with light trouting 
tackle, but these big German trout always seem to get 
away when hooked with small flies. About 3 pounds 
is the heaviest I know of as having been killed in this 
\va,y. One or two 5-pound fish have succumbed to bass 
flies, and I heard of one weighing 8>2 pounds being 
caught by a boy. 13 years old. But enough said. 
Good luck to all the fraternity of genial fly-fishers. 
Badger Hackle. 
Fish and Fishing. 
Royal and Select Anglers, 
In ilie tnass of anecdotal matter which has appeared all 
over the world within the last few weeks concerning King 
Edward VII., it is not surprising to find lengthy reference 
lo his career as a .sportsman. Like President Roosevelt, 
His Majesty has an enviable record as a successful hunter 
of large game, though whatever may be the reason for 
it, w^e hear of few of his performances as a fisherman, 
compared with those of other members of the British 
royal family, and of many more, who, like him, are much 
in the public eye. Perhaps it is because he has been so 
very much in the public eye all his life long, that few 
opportunities were aft'orded him for the contemplation and 
retirement so helpful to the education of a successful 
iingler. His eldest son, on the other hand, who has been 
styled "the angler-in-chief of the royal family," was so 
far removed from the throne in the days of his youth, that 
he had ample opportunities for careful study and fre- 
quent practic^'of the gentle art, and is recognized as quite 
a 'master of the salmon rod. As long ago as when his 
aimt, the Princess Louise, Duchess of Argyll, was liv- 
ing in Canada, the present Prince of Wales, then Prince 
George, enjoyed good salmon fishing while visiting her 
upon her salmon river, in company with his elder brother, 
the~late Duke of Clarence. The Duchess was quite an 
accomplished fisherwoman when in Canada, and met with 
splendid success upon both the Ristigouche and the Grand 
Cascapedia rivers. The 54-pounder killed by her was not 
far from the record fish killed by rod and line in Canadian 
waters. She and her husband, then the Marquis of Lorne, 
Governor-General of Canada, erected a pretty fishing lodge 
for their own u,se, on the banks of the Grand Cascapedia. 
In those days the Government reserved the fishing of the 
waters controlled by it in the Cascapedia, for the personal 
use of the Governor-General and party. Now this fishing 
is leased for no less than $8,500 a year, including that of 
the estuary. On one of her fishing expeditions, H. R. H. 
had a very narrow escape from drowning, I think it was 
in the Rock Pool of the Ristigouche t,hat the canoe in 
which the Princess was seated was on the point of capsiz- 
ing, wdien one of the Indian guides leaped out of it into 
the water and held it upright. 
Princess Louise is not the only keen fisherwoman of 
the British royal family. Her niece, the Duchess of Fife, 
one of King Edward's daughters, is an expert angler for 
both trout and salmon, both of which abomid in the waters 
upon her husband's estates in Scotland. 
Queen Alexander is no novice with the salmon rod, and 
the fact has lately been recalled, by an English sporting 
paper, that at the 1901 dinner of the London Fly-Fishers' 
Club, the late Sir Courtenay Boyle, who presided, stated 
that he had assisted her present Majesty in landing from 
the Blackwater her first salmon. 
In the Highland Dee, the angling members of the royal 
family enjoy exceptionally fine sport, rising fish being 
found in some of its stretches throughout the entire sea- 
son. The King is absolute proprietor of the right bank of 
the Balmoral water, and rents the fishing of the left bank 
from one of his neighbors. 
When His Majesty visited Canada in i860, every efl^ort 
was made to afl^ord him some good fishing in the 
Saguenay country. The late Senator David Price enter- 
tained the young prince at the famous Marguerite, but 
the fates were not propitious, and a few small trout were 
all the whole party had to boast of, beyond the experi- 
ence that there is no royal road to fishing. Mr. Price 
booked a large salinon and gave it to the Prince to land, 
but his attempt was not successful. The Prince had 
not had sufficient practice in salmon fishing to enable him 
to accomplish that most diflicult of all feats to a beginner— 
tlmt of landing a very large fish with a very smaU line. 
The historian of the expedition amusingly adds : 'Tt was 
not for the want of advice, however ; there was plenty of 
that. Every one called out what to do, and, as a matter 
of course, every one suggested a different mode from 
every one else, so that His Royal Highness was be- 
wildered, and the salmon proved the truth of the old 
proverb, that 'in a multitude of counsellors there is safety', 
and, l)reakiug the line, got clear away." 
Marine Biological Station. 
Every student of fish life in North Atlantic coastal 
streams and adjacent waters will rejoice to learn of the 
good work being accomplished by the comparatively new 
Marine Biological Station of Canada, which has just en- 
tered upon the fourth season of its operations. Its posi- 
tion is already established as the center of original marine 
and fishery researches for the Domiiaion of Canada, and 
an arrangement has been completed with Dr. C. O. Whit- 
man, director of the Wood's Holl Biological Station, 
whereby an investigator's table at that station is placed 
at the service of a nominee from the Canadian station, in 
exchange for a similar courtesy extended at the latter to 
an American investigator. It was contemplated at the 
inception of the scheme for the establishment of the sta- 
tion, that the huildmg should be floated to a different point 
each yean So fruitful a field for scientific research was 
found to exist, however, in Passamaquoddy Bay, near St. 
Andrews, N. B., that operations were continued there for 
two seasons, and now the staff of the station have entered 
Upon their second year's work at Canso, on the coast of 
eastern Nova Scotia. Canso is a great center of the Gulf 
and Atlantic deep-sea fisheries, forming a connecting link 
between the fishing industries and marine fauna of the 
southern waters of the Dominion, as found in Passama- 
quoddy Bay, and the more northerly fisheries and fauna 
(jf the Gulf of St. X„awrence proper. The paperg in course 
of preparation upon the work of the station are expected 
to be of peculiar interest. Trawling, tow-netting, dredg- 
ing, line fishing and other methods of testing the neigh- 
boring sea and of procuring specimens are being adopted 
with great success, and experiments have been made with 
dynamite, for the purpose of securing accurate informa- 
tion as to the effect of the explosive upon schools of 
fish at different depths of water. 
Sammer Netting ia the St. Lawrence. 
Prime Minister Parent of Quebec, in whose depart- 
ment rests the control of the provincial fisheries, is 
nothing if not thorough and practical. The fishery de- 
partment of the Dominion of Canada, with which rests 
the right to entirely prohibit fishing in any Canadian 
waters, lately asked his advice as to the propriety of en- 
acting a partial or entire prohibitton of net fishing for 
two or three seasons, in that part of the St. Lawrence 
and Ottawa rivers extending from the foot of Lake St. 
Peter to the head of the Lake of Two Mountains. Be- 
fore proffering any advice on the subject, Mr. Parent 
ordered a thorough inquiry into the matter. Mr. L. Z. 
Joncas, Superintendent of Fisheries, accordingly spent 
a fortnight going over the entire ground and taking the 
evidence of fishermen and others on the spot. Upon 
the 'two banks of these 140 miles of river and lake, it 
was found that some 270 families depended alone upon 
the result of the fisheries, and that the closing up of the ^ 
industry for a couple of years would mean ruin and ex- 
patriation to them. It was established, however, that the ' 
principal waste of fish from these waters occurs in the 
months of July and August, when it is not easy to take 
the larger specimens, and when, consequently, millions 
of small and immature fish are captured and destroyed 
in the hot weather. Almost unanimously, these poor 
people urged the prohibition of netting during the 
months of July and August, fully realizing the fact that 
if the present slaughter of immature fish is persisted 
in there will soon be none for them to take. This 
recommendation will be forwarded to Ottawa, and will 
most likely to be acted upon. Over 10,000 pounds weight 
of these small fish, taken out of the waters in question, 
have been seized during the present season, mostly small 
pike-perch, bass, pike and maskinonge. 
Reducing the Limit. 
There is a move on foot in the Province of Ontario 
to reduce the limit of catches of bass and maskinonge. 
At present the law allows twelve bass and four maski- 
nonge to each rod. District Overseer Thwaite, of 
Oshawa, recommends that the limit be reduced to eight 
and two, and he says that nearly all of the local over- 
seers in his district would make it six bass and two 
maskinonge. ,^ 
Dynamiting, 
Several reports have been received of late that dynamit- 
ing, was being resorted to in many of the inland waters of 
Canada, most of the complaints coming from the shores 
of the St, Lawrence, It is feared that the practice is 
much more general than supposed, and that it is not at 
all confined to poachers from the other side of the Amer- 
ican line, though many undoubtedly cross the river at 
night in order to indulge in the forbidden work of de- 
struction, under cover of the darkness. A scientific in- 
vestigation into the effects of dynamite explosions upon 
fish life, not only upon adult fish, but upon fry, fish eggs 
and all other kinds of life found in the water near the 
spot of explosion, has been made by Dr, A. P. Knight, 
professor of Animal Biology, at the instance of the fed- 
eral government, and his report upon his experiments 
is awaited with considerable interest. 
A New "Wiiitefisfa. 
The Ontario department of fisheries was recently 
asked to identify a fish taken in Lake Simcoe, which re- 
sembled somewhat the common whitefish, though dif- 
fering therefrom in some well-defined respects. Dr, 
Bensley, who made the examination, reported that "the 
specimen belongs to the genus Coregonus, but does not 
correspond to any of the species described by Jordan 
and Evermann in their 'Fishes of North and Middle 
-America.' From Coregonus clupeformis it differs in 
the coloration, in the number of scales and in its more 
elongated form. The fact that it occurs in Lake Sim- 
coe, with the common whitefish, makes it extremely 
probable that it belongs to a different species. Its 
characteristics approach more closely to those of Core- 
gonus lahradoriciis, of which it may be a local variety. 
It shares with the Labrador whitefish the following char- 
acteristics: Color, dark bluish above, sides silvery, scales 
with dark punctulations on edges. Dimensions corre- 
spond very closely. Teeth on tongue present in both. 
The more important difference is in the number of the 
scales, of which there are 71 — 76 in longitudinal series 
in C. labradoricus, 83 — 88 in the specimen submitted. The 
characters are not intermediate between the common 
whitefish and the lake herring as has been suggested. 
The gill rakers, which are numerous in herring, are 
few in this specimen, even fewer than in the common 
whitefish, and the relationship of the jaws to one another 
IS characteristically coregonoid. The occurrence of two 
distinct species of whitefish in such a small body 
of water as Lake Simcoe, is, in all probability, rendered 
possible by a difference in habits, or in the nature of ; 
the food. In the summer of 1899, I examined, at the 
St. Andrew's Marine Station, the stomachs of a num- 
ber of whitefish obtained by Prof. Prince from fish 
caught in the northern part of Lake Huron, the con- 
tents of which were quite exceptional as whitefi.sh food, 
consisting for the most part of small fish, sticklebacks 
and others. This is a matter of some interest, as I am >' 
told that these Lake Simcoe fish are taken with minnow 
bait. It is possible that the species is distributed over a ( 
certain area of the northern portion of the province, and 
that individuals reach a greater maximum size in the 
larger bodies of water. The largest specimen submitted 
was 13 inches in length and a little over i pound in 
weight,'' E. T. D. Chambers, 
.4.11 communications iptended for Forest and Stream should 
always be addressed to the roiest and Stream Publishing Co., Ne>y 
yof^, and nof |;p Sfaj fn^jyidual connected w?th the papefr 
