1S2 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
[Aug, i6, 1902. 
"Inbreeding Pond-Reared Trout," Arthur Sykes. 
Two very important papers on the surface life of the 
lakes were unfortunately omitted, because of the lack of 
facilities for lighting the lantern slides necessary for their 
illustration. The discussion of the articles was animated 
and highly interesting, especially of the paper on black 
bass by Mr. Lydell. which is a very valuable contribution 
to our knowledge of an important game fish. 
During the course of the meetings the Society was ad- 
dressed by Dr. Bean, on behalf of the World's Fair at 
St. Louis, regard'ng the advantages of St, Louis in 1904 
as a place of meeting. Woods Hole, Mass., was selected 
for the sessions of 1903. 
Through the courtesy of Commissioner Geo. M. Bowers 
the Fish Commission steamer Shearwater was placed at 
the disposal of the Society for visits to tlae great hatchery 
on the island and to the adjacent fishing grounds. This 
meeting was unquestionably the most interesting and 
enjoyable ever held in the West, and it will be remem- 
bered for its effective handling of a remarkably good pro- 
gramme. T. H. B. 
Fish and Fishing. 
cir 
Newfouadland Angling. 
Mr. W. F. J. McCoRMicK, of Biscayne Bay, Florida, 
who has made his headquarters, as usual, for the greater 
part of the summer, at Lake Edward, left a few weeks 
ago for Newfoundland, after salmon and sea trout. He 
is now on the coast of Northern Labrador, and will 
probably go as far as Nain. Writing me from St. John's 
on July 24, Mr. McCormick reports having found the 
ouananiche in Sou'west Brook and the Gander River, 
and has sent to Lake St. John for skins of the fish taken 
there, in order to be in a position to make careful com- 
parisons. There is no doubt whatever that the fish to 
which Mr. McCormick has reference is identical with 
that of Lake St. John, for specimens which could not 
be mistaken, were identified in 1899. in Newfoundland, as 
true ouananiche, by both Colonel Haggard and myself. 
The distribution of the fish is very much more extended 
than was supposed up to a few years ago, and as ex- 
ploration and industrial enterprise cont'nue their north- 
ward march, we are likely to learn much more than we 
at present know of other sub-Arctic varieties of the 
Saimonida;. 
It is gratifying to learn that no more netting of sal- 
mon is now allowed in the estuaries of the Newfound- 
land rivers, and as a result. Mr. McCormick reports 
that a number of splendid fish have been taken this year 
out of the Humber in the vicinity of the Bay of Islands. 
When I visited the island with Colonel Haggard, we 
found the Humber perfectly honeycombed with nets, and 
promptly reported the matter to the Hon. Mr. Morine. 
of St. John's, who was at that time Min'ster of Fish- 
eries. It is only justice to Mr. Moi'ine to say that he 
took prompt measures to remedy the evil, dispatching 
his deputyi. Mr. Watson, to the scene of the poaching 
by the same train with us. 
Mr. ■ McCormick reports splendid sport with the 
ouananiche and also with the sea trout at Main River 
Bridge, Bay St. George. His only complaint of the 
latter locality is that the fish are too plentiful, and that 
he had as much of the sport as he could stand in two 
tides. 
Effects of Fish Planting. 
Specimens of the steelhead salmon have been lately 
taken in pound nets on the north shore of Lake Su- 
perior, which indicates that some of the fish deposited 
by the Fish Commissioners of Minnesota had found their 
way into Canadian waters. In consideration of the fine 
game qualities possessed by these fish, arrangements have 
been made with the fishermen for the preservation of any 
caught, and their transfer to a small spring water lake 
in the vicinity for distribution therefrom, as may be re- 
quired. It would seem to be only right that these fish, 
having been planted by a friendly neighbpring State, 
should be returned to the waters whence they were taken, 
and not transferred to other and inland lakes. However, 
it appears that only a few specimens have been so far 
taken in Canadian waters. 
The wholesale planting of black bass is still continued 
in Ontario waters, but it is understood that they are not 
being' introduced into natural trout waters, except in 
cases in which the trout have wholly or almost wholly 
disappeared, for it is a pretty well recognized fact that 
where bass have been introduced and have largely in- 
creased, the trout have all disappeared. The provincial 
authorities are understood to favor the introduction of 
landlocked salmon in preference to black bass in some 
of their waters, but find it impossible to obtain either the 
fish or their spawn. The Quebec authorities might as- 
sist their neighbors of the sister province if they cared 
to, but apparently prefer to keep to themselves whatever 
good things they have. This policy may succeed for a 
time, but it cannot endure in the long run, in our pres- 
ent advanced state of civilization. A good many anglers 
and students of fish life are of the opinion that it would 
pay the Ontario people better to plant steelhead salmon 
and lake' trout, or better still, to replenish worn-out 
brook trout waters with he young of this latter variety, 
artificially hatched, than to continue the planting of black 
bass in so many of the inland waters of the province. 
Undesirable Fish, 
It would be difficult to overestimate the evil that may 
be caused by the planting of undesirable fish. It is said 
that much injury is likely to be caused to the many 
splendid species of Salmonidje in Lake Sunapee by the 
introduction there of black bass. From the beautiful 
Nepigon come loud complaints of the rapid increase 
of pike. Fishermen on the great lakes are very much 
roncerned at the vast increase of suckers, and suggest 
that those taking them in nets should be required to 
bring them all ashore and to burn or bury what they 
cannot market of them. One correspondent says: "On 
the grounds here where our fishermen used to take 
their large catches of whitefish. they get as much as from 
five to ten tons of suckers. These are all thrown back 
jptp t\if- water, II the fishermen cotjld get about 25 cent§ 
per cwt. for bringing them ashore and burying them, or 
selling them for manure, there is no doubt that hundreds 
of tons of them would be destroyed, and the fisheries 
tremendously benefitted." The Ontario Department of 
Fisheries reports that carp are making great headway 
and becoming established almost everywhere, being no 
longer confined to international waters. They are in- 
creasing to an alarming extent in Lake Sijncoe, and al- 
ready hundreds of acres of rice fields in the vicinity o^ 
Holland River have been destroyed. All legitimate 
means of caputure have been approved and encouraged 
by the department, but there seems to be no feasible 
means of exterminating them or even of checking their 
inroads. 
North American Association. 
Hon. F. R. Latchford, president of the North Ameri- 
can Fish and Game Protective Assoc ation, has fixed 
the third Wednesday in January. 1903, for the annual 
meeting at Ottawa, of the association, and notices to 
this effect will be received bj^ the members in due time. 
It will now be in order for members to set about pre- 
paring papers and addresses for the coming meeting. 
The city of Ottawa is the center of a grand sporting 
country, and the home of many rod and gun enthusiasts, 
from whom the association may expect a warm welcome 
to the capital of the Dominion. 
An Interesting Report. 
T am indebted to Mr. S. T. Bastedo, of Toronto, 
Deputy Commissioner of Fisheries for Ontario, for a 
copy of the third annual report of his department. Not 
only is it full of valuable information from cover to 
cover, but it is very fully illu.strated. containing not'only 
figures of all the principal fish found in the province, 
but several very interesting views of the different pools of 
the Nepigon River, as well as of Lake Nepigon and of 
the Virgin Falls. It is gratifying to note the beneficial 
results attributed to the prohibition of the sale as wel! 
as of the export game fish in Ontario. The report cor- 
rectly states that there is no agency for protection so 
potent as prohibiting sale. 
E. T. D. Chambers, 
CHICAGO AND THE WEST. 
M jre FuQ with the Mississippi Smal'-Mooths, 
Chicago, 111., July 28.— In an earlier letter I spoke of 
the fun I had with the small-mouths on the Mississippi 
River below Wabasha, Minn. On my first day out I 
fi.shed but a few hours and sundown came all too soon. 
We landed at the little town of Alma, which is on the 
C, B. & Q. Railroad, or the side opposite from Wabasha, 
the Burlington Road and the St. Paul Road paralleling 
each other for some distance on cppcsite sides of the 
river, I had telegraphed a friend to meet me at Alma, 
but of course the friend did not materialize. Hence I let 
Ira Weeks take my boatman Louis back to Wabasha on 
his launch, and I cast about for a local guide. I found 
Henry Henning, who was recommended to me by Mr. 
Emmet, of Chicago, as a good man, the latter having 
employed him several times with great success. Hen- 
ning is a market-fisherman, and he and his partner Louis 
Lc Bras, rely upon the rod and line altogether for a 
living. They fish exclusively for black bass and wall-eyed 
pike, and if they do not make $3 or $4 a day each they 
are disappointed. One hi:ndred pounds of small-mouth 
b'ack bass a day is not an unusual amount for them. 
Henning charges $3.50 a day for his services, with boat. 
At least this gave promise of one thoroughly acquainted 
with the lurking places of the bass, and I must say that 
the promise was more than fulfilled. Henry told me 
that he did not intend to go out fishing that next day 
himself, because the river was too high to offer any 
chance of success. However, he agreed to take me, and 
hence earlj' on the following morning wc started. I having 
spent the night at Alma. Henry had a good boat, and I 
quickly saw that he was a good river man. He began to 
tell me all kinds of bass stories, including some of the 
experiences of his fr'end, Mr. Emmet, of Chicago. He 
told me that the latter gentleman at one time had fifty- 
seven bass on in the course of one day's fishing with the 
fly. Only a few of these bass were landed, as the tackle 
which Mr. Emmet had along was not strong enough. 
As for myself, I had a powerful 6>4-ounce rod with 
plenty of backbone. My leaders were especially strong 
and my flies of the special McHarg pattern, tied on hand- 
forged hooks, and in the Onondago pattern, which I have 
always fancied for this Mississippi River fishing. With 
this tackle anything like delicate casting is impossible. 
The fly is so heavy that it sinks down as soon as it 
lights. I pointed out to Henry that with this rig of mine 
the black bass of the Mississippi River were entirely at 
my mercy, that they could not get away if I once sock"d 
the hook into them, etc. Henry had seen other people 
come there fly-fishing. Hence he maintained a respectful 
silence. 
We worked on down the rivfer that morning under a 
glaring sun, which would have made fly-fishing almost an 
unpossibility even had the river been in decent condition, 
which it certainly was not. It was a tremendously power- 
ful flood which poured down the ancient Mississippi. That 
any one should go out on that waste of waters and expect 
to catch bass on the fly seemed the height of folly. I 
dcn't think any one less foolish than myself would have 
itndertaken it. Indeed, perhaps there was not a fly-rod 
out on that part of the Mississippi excepting mine. 
Henry showed me different favorite spots of his as we 
v.orked on down the river four or five miles. These 
proved fruitless. The wing dams were buried under two 
or three feet of w^ater. Here we saw great schools of 
fish chasing minnows, but though we cast repeatedly and 
changed our flies through our Avhole repertoire, we 
were unable to inveigle those small-mouths in any way 
whatever. By noon I had taken only one small-mouth, a 
fi.sh of 1 7^ pounds weight, which made a good fight, but 
which was snubbed into subjection early in tl:e game. 
We made coffee near the end of a wing dam, where 
Henry told me we ought to get four or five bass. I had 
two strikes here, one of a white bass and one o£ ft ,^ack 
^85s, both of them breaking aviray, Henry looked rather 
m.ournful at my endeavor, but did not make any criticism. 
I now suggested that we take to the sloughs, as the bass 
did not seem to be working in the big river, and after 
lunch Ave made for the mouth of the Belvidere Slough, or 
rather one of the mouths. Here there was a swift cnr- 
rent of water flowing between high banks. At the mouth 
of the slough, buried now well beneath the surface of the 
waters, there was one of the Government wing dam'^. 
Just below this wing dam as we pulled into the slough 
we could see fish dashing about and playing among the 
schools of minnows. Henr}^ thought some of these m'ght 
be black bass, but we saw that most of them were the 
worthless fish known as the hickory shad, 
"I'll see if I can't hook one of those fellows," said I, 
and casting, I had what I thought to be a strike. To 
make a very long story short, we played this fish for 
twenty-three minutes, not having any idea of what kind of 
a fish it was. I thought it was a 12-pound catfish, and so 
did Henry. I could not feel any head motion or jerking 
on the line. Never were two anglers more deceived. 
When at last, at the risk of breaking the rod, we lifted 
the fish to the surface, we found it to be a hickory shad, 
hooked deep in the side 1 When this fish got deep down 
and square across the current of the Mississippi, it gave 
my fly-rod all it wanted to do. 
Meantime Henry's eyes had discovered bass play'ng 
around a certain cut bank, where he and his partner very 
often made heavy catches. "They are always in there," 
said he. We gradually pushed over and ran along this 
bank, which ran in a semi-circle out to the mouth of the 
slough. I cast a few times and then all at once got a 
smashing strike. At once Htnry reversed the boat and we 
shot out into the current of the slough. It was fifteen 
minutes now of rough and tumble with this red-eyed 
fighting bass. I must say that the hook held, and so did 
everything else, and at last we got him into the net. 
"Now we'll g A another," said Henry. And we d'd get 
another strike, and still another, and still another. EA'cry 
one of these fish seemed to be hooked, but every one of 
them broke away. All the time we were never more than 
twenty-five feet from the bank, and could see the e big 
bass smashing among these schools of minnows and 
sometimes jumping into the air. On further under the 
bushes, and also to our right out into the main current 
of the slough, there were dozens and scores of hickorj/ 
shad leaping out of the water in their assaults upon the 
minnows. It was certainly as exciting a little corner as I 
have got into in all my angling experience. 
We saw an occasional heavy swirl under a bunch of 
grass which hung out from the bank, and casting in 
here at a distance of twenty feet, I felt a heavy sudce, 
We pulled this fellow out into the wdter and fi:!Ught h-Ui 
for a few minutes. 
"Only a pickerel," said Henry. He w^eighed abot t Fiv^: 
pounds, and the fly-rod killed him much qicker t'.an it 
did a bass of half that weight, I struck four of these 
pickerel in the course of my fishing, and of the four wo 
landed two, and purposely broke away from a third, which 
latter nearly cut through the sextuple gut strands of my 
favorite McHarg fly. 
I went back once more under the bank and again I g 
n heavy strike. This fish I think was the quicke.^^t 1 
ever saw in all my hfe. It struck, went under, and came 
out again liigh in the air, almost in the winking of an 
eye. Then it made a run straight out, struck a sand 
bar, doubled, came back, and went up into the air higher 
than I ever saw a bass jump. It was a beauty, wi-ighing,. 
1 should judge, something over three pounds. The hook 
held for three jumps, but I got nervous and ex:L_d at 
this bass, it was such an excitmg .sort of bus'ness, and I 
imagine I put a little too much strain on my rod and finally 
wore a hole in his jaw. After playing h.m five or six 
minutes he went into the air once more, shook himself 
until he looked like a sort of l)lurred bu.zz saw, threw 
the fly back into the boat and k'ssed us good-by. Henry 
was very gloomy over this, but I was rather thankful. I 
don't know what that bass wou'd have done to us if he 
had ever gotten into the boat. He might have chased us 
overboard. He was the savagest thing I ever did see ! 
Henry was beginning to think I couldn't fish a little 
bit. We crossed the river to change the luck, and Henry 
pointed out several places where he had seen bass at 
different times. We saw them now feed'ng along the 
banks. I lost six bass one after another, caught a pickerel, 
then caught two more bass, and then lost a whole lot 
more. As nearly as I Could figure out, dur.ng the day's 
fishing I had something like twenty or twenty-five strikes, 
had hooked ten or a' dozen bass, and had saved just i:ur, 
only one of these of any great size. 
I don't know what it was about this fishing wh ch made 
it so difficult. I only lost one fly, which broke at the 
head of the hook through a fault of my own in putting 
it on the leader. The bass would take held and go down 
deep, but the hook would be released as though they were 
simply holding on to the feathers. I know that a bass will 
sometimes hold on to a frog in this way, but I should be 
slow to think that they would hold on to the feathers of a 
fly. I can only say that I fished my best and prettiest, and 
in a day and a half of exciting fishing I landed just seven 
bass all told. This experience persuaded me that I was 
not so much of a fisherman after all, for I went there 
knowing something abottt this game, and had an equip- 
ment with which I can find no faiilt whatever. I came 
away convinced that this Mississippi small-mouth bass 
fishing is absolutely the best to be found in the United 
States. 
Henry told me my hooks were not big enough, that the " 
bend in my hooks was not right, that the flies had too 
much feathers on them, etc. Of course one is used to 
that sort of talk, but there was considerable ground for 
dissatisfaction on his part. 
"That's the poorest day's fishing I ever had in all my 
life," said he. "I w^ouldn't go out with any one to catch 
a half-dozen bass.," 
Yet he admitted that very frequently he had fishermen 
out who had similar experiences with the bass. The fish 
find some way of breaking away, and I would consider 
the man who landed half the bass he raised at his fly very 
k;cky in the ordinary fishing of that locality. Henry told 
me, and so did Louis, my other guide, that as quick as 
the' river begins to fall the bass fishing will be prime. He 
told me that Mr. Emmet and Mr. Comstock, of this city, 
vvere to meet him at Alma on July 2$ for a few days' fish- 
