146 
r 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
tAuG. 23, ipoi. 
Proprietors of fishing resorts will find it profitable to advertise 
them m Fokest aho Stksah. 
Random Notes of an Angler. 
The Pickerel is the Poor Man's Game Fish. 
I WONDER how many there are to whom it had occurred 
that the pickerel or pike is the chief game fish for the 
poor man of the rural districts. The game fish for 
farmers and farmers' boys, small traders, naechanics, fac- 
tory operatives and others to whom the higher game fish 
are by reason of pecuniary and other conditions forbid- 
den fruit ; and although many of us who have for many 
years handled the rod and reel do not consider the fish 
to be of much value either for game or food, yet what 
a lot of sport there is derived from its pursuit by those 
who are accustomed to follow it. 
A Fish that is Widely Distribtited. 
You see it is more generally diflEused throughout a 
great portion of the country than is any other species. 
I think I am perfectly safe in stating that there are at 
least twenty acres of water in which these fish are found 
to one acre containing black bass or trout. I am speak- 
ing now collectively of the pickerel and pike portions of 
Canada, of the Eastern States and the Middle and mast 
of the Western States, and the pike or jackfish of Vir- 
ginia and further south, almost ■ every river, pond and 
lake having its "long-snouted" denizens, which in some 
localities are veri' numerous. 
It is sufficiently gamy in the opinion of many to be well 
worth following, and its pursuit is one of the few recrea- 
tions that a large number of persons indulge in. 
I know that the general impression is that the brook 
trout is the farmers' boys' game fish, but that honor, if 
it may be so called, belongs to the pickerel. To' all who 
are familiar with rural affairs it is a common thing to 
see these boys at the end of the haying season rig up 
their tapering maple, ash or alder poles, to which is 
attached a strong line with a stout hook at the end on 
v.hich is impaled a frog's hind leg or a strip of the skin 
of salt pork cut somewhat in the shape of a minnow, and 
sally forth of a cloudy day when the Avind is in. the 
"south'ard" or "so'westward" and "skitter" their bait 
on the surface of the water among the lilypads and 
aquatic weeds for the fish wHch "always are hungry." 
They really get a lot of sport out of it, and if success 
favors them and they return at night with a "good 
string," they exhibit their catch with as much pride and 
- complacency as does the fly-fisherman offer for your ad- 
miring inspection the elegant creel of .spotted beauties he 
has succeeded in taking. 
Various Phases of Spoftsmaoship. 
The older I grow the more I am becoming convinced 
that "sportsmanlike" is after all not a positive but a 
comparative term; that there is and can be no unwaver- 
ing line -drawn wliich shall decide arbitrarily that the 
capturing of certain species in certain ways is en regie 
only, while the .taking of other species in- other ways, 
more commonplace, if you will, is poaching, or rather 
"potting," because there are hosts of anglers who have 
never handled a fly-rod. yet who have all the true sports- 
man's instincts and really get "sportsmanlike" enjoyment 
out of the methods that are familiar to them. Of course 
I do not wish for a moment to imply that fly-fishing with 
light tackle is not the acme of the angler's art, for it is, 
but there are many who claim that in other methods there 
is as sportsmanlike enjoyment to be obtained. 
For example, I have a friend who contends that fishing 
a trout stream with a live minnow for bait is the high- 
est sport with the rod that can be named. He insists that 
it requires vastly more skill to quietly follow all the 
meanderings of the stream by wading and drop his min- 
now into every little eddy and deep hole down among 
submerged tree trunks and rocks or overhanging banks 
and to hook and save his fish in such places than it does 
to fish in the open with the fly. 
I have another friend who- is the veriest crank you 
ever saw in relation to fly-fishing. If he cannot take 
his trout with the fly and on a four-ounce rod at that, he 
will go- without until doomsday. He would scorn to 
take one with bait, yet he just simply delights in fishing 
with a hand line for scup (porgies), black sea bass and 
biackfish or tautog. 
Another gentleman who is quite celebrated as a sports- 
man, and whose views arc as rigid as steel regarding 
the. killing of game, both large and small, actually ap- 
proves of and delights in trolling with a minnow or a 
spinning spoon for trout and landlocked salmon in the 
great lakes of Maine. He would rightly regard with dis- 
gust a man who would fire into a covey of running quail 
or at a partridge in a tree, yet he is oblivious of the fact 
that trolling for trout and salmon is, in localities where 
they may be taken with the fly, in the opinion of most 
anglers, simply potting, and is not a "sportsmanlike" 
method in any degree. 
Value of the Picfeerd as Food. 
I have said that the pickerel or pike in the domestic 
economy of a large number of persons occupies an im- 
portant position ; in fact, it is aJmost the only food fish 
that is available tO' them, and it furnishes not only food, 
but sport also. I know something of farmers' boys and 
the slim opportunities they have for recreation with rod 
and Ijne, for I was one myself. It was not very often 
that I had a chance to get away from the hayfield or 
cornfield to go a'-fishing, but now and then the opening 
presented itself and it is not necessary to state that 1 
availed myself of it. 
The first large fresh-water fish that I ever caught was 
a five-pound pickerel, and though it occurred over a 
half-century ago, it is as fresh in my memory as if it 
had happened yesterday. It was in the brook known as 
the Pine Tree Brook, in. Milton, Mass. It had formerly 
been a famous trout brook, and it is to this day, away up 
under the shadows of the Blue Hills toward its sources a 
home for the spotted beauties. 
But below the dam at the Old Mill— so called on the 
crossroad running between the main road in Milton and 
the old Scotch woods road — and down thr-ough the long 
stretches of swamps and meadows the pickerel have ex- 
terminated all other species. 
At the period I refer to a few fair-sized fish ha.d from 
time to time been taken from it, but a two-pound fish 
was the largest thai had been seen, and that was con- 
sidered a good size, considering that the brook was not 
a large one. 
On the occasion to which I refer, I started down the 
brook from the bridge on the crossroad, and working my 
u'ay through alders and swale and thickets of brier bushes, 
1 cast niy bait over every foot of the brook. 
I doubt if many anglers had ever preceded me through 
a portion of that jungle, but I was full of enthusiasm and 
determined to see just what there was to be obtained in 
the line of pickerel that day. It was not exactly a case 
of woodchuck and prea.cher, but I was simply determined 
to get fish. 
As I moved along I found that there often were 
stretches of four or five rods in length in which the brook 
Avidened considerably, and among the masses of yellow 
lily plants and weeds that abounded there, were many 
•quite deep holes. From these I succeeded in taking three 
or four good fish, and I felt mighty elated at my success. 
At length I came to a wide stretch of the brook in 
which there was a large area of deep black water, and as 
1 wormed my way out of the jungle and prepared a fresh 
bait of a frog's hind leg. I felt certain that here I was 
to get a good fish. 
I cast my lure as far out into the pool as I could and 
then began to play it about cn the surface of the water. 
I had not moved it more than a yard or two. in fact. I 
had hardly begun to- give it the peculiar motion that suc- 
cessful pickerel anglers practice, ulicn a great circle of 
water moved toward the bait an enormous pair of jaws 
opened and with a heavy splash- the pickerel seized my 
bait and turned back to its lurking place, where it cou'd 
swallow it at leisure. 
I had, I remember, an old-fashioned bamboo pole, which 
had been a present to me, and which I prized most highly. 
In my excitement I raised it pretty sharply, and as I saw 
it bend into a half-circle, I expected it would go to 
pieces, but it proved sound and strong, and with a "long 
pull and a strong pull" I drew the fish to the bank where 
I was standing. 
It was a bad place to land a fish on account of its 
steepness and the abundance of rushes that grew on it, but 
there was a little patch of aquatic grass a yard or two 
down the stream, and to this I led my prize ; it came along 
rather passively, and I had fairly drawn the fish its length 
across the grass when the hook sprang out of its mouth. 
The fish on finding that it was free began to flap around 
most vigorously, and it was just on the point of slipping 
back into the deep water, when I threw myself upon it 
bc-dily, and clasping it tightly in my arms, struggled back 
away from the water. I lost no- time in giving it its coup 
de grace, and then, panting with excitement, T paused to 
admire my prize. And what a beauty it was, and such a 
monster, too-. I thought I had never seen a pickerel half 
so large. 
It did not take me long to string my fish, my big one 
on top, of co'itrse^ and work my way out of the swamp and 
start for home. I am inclined to think I ran most of the 
distance, for when I entered the house I was quite breath- 
less. Well, the fame of that pickerel spread far and 
Avide, and 1 was for a time "high line" among the boys 
of the neighborhood. 
That it was a highly colored, beautifully reticulated 
fish, I remember quite distinctly, but further than that I 
can say nothing regarding its identity. It may have been 
a pike, for it is said that five-pound pickerel are few and 
far between, but as we did not pay any attention to the 
scales on the cheeks of the fish in those days, we called it 
a rousing big pickerel, and so let it rest. How many 
years it had made that pool its home, lurking there like a 
Giant Despair for victims to whom no- mercy was ever 
shown, who can tell? But that it had destroyed a large 
number of trout which had tried to pass up and down the 
brook there is no question. 
The voracity of pike and pickerel is a matter of common 
observation, almost every angler being able to give his 
testimony in relation to it. The most striking example of 
it that ever came to my knowledge occurred in Lake 
Umbagog, the lower and second largest of the great 
Bangeley chain of lakes in Maine. 
Until pickerel were introduced into its water it was one 
of the finest trout lakes in the entire system. Now 
scarcely a trout is to be found in it. The planting of 
pickerel in the lake was, according to one account, acci- 
dental, but another story which seems to obtain the great- 
est credence is that they were placed there out of revenge 
by a party who had been arrested for taking trout out 
of season, and who vow^ed that if settlers near the lake 
could not have the privilege of taking trout for their own 
use (some versions are that he caught the fish for market 
purposes) when they pleased, he would prevent all others 
from o-btaining any forever after. 
No^matter how the pickerel found their way there, they 
are now so abundant that parties in fishing through the 
ice for them catch "cords of them," as one of the .settlers 
told me, "they bring tenting outfits and remain by the 
lake a day or two, and when they go home they have a 
two-horse sled packed full." 
The.se fish have multiplied and increased and diffused 
themselves so thoroughly that they have found their way 
down the Androscoggin River to and beyond the Erroll 
Dam, have been seen two miles or more up the Rapid 
River or Five-Mile Falls, and have ascended the Magal- 
loway River as far as the Aziscohos Falls, a distance of 
fifteen or twenty miles from the lake, in most oi which the 
water is shoal and sometimes quite rapid. The popular 
notion is that pickerdl will not traverse quick water, but 
this example proves to the contrary. 
They cannot ascend the falls, for they are too high and 
steep, they proving an effectual barrier to the ascent of 
trout, but in the pool below they are abundant, but all 
other fish have been exterjninated. 
It is a great pity, for I always regarded that pool as 
one of the finest in New England, and it used to^ be famous 
for its trout; bright colored gamy fish they were, the 
delight of anglers whO' were so fortunate as to^ reach 
them. 
When I state that on June 17, 1860, I stood on a rock 
on the edge of this pool, and though it was snowing and 
hailing most of the time, and my fingers were so cold I 
could hardly take the fish off my hook, I landed upward 
oi fifty elegant trout with the fly (red-hackle) in less than 
three hours, and I could have taken hundreds if I had 
Avished, Avhile ten years later not a trout Avas to be found 
there, one can form some idea of the destructiveness of 
the pickerel. At the southern end of Lake Umbagog, 
where the Cambridge River empties into the lake, the 
pickerel are especially numerous all through the stretch of 
riA^er for a half mile or so below the dam, and one may 
catch all he desires, and with the fly, too. I have often 
taken a boat into- the river — it is really almost dead water 
— and with an eight-ounce rod, strong trout line and big 
ba.ss flies, particularly the red-ibis and the red-and-Avhite- 
ibis, have had all the success I could have wished for. 
'they Avere not gamy in the slightest degree, for the 
pickerel comes right into the boat Avithout even a protest, 
reserving ' its energies for a tremendous "knockabout" 
after it is landed, and Avhich it continues to indulge in 
imtil it is knocked on the head. Noav those fish, coming 
as they did out of clear, cold Avater, were very good o-n 
the table, their meat being firm and SAveet, quite different 
from that of ordinary summer pickerel, and, really, I used 
to enjoy taking them. To be sure, I did not need to have 
used flies, for the fish wotdd have come to any moving 
lure I might have cast tO' them, but it seemed a little more 
like .sport to use a sportsman's tackle. In speaking of bait 
for pickerel, one of my friends says that "any old thing 
will ansAver; a frog's leg, a minnow, a strip of pork rind, 
a mouse or small snake, a flannel rag, a strip of lemon 
peel or an old tin can will fetch 'em." While I may not 
agree with him as to the value of all these items, I am 
certain that there are but very fcAv lures which AA'ill be 
refused. Although the pickerel have diffused themselves 
Ihroughout Umbagog, they do not as a rule like cold Avater 
as. an abiding place, preferring quiet bodies of more shal- 
low Avater, Avhich have an abundance of aquatic vegeta- 
tion growing in it, and Avhich have muddy bottoms. This 
is well shown by the folloAving example: 
It Avas during an outing on the Schoodic Lake (St. 
Croix system), in Maine, where I was enjoying myself 
among the landlocks. In passing up Grand Lake my In- 
dian guide asked me if I Avould like to catch a few 
pickerel. I replied that although I Avas not craving for 
si'ch sport, a little change in our Avork Avould be accept- 
able, upon which he headed the canoe for a stretch of 
loAV marshy shore, and Ave soon entered, not a stream, but 
a stretch of dark-colored dead Avater, which after many 
Avindings tapped a small body of water Avhich the Indian 
called Muddy Lake. It Avas of perhaps twenty-five or 
thirty acres, and lilypads and other aquatic vegetation was 
abundant. 
I rigged up a strong bait-rod, and with a spinning spoon 
for lure commenced operations. At the first cast I hooked 
a black-backed monster, Avhich weighed at least ten 
pounds Avhen it was landed in the canoe. The guide, after 
knocking the fish on the head, held it up for my inspec- 
tion, and opening its jaws to their full Avidth, Avhich was 
at least eight inches, exclaimed, "What a m6uth ! These 
devils kill more young ducks than a few in the summer ! 
How big Avould one look in that?" said he, again opening 
wide its mouth. "They eat everything and anything, even 
their OAvn young ones."* 
We remained among the pickerel an hour or so, during 
which I caught a dozen or soi very large fish — they must 
have been pike— and then we returned through the outlet 
i.'ito Grand Lake, trolling the spoon behind the canoe all 
the Avay out, but not obtaining a single strike. 
I mention this incident to sho-Av that if these fish can 
find such Avater as that oi the small lake, they Avill not 
leave it for colder and clearer Avater. I doubt if any 
ever get out into Grand Lake, for its bottom is rocky and 
its shores are free from reeds, etc., among which they 
love to lurk. It is fortunate that this is the case, for if 
they Avere to diffuse themselves through that lake, the 
landlocks Avould soon begin to dimini.sh in numbers, and 
it Avould not take many years to extirpate them. 
Edward A. S.-vmuels. 
[to be continued.] 
* With Fly Eod and Camera. Page 178, 
New England Waters. 
Boston, Aug. 18. — In New Hampshire the mountain 
streams are yielding some good baskets of trout. A party 
of five Avent to Elbow Lake last Aveek, Avhere they occu- 
pied the new Knights of Pythias camp for several days. 
They caught twenty-three trout, the largest weighing two 
pounds, and fifty-tAvo pickerel. In the streams above 
Plymouth some good fishing has been enjoyed lately, 
though the season is late. John Webber, of Boston, and 
Harry Batchelder, of Exeter, caught a good string of 
trout from the upper waters of the Pemegewasset Wednes- 
day. Other good strings have lately been taken. At the 
Rangeleys all is summer gaiety, with little attention be- 
ing paid to fishing. True anglers are waiting to try these 
Avaters for the September fly-fishing. At the Pool at the 
Upper Dam an occasional trout or salmon is taken. At 
Reddington some fly-fishing is being done. E. P. Bliss, 
of Lexington; A. M. Aldrich, of Pepperell; B. E. Wood, 
E. A. Sprague, and A. J. Roberts, of Boston, have been 
taking some good trout the past Aveek. Mrs. Arthur 
Hammond, and Miss Helen B. Withee, of Danvers, have 
taken some good strings of trout lately, at Reddington, 
though both have had little experience till this season. 
.A^t Kineo, Moo.sehead, parties are going daily to the back 
ponds and lakes and returning as often with good strings 
of trout. On these trips camping out is in order, and is 
greatly enjoyed by boys and younger men. Big game is 
seen constantly, with the report that it is more plentiful 
than a year ago. Parties are in order making the long 
trip by canoe and carry to the Alleguash waters, and home 
via the Provinces; or the reverse, starting in at Van 
Buren, or further doAvn, and out via Norcross or Moose- 
head. Multitudes of big game are reported. From the 
several stations and hunting and fishing resorts on the 
Aroostook Railroad come reports of excellent fishing, and 
big game in Avonderful abundance. A Boston gentleman, 
interested in hunting, is just in from a business 
trip up the line of the Bangor & Aroostook. He says 
that he has seen more deer than he ever dreamed of see- 
ing, and a great many moose. But he concludes that it is 
easier to run on to a dozen deer in midsummer than it 
is to find one in legal open season. Speciaj^. 
