208 
FOREST AND STREAM, 
[Sept. 13, 1902. 
will be all off!" cried Dick, as he followed the fish down 
stream, wading along the edge of the hole up to his hips. 
"I'm going to snub him up, it's the only thing I can do." 
Just then the reel stopped singing, his rod made a 
pretty arch, then straightened up as the line came back 
limp and slack, and the big fellow was gone. 
"Wasn't he a beauty and all fight," said Dick. "He 
never gave me a chance to take in line, but kept going 
right ahead till he got the lot. I'm sorry I lost him, 
but he gave me a rare bit of sport. However, better 
luck next time." 
J'We seem to be in the right neighborhood," said I, as 
Richard put on a new leader, at the same time making 
a suggestion that we cross the river, as we could cast 
into the lower end of the hole better from the opposite 
side. Accordingly we waded into the riffles, where we 
had a nice little tussle with the stream, more than once 
narrowly escaping being swept off our pins ere we 
reached the other bank. 
After a few unsuccessful casts Dick managed to pick 
up another one-pounder, and before long a fish weigh- 
ing twice as much came his way after a good struggle. 
Then we had an hour which was a positive blank, ex- 
cept that occasionally one of us would get a rise; we de- 
cided, therefore, to give them a rest while we lunched. 
After enjoying a smoke Richard put on a royal- 
coachman and professor, while I replaced my klootch- 
man with a silver-doctor. 
About the second cast I made I hooked a fine fish, 
which only came to creel after a good stiff lo-minutes' 
fight. He scaled 2j4 pounds. 
By this time the sun was begininng to touch the pool, 
but shining as it did through the tops of the mighty 
Douglas firs on the opposite bank, there were still some 
shady spots left, and I soon discovered that casting 
where these giants threw their broad shadows and let- 
ting the doctor swing across a sunny patch, seemed to 
take the fancy of the beauties, and in a short time I 
had two more to my credit, 2 pounds and 2^ pounds, 
and both scrappers of the highest order. Then I had 
a piece of bad luck, losing a nice one which I judged 
would weigh about 2j4 pounds, and this after playing 
him for some minutes. He had been poorly hooked. 
I began to wonder how Dick was faring, not having 
seen nor heard anything from him for about half an 
hour, he having worked up stream to a small hc'e jus^ 
around a bend and about 50 yards from me. I halloed 
to him, and in a few minutes he reappeared. "What 
luck, Richard?" "Oh, not too bad; got a couple, but 
they^re not as large as they might be." 
His faced beamed with delight as he gazed into my 
open basket. "Those certainly are dandies. Frank. 
You've struck the right fly." 
Off came his professor and royal-coachrnan and on 
went a doctor. "Try a few casts there, Dick, while I 
fill my pipe," said I, laying down my rod and digging 
into my pocket for a bit of the weed. Just as I struck 
a match to light up, I heard the sharp clicking of his 
reel as a fine fellow made off down stream, and after a 
series of runs and leaps, lasting about ten minutes, I suc- 
ceeded in getting him into the net; but as I was wading 
out of the river to a patch of sandy beach where our 
baskets lay, the fish,a 2j/2-pounder, made a last final effort 
to escape, managed to leap clean out of the net and fell 
in the water, where he put up another short battle, which 
I eventually decided in our favor. I should like to know 
if any of your contributors have ever had an experience 
of this kind. I always thought it impossible for a fish 
when once fairly down in the net, to find there any- 
thing solid enough from which to make a leap. The 
net is about r8 inches deep. They were now beginning 
to take so heely that we decided to have turns at it. 
While Dick loaded his pipe I made a few casts, and with 
success, for at the third attempt the doctor found an- 
other patient, my friend doing the net trick after I had 
had a few minutes' royal sport. 
So it went, first one of us then the other, till we had 
taken nine fish from this pool, and but two of them 
«nder 2 pounds. Then came a straight half hour with- 
out a rise, so I made a suggestion that we go up stream 
to the small hole round the bend where Dick l^d been 
trying the professor and royal-coachman. He ac- 
quiesced, and in about twenty minutes we took five there, 
ranging from i pound to 2^ pounds in Aveight. 
It was now 11 A. M., and we had promised our wives 
that we would be back in camp for dinner at 12 o'clock. 
We opened the baskets and displayed the catch on a 
nice, grassy spot, discussing their beautiful lines and 
the noble way in which each one had fought. As we 
waded down strearn after crossing the riffles, Dick made 
one last cast behind a big boulder, which lay in the very 
center of the river, and away went his line once more. 
I could see by the way his rod bent and shook that he 
had hold of something a little-larger than any that had 
come to creel as yet. I stood in the water, landing net 
in hand, watching the expert way in which Richard 
handled his reel. "Stay with him, Dick," I said, as the 
fish made another rush for liberty. Then back came 
the line, only to be taken out a second later, as the trout 
put down stream once more. 
This fish differed from any of the others, in that he 
never once showed himself during the fifteen minutes my 
friend played him, staying near the bottom all the time 
and fighting like a Trojan. 
He tipped the scales at 3^ pounds. 
"That's a fine finish," I remarked, as I dropped him in 
the basket. "I think we'll call it off," Dick whispered. 
"Well, who wouldn't?" 
As we wound up our lines and put our rods in their 
cases, we compared this half day's sport with others we 
have had on this river, and both of us agreed that though 
we had made heavier hauls, never had we met with 
such success in landing fish of this size, for a man (fish- 
ing in the neighborhood we were in) is reckoned lucky 
if he lands two out of every three he hooks, and we had 
managed to bring to creel eighteen out of twenty, with 
the loss of only one fly and half a leader. So we wended 
our way back to camp. Our loads were heavy, there- 
fore our hearts were light. We were late for dinner, but 
no scolding awaited us once our guardian angels had 
peeped into our baskets. As we lay in the shade that 
afternoon after partaking of a hearty dinner, sicking 
(Mir pipes and thinking over the events of the morning, 
Richard remarked: "I know men on the other side that 
would give $50 to have the bit of sport we had this morn- 
ing." 
"Well," said I, "though they were not with us in the 
body, if they read of it they may still be with us in the 
spirit, so off it goes to Forest and Stream." 
At night, when I turned in and all was still, save the 
harsh cry of the mosquito hawk, I thought that the 9th 
of August had been a crowning day for Richard and me, 
as well as King Edward Vil. 
Frank Ramsay. 
Russia's Great Fishery Exhibition. 
The International Fishery Exhibition, held at St. 
Petersburg during the first quarter of the present year, 
was an event of great importance to the fishery interests 
of the world. A building 68$ feet long and 130 wide, 
formerly used as a riding school, situated in the center of 
the city, contained a splendid array of exhibits from Rus- 
sia, Finland, Norway, France, Japan, Roumania, Siam, 
Germany, Austria, Denrnark, Sweden, Italy, Spain, Egypt, 
Persia and India; a varied and complete display that was 
in the highest degree instructive and entertaining, Imme- 
diately upon entering the hall the visitor was confronted 
with an artificial rock grotto, upon various portions of 
which were perched, in natural attitudes, stuffed sea birds 
of different species, and overlooking a large aquarium 
contained within the grotto. Many of the exhibits were dis- 
posed upon the walls, as well as in various niches, pavilions, 
etc., "of the building, and arranged with the utmost taste 
consistent with the observer's ease of inspection. The 
building held a large open space in its center, inclosing an 
excavated basin brilliantly lighted with electric light, thus 
displaying its finny inmates to the fullest advantage; vari- 
ous niinor fish basins were also so illuminated, for the 
principal attendance was during the evening hours, the 
financial results being satisfactory. 
In contemplating the exhibition one was impressed with 
its remarkable diversity, as well as its completeness ; the 
fullness of the representation of the fisheries included in 
the vast territories of Asiatic and European Russia being, 
in every aspect, astonishing. The Russian Imperial Fish- 
ery Company's exhibit was a very elaborate representa- 
tion of the country's piscine resources, and the sight of the 
Rusian department alone was well worth a journey to 
St. Petersburg. In excellence and extent it was far and 
away the dominant feature of the entire exhibition, for 
the contributions were from the North, the Baltic, the 
Black, the White and the Caspian seas, as well as from 
the empire's immense rivers and inland lakes and streams. 
Although in European Russia alone there are nearly three 
hundred species of fish, but a small portion have been 
turned to advantageous accoimt, it is nevertheless stated 
i-pon expert authority that from ten to eleven million 
double hundredweight is the annual yield of the nation's 
fisheries. In this connection it should be considered that, 
unlike England and other countries, Russia has no ocean 
fisheries, her product being that of coast and inland 
w aters, yet despite such circumstance the finny harvest, in 
weight at least, would seem to bein excess of that of Great 
Britain. The appliances and methods are often of the 
most primitive nature, crude and inefficient. There is 
much waste and destruction, and an insufficient study of 
the natural conditions contributory to the well-being of 
the finny occupants of the Tsar's varied waters. The 
enormous mineral oil traffic of the Volga, the constant 
multiplication of factories with their resulting refuse, the 
immense destruction of standing timber, and the conse- 
quent fouling of the streams with sawdust, all operate in 
Russia, as elsewhere, adversely to the fishery interests. 
The exhibits were displayed in every variety of form 
and manner; in the technical department the fish were all 
exhibited in alcohol; then there were frozen fish, tinned 
fish, dried fish, smoked fish, fi.sh that were pickled, salted 
or soused, and finally fish that were alive and swimming 
in their element. The variety of the modes of production 
and the amplitude of the exhibits of each particular form 
of preparation were notable features of this unique imder- 
taking. The exhibit of the Biological Experiment Station 
on the Volga comprised a great variety of living fish — 
pike, burbot, perch, carp, roach, tench, etc. Near these 
were displayed finny folk of greater importance and value, 
the migratorj'^ fish, notably the great sturgeons and the 
salmons. Of the sturgeons there were half a dozen 
species, the specimens ranging up to twelve hundred 
pounds. Some of the uncouth monsters were from the 
Volga and some from the Kura and Ural, all tributaries 
of the Caspian. The sturgeon called by the Russians 
osetre and by Germans Dick, is the chief source of the 
famous Astrachan caviar, which was shown in various 
modes of preparation, including the gray caviar, the finest 
of all, bringing two dollars a pound in the Astrachan 
nmrkets. A fish of twelve hundredweight may yield from 
two to three hundredweight of carviar, the capture of 
such a prize being a veritable windfall. The flesh of one 
of the species of sturgeon is carefully dried, cut into strips 
and sold in bundles. This is called wjasiga. That of an- 
other, the famed balyki, is sold in masses, cut from the 
fattest portion of the sturgeon and prepared with salt, 
pepper and laurel leaves. It is very popular in Russia, 
retailing at seventy cents a pound. It is also much in 
demand in Germany, where it is called Storfilet, or 
sturgeon filet. There was also an exhibition of Siberian 
caviar, an industry of recent development, but of great 
promise, for the rivers of Asiatic Russia are among the 
largest of the world and teem with finny wealth. 
The sturgeon, however, that is most highly prized is the 
famous sterlet, adult specimens from the Devina some- 
times bringing a hundred roubles. This exceptional value 
should afford an ample incentive to its acclimatization 
elsewhere, but the efforts in that direction have as yet 
met with but limited success. The sterlets were well 
represented, appearing as the quick and the dead, in 
aquaria and frozen upon marble slabs. There were also ex- 
hibited sturgeon (A. baeri) from the Siberian river 
Yenesei, in appearance and habit allied to the Caspian 
osetre. The sturgeon of the Caspian may be thus enu- 
merated. Belouga (Acipenser huso), average weight 108 
pounds, maximum 2,260 pounds, Sevriouga {A. siellatus), 
average fifteen pounds, is caught in enormous quantities 
in the Kura River. Osetre goldenstadiii) , average 
30, maximum 108 pounds, Chyp (A. schypa), Jiverage 54 
pounds. Sterlet (A. ruthenus), 15 to 20 pounds. The 
sturgeon fishery of the Caspian and its tributary rivers 
seems to be inexhaustible, an average of 15,000 a day 
having been caught in a period of twelve successive days, 
and though actively prosecuted for over a century, no 
material decline has as yet been manifested. 
It has been maintained that the North Sea is the world's 
most productive fishing ground, but the claim may be 
disptited in behalf of the Caspian. The wealth of piscine 
life in both bodies of water is mainly dependent upon 
the influx of large rivers loaded with organic matter, 
which is deposited at no great distance from the point of 
discharge. The North Sea is scoured by tides that tend 
to the wide dispersal of the ingathered material, or to its 
whelming beneath shifting sands ; the Caspian, on the 
contrary, is a closed sea, having no outlet, and receives 
the flow of the largest river in Europe, beside that of 
minor streams. It has been found that young sturgeon 
feed upon animalculse that in turn derive their subsistence 
from the masses of vegetable matter borne down by fluvial 
currents, and there can be but little doubt that the vast 
amount of organic material deposited in the quiet basin of 
the Caspian is the source of its varied abundance of 
aquatic life. The sturgeon fishery of the Caspian and its 
tributary rivers yields an annual product of about eleven 
million dollars, the export of caviar alone reaching 
nearly a million. All the different species of the sturgeon 
and the many and varied forms of their prepared flesh, in- 
cluding the famous Russian isinglass, were fully dis- 
played. 
Next to the sturgeons the -Salmonidae were the most 
prominent feature of the exhibition, the family being rep- 
resented in Russian waters more abundantly than in those 
of any other old world nation, as is shown by the 
product of European Russia, which reaches a hundred 
million pounds annually. The leading species exhibited 
was, of course, the common salmon (S. salar) of the At- 
lantic coast, its representatives being the product of the 
streams emptying into the Baltic and the White seas. 
There was also to be seen the Caspian Sea species, which 
is really a sea trout, both the salmon and trout alluded 
to ranging up to thirty or forty pounds. Great interest 
v/as manifested in the contribution by an enterprising fish 
dealer of Krasnoyarsk, Siberia, of immense salmon weigh- 
ing from fifty to seventy pounds, the product of the 
Yenesei, a river declared by one of its explorers to be the 
largest in the world. This particular species is designated 
by the Russians Sahno Hiiviatilis, it being purely a river 
fish, non-migratory, apparently confining itself to the up- 
per waters of the great Siberian rivers, the Yenesei, the 
Ubi and perhaps also the Lena, so much of Siberia being 
inadequately explored that the extent of the fish's range 
cannot, with certainty, be defined. In the Danube there 
is a salmon of precisely similar habit, abiding in the river 
and never going down to the sea. It is known as the 
nucho, and has a counterpart in a salmon of the Kura 
River, a tributary, through the Volga, of the Caspian, to 
which sea it does not descend. 
An explanation of this singular habit would seem 
to be afforded by the character of the seas that receive the 
waters of these salmon rivers. The Caspian, into which 
the Volga pours its mighty flood, is the dried-up remnant 
of a far larger body of water that, at some time in the re- 
mote past, had a connection with the Black and the Medi- 
terranean seas. Its gradual shrinkage and closure not 
improbably involved changed conditions that tmfitted it 
a;-, an abode for the migratory salmon, which thus be- 
came habituated to an entirely fltivial existence. It may 
also be assumed that the riverine salmon of the Danube 
owes its change of habit to altered marine conditions, It 
probably at one period of its racial existence migrated an- 
nually to the Black Sea, then joined to the Caspian as well 
as to the Mediterranean. The geological changes since 
occuiTing have apparently greatly changed the character 
of the Black Sea waters, which, except upon or near the 
surface, have become destructively poisonous. Its depths 
are saturated with sulphuretted hydrogen, probably escap- 
ing through its bottom, for the amount there found was 
twenty times in excess of that at fifty fathoms. In its 
deeper waters there is no vertical circulation ; they are 
devoid of oxygen and therefore of all forms of life. This 
fact also accounts for the absence of the eel in the Danube, 
the Don, Dniester and other streams tributary to this 
morbific sea and affords a confirmation of Grassi's dis- 
coverer that it spawns at great depths. 
The lapse of the migratory instinct in the Siberian 
salmon is open to a similar explanation, for the rivers 
that they occupy flow into a body of water that, in the 
obscurity of the past, was a perennially open sea. When 
within the Arctic circle a temperate climate reigned and 
the mammoth was the monarch of its far-stretching for- 
ests, the salmon, with each season's round, performed 
their accustomed journey to the distant deep. But the 
aging earth grew hoar and chill, the circulation of its 
extremities feeble and slow, and at last its polar waters, 
locked in an icy embrace, became rigid and still. Then 
it was that the migratory salmon, barred of access to the 
ocean, became permanent residents of the streams that 
gave them birth. Our landlocked salmon of the New 
England and Canadian lakes as well as those of Sweden, 
liave become dwarfed, but their river-bound congeners of 
Europe and Asia are, at least in this respect, undegen- 
erate.. The hucho is credited with a maximum weight of 
125 pounds, and probably specimens equally large will in 
time be found in the as yet little known Siberian rivers. 
The largest weight attained by a sea-going salmon was 
that attributed to a specimen caught in Oregon waters, a 
quinnat of 100 pounds. It is probable that the fluvial 
salmon alluded to owe their excessive proportions to an 
easily obtained and abundant sustenance; undisputed 
masters of the waters they occupy, they levy without 
let or hindrance their alimentary toll. 
The riverine seclusion of the Siberian salmon perhaps 
points to an approximate limit of the marine journey of 
the species in general. The salmon of the Yukon prob- 
ably voyage a thousand miles of the Behring Sea, the 
passes of the Aleutian Islands and the neighboring ocean 
waters before finding their abiding place in the great 
Pacific. In the Mackenzie, a river discharging into the 
Arctic to the eastward of the Yukon, and perhaps equal 
to it in volume, no salmon appear to be present, its mouth 
not improbably being too far removed from habitable 
ocean waters tQ admit of the salmon accomplishing the 
