66 
FOREST AKD stream, 
said good-by. The Colonel was heart-broken at the loss 
of such a fighter as this fish had proven himself to be. 
He evidently communicated to his mates his miraculous 
escape, as I dfid not get another strike from a salmon 
in that pool. I had, however, excellent sport during 
the rest of my stay, principally fly-fishing, the trout rang- 
ing from a half pounder to one and three-quarters and 
one six pounder. 
Slate Creek, which empties into the Sacramento Kiver 
a1 this point, is a very prolific little stream and an ideal 
home for trout, with its high bluffs and immense boulders 
studded here and there continuously from its headwa- 
ters to its outlet. In the early part of the season when 
the Sacramento River is high and at times somewhat dis- 
colored, this creek affords excellent sport to the sturdy 
young angler, who cares not for the many impediment's 
which beset him. A good creel is always obtainable. It 
is very swift and the fish taken are of good size, strong 
and great fighters. 
There are always amusing incideots occurring when 
out on fishing trips, one of which will bear chronicling. 
A lady angler, wife of a well-known fisherman, was whip- 
ping in a sportsmanlike manner the. riffle at the head of 
rhe Onion Patch Pool (by the way this particular pool was 
reserved for women and old men, being of easy access 
and only five minutes' walk from the hotel), when sud- 
denly she stopped, and from where I stood, probably a 
hundred yards off, I saw that she had hooked a fish of 
goodly proportions, the largest she said she had ever 
hooked, and she has landed many a fish. But in this par- 
ticular instance she unfortunately lost her usual presence 
of mind and essayed to hold the fish without allowing 
him to make a dash for liberty; of course her tackle 
gave way, and when I reached her she' was in tears. Be- 
tween her sobs she remarked, "If Will had only been 
here I would not have lost the fish." Will is one of our 
niost successful fishermen with either spoon or fly; he 
is a great worker and never fails to fill his basket. Will 
and his wife spend their vacations at La Moine, and the 
inany baskets of fish which he ships to his friends in the 
city testify to his prowess as an angler. 
La Moine bids fair to become one of the principal re- 
sorts in California for anglers who want good fishing and 
good accommodations. 
My stay was most pleasurable, and I again look for- 
ward to' a similar outing in 1904. 
James Watt. 
Fish and Fishing. 
Salmon Ffshermen Rctorcing, 
Many of the American and Canadian salmon fisher- 
men who were early upon their rivers have returned 
home, and notwithstanding the indifferent opening of 
the season most of them report satisfactory .sport. 
There are still many fishermen on their streams at pres- 
ent writing, and the parties who take the second half 
of the fishing in certain waters have only recently gone 
into camp. 
Messrs. Ivers Adams and Walter M. Brackett are 
still, at this date, upon their rivers, the Moisie and Ste. 
Marguerite, respectively, Avhere the sport is yet at its 
height. The Restigouche and Cascapedia Salmon Clubs 
report a number of members still upon the pools. Some 
of them will go to Lake St. John for the ouananiche 
fishing, before returning home, and others will stay 
over for a time at Murray Bay, but the majority return 
directly home from the rivers. Mr. R. E. Plumb has 
already gone from the Natashquan, where his party en- 
joyed good sport, and the Messrs. Adams, Jr., of Bos- 
ton, and Mr. - Sampson, who was their guest, from the 
Moisie. Mr. Morton Paton of New York passed 
through Quebec on the 7th inst., from the Trinitj^ 
which he fished in company with Messrs. Edson Fitch 
and Vesey Boswell. This party has 109 fish to its rec- 
ord for the season. The sea trout were rather late this 
season at Trinity, so that the fishing for them was 
scarcely at its best when the party left the river. Trin- 
ity Bay offers about the best sea trout fishing to be 
found anywhere. 
The Godbout is being fished by Messrs. John Man- 
uel and nephew of Ottawa and Col. Whitehead and Mr. 
Law of Montreal. This remarkable river had jdelded 
348 salmon to four rods this j^ear up to the loth inst., 
and is still being fished. I recalled some of the remark- 
able scores made on the Godbout, when reading the 
boast made a few days ago by an English sportsman 
in Chambers' Journal. In this publication Mr. W. A. 
Sommerville reports the killing of 53 salmon by him in 
one week on the Corrib River in Galway. I was con- 
versing with Mr. Napoleon Comeau, the well-known 
occasional correspondent of Forest and Stream the 
other day, on the subject of scores, and he referred me 
to the fact that some years ago he had made the rec- 
ord catch of 57 salmon in one day on the Godbout. In 
three days of that season nearly 400 fish were killed by 
three rods in the river. Of course this fishing was 
merely to establish a record. The river is now prac- 
tically swarming with fish. The early run this season 
made a good average in size. The present run yields 
an average of about ten pounds. 
Speaking of numbers it is interesting to note that 
the yield of the nets at the mouth of the Moisie for one 
day this season was eight hundred fish. These nets 
have been so judiciously employed for the last half 
century or so that the angling in the Moisie now is as 
good as ever it was, thus illustrating what may be ac- 
complished by a wise understanding between angling 
and netting interests and the close observance of pru- 
dential legislation, coupled with some scientific knowl- 
edge of the subject. It should be noted, too, that the 
Messrs. Holliday, who succeeded to their father's in- 
terests in the netting privilege of the Moisie many years 
ago, still maintain a hatchery on the river. I am £or- 
warding this letter from the establishment at the mouth 
of the Moisie, which I hope to ascend to-day, returning 
with some practical experience at the "Anglers' Camp," 
eighteen miles up the river. 
I find that besides shipping enormous quantities of 
fresh salmon from this and other North Shore streams 
to the American and Canadian markets, the Messrs. 
Holliday send large quantities of the split and salted 
fish to Europe where the salt is partially extracted and 
the fish smoked ready for consumption. The process 
of preparing the fish for this market is a very interest- 
ing one, and Captain Sands of Denmark, an old ship 
captain, who has charge of it, tells me that the product 
of Scotch, Norwegian and other European rivers is 
now very far from sufficient to supply the German and 
D anish demands for salmon, and that the Copenhagen 
firm represented by him imports immense quantities of 
Pacific Coast as well as Atlantic Coast salmon for their 
European trade. 
The Hollidays are not limited to the Moisie for 
their supply of salmon, but employ the iron coasting 
steamship "King Edward" in collecting the supply of 
fish netted at the mouths of the other North Shore 
streams. As this ship also carries the anglers who 
fish these northern waters, it may readily be imagined 
that its atmosphere is laden to overflowing with fishing 
stories. Its commander, Captain Picken, has sailed in 
every sea and has a good fund of his own. 
Fishiog for Swordfish. 
One of Captain Picken's most interesting experiences 
was fishing for swordfish off the coast of Peru. The 
small craft used are birch-bark canoes, very much like 
those used by the ' North American Indians, but of 
larger size. The canoemen are also of Aztec or Indian 
origin. The fishing tackle consists of a harpoon four 
feet long, attached to about 130 fathoms of line. The 
fish float lazily on the surface of the warm placid 
water,, apparently asleep, for the canoemen approach 
quite close to them before hurling the harpoon into 
them. Then the excitement begins. The fish darts 
down, but finding no relief, commences a series of wild 
rushes and giddying gyrations, now switching the boat 
sharply around and around, and now towing it with 
frightful velocity. Some hours are frequently occupied 
in killing one of these fish. That described by Captain 
P.-cken measured 19 feet in length. 
The captain had naturally heard a great deal from the 
American anglers traveling on his ship of the sport 
afforded by the Lake St. John ouananiche, some of 
which seemed very much more incredible to him than 
many of his own stories. Yet none of them are un- 
familiar to frequenters of those northern waters. So 
much stranger do the experiences of others appear to 
us than those of our own! 
Messrs. Bayard Dominick and Dr. Smith and son of 
New. York have gone home after enjoying excellent 
sport on the Mistassini, notwithstanding that they ar- 
rived on the river very late. This Mistassini, which 
i-^ a salmon river on the north shore of the St. Law- 
rence, must not be confounded with the famous 
ouananiche river of the same name flowing into Lake 
St. John. 
PoIIutioa of Rivers. 
There is very much cause for alarm in Canada over the 
subject of river pollution. The increased demand for 
pulp has led to a very large increase in the number of 
saw and pulp mills in the backwoods of the Dominion, 
and these are, very unfortunately, erected in many cases 
upon the banks of some of the best salmon and trout 
streams, and with an utter disregard of the law prohibit- 
ing the pollution of rivers. I know of salmon rivers 
which have been completely ruined in this manner. As 
an illustration of the extent to which this evil has grown, 
it is only necessary to refer to the last annual report of 
the late Mr. L. Z. Joncas, Government Superintendent of 
Fish and Game, addressed to the Minister at the head of 
the department. He states that upon the occasion of an 
official trip into the country north of Montreal for the 
purpose of observing how the law was obeyed, he found a 
very alarming state of things with reference to the future 
of the fisheries in that part of the Province. During the 
trip he visited thirty-nine mills and found that not only 
was there not a single one with a fishway, as required by 
law, but that all the mill owners deliberately threw the 
sawdust and other refuse from their mills into the dis- 
charges of the lakes and into the rivers, a condition of 
affairs which is bound to work the total ruin of the 
fisheries unless the proper remedy is at once applied. 
[We have in hand and shall publish, in our next issue 
a valuable report on certain investigations into the effects 
of sawdust on fish.] 
Fishing Stories* 
The present season's, crop of fishing stories in this 
country promises to be outdone by that from the other 
side of the water. The Mr. Sommerville, whose ex- 
perience in the Corrib River has been already referred 
to, tells of two salmon rising to him at the same time, 
and claims that he hooked them both. 
An angler who was fishing the Avon, near Tomintoul, 
with a trout fly recently; says that he hooked a trout 
about three inches long which was instantly killed by a 
grilse of four pounds. Feeling an unexpected strain, 
and not aware of the incident, he worked gently to the 
side, and secured the grilse in his landing-net. Then 
the grilse let go its hold of the trout, which was still 
on the hook. 
I was shown at Moisie, yesterday, a salmon fly with 
part of a broken cast attached, which had been taken 
out of a net in which salmon were captured, and was 
told that on previous occasions a salmon fly has been 
found attached to the mouth of netted salmon, all of 
which tends to prove that even so apparently slight an 
injury as a hook in the mouth sends the fish straight 
back to its hospital in salt water. 
Last night I watched Mr. Holliday's men taking the 
salmon out of a net. Almost the third part of a fish 
of over twenty pounds weight was missing. It had 
been bitten clean away by a seal, while entangled in the 
meshes of the net. E. T. D. Chambers. 
A consignment of 20,000 rainbow trout ova are en 
A'oyage from the hatchery of Mr. Moreton Frewen, In- 
n; shannon, County Cork, to Japan for exhibition at the 
Japan exhibition at Tokio in the coming summer. The 
ova were fertilized and then spread on muslin troughs 
covered with two inches of damp moss, the whole being 
hermetically sealed in a can. By the time the can com- 
pletes its voyage, some 11,000 miles, the ova will be al- 
most hatched out. — London Fishing Gazette. 
Canoe and Camp Life Along the 
Delaware River. 
XVII.— A Side Trip to a Trout Stream,— Fly-Castiog a 
Saw Creek, Pennsylvania, 
I'm just a jolly little trout I 
Darting, flashing, leaping out 
From my home beneath the bank, 
Where the ferns grow tall and rank! 
Ripples, shadows, dance 'and play 
Through my pool both night and day. 
King am I in this iriy nook; 
Joyous in my forest brook. 
—Soliloquy of the Brook Trout. 
It is the mountain to the sea 
That makes a messenger of me; 
And lest I loiter on the way, 
And lose what I am sent to say, ' ' 
It sets my music to a song, 
And bids me sing it all day long. 
Farewell, for here the stream is slow, 
And I have many a mile to go. 
— Monologue of the Trout Brook. 
My comrade has at last grown weary of the river. He 
sits here under the shadow of Mt. Mihsi, and looks list- 
lessly at the marvelous play of light through and under 
all the lines of silver palaces made by drifting cloud- 
masses, and at their shadows over the league-long hill- 
ranges, and their reflections in the deep, still water just 
where the Delaware breaks through the Water Gap. Yet 
he sees nothing, and voices his lack of interest: 
"All very well; biit I have had this sort of thing for 
UNFENCED NATURE. 
many weeks. I would not care to hear the finest orchestra 
forever. I am ashamed to fish any more for these bass. 
Had more than my share a month ago. I must go to 
town, or get further away from folks. Want it tamer or 
wilder." 
"Where are your eyes and ears, man? All these wooded 
hills freshly washed, and a rainbow with one end vivid, 
and-^" 
"Ain't wild enough to suit me. Reef that smile ; that 
widow is in Boston now ; so I'm not going back to Nar- 
rowsburg. Going to town, unless you will go to Saw 
Creek with me at daylight to-morrow." 
Useless to argue when his mind is "sot!" I know that 
the long-continued dry weather means only half the usual 
volume of water in the trout stream from which I brought 
away nearly two hundred beauties two years ago. The 
fish will see us and hide; the season is far advanced, the 
water too warm, and the trout are at the mouths of the 
spring rivulets. But I realize that the stream and its 
woods are singularly wild and attractive. And I should 
miss my comrade. 
Five o'clock the next morning finds us leaving the Gap 
in a double-seated surrey behind fast steppers pravided 
by host Johnson,- of the Glenwood House at the Gap. 
AFTER LUNCHEON. 
We pass through that famous region of high hills and 
winding river, and on to Shoemaker, about twelve miles 
from the Gap, There we turn to the left, cross the Big < 
Bushkill River, drive four miles into woods, and are at 
the Decker cottage on the bank of Saw Creek. Here is 
- where the whippoorwills, male and female, sat on the 
fence two years ago and the female sang the well-known I 
notes for five minutes, as mentioned in a former number 
of this series. The stream is roaring down through the 
woods, not ten rods back of the house. The feverish 
longing to hasten the jointing of the rods and the actual 
casting of flies, is strong upon us. We drive a half mile 
I 
