Sept. 26, 1903.] 
FOREST AND STREAM, 
these a split bamboo six-foot casting-rod of six and a 
half ounces, a beauty that was humiliated into doing dutj' 
as a trolling rod for maskallonge, with no better reward 
than several wall-eyed pike of six pounds and over. 
Our assortment of flies we fondly thought fit to tempt 
the coyest fish are still undisturbed in the books ; a couple 
of batteries already rigged were sufiicient to persuade us 
that flies were comparatively useless in the waters we 
visited. There are no trout in that country and the bass 
feed deep. 
We reached the foot of Muskoka Lake early in August 
in the gray dawn with a drizzle from the northeast to 
chill the marrow. Colfee is not understood at the only 
place open at that hour in Gravenhurst. We had left 
a hot wave in the south and here were mid-winter con- 
ditions for heat fag and open pores. We shivered under 
two or three fluf¥3' blankets that night, but this only lasts 
a day or two. This Lake Muskoka, the largest of this 
group, is of the color of old cider vinegar. There are 
several sawmills about the foot of the lake, one of these 
burning its refuse in a cylindrical furnace, and it is 
assumed that none of them are permitted to dump in 
the lake, as the cottagers on the islands are subject to 
embarrassing restrictions in the matter of hygienic dis- 
posal of garbage. Many of the bays in the lower end 
of the lake are filled with saw logs rafted down from 
above and anchored with booms. 
A few days later, in a visit to Bracebridge, up the 
Muskoka River, we found the source of the ugly color 
of Muskoka waters. 
Here are located immense tanneries which pour a thick 
red liquor into the stream all day long, and the ground 
tanbark of the. color of logwood is piled along the banks 
for roads and fillings, and its drainage is carried away to 
the lake. 
Discoloration alone Is not always fatal to fish, and 
water off the peat bogs in Scotland, eastern Canada, and 
other places, sometimes affords good fishing when of a 
shade 'twixt honey and Orleans. But the chem- 
icals and tannin in this liquor of the tan mills poured 
down day after day with a cumulative effect that would 
in time ruin Lake Superior, has already lost for Muskoka 
its reputation among anglers — and must soon make its 
waters distasteful to its peopk for culinary purposes. 
Yet, judging by the course of events here at home, in- 
dustries are' not likely to be disturbed, even to the extent of 
asking them to take care of their own refuse, where the 
right to pollute public waters has become "vested." 
At the head of Muskoka is a little rapid out of Lake 
Rosseau, and steamboats plying both lakes use a lock 
with about a three-foot lift; enough, let us hope, to save 
the waters of the upper lakes for some further while from 
the filthy tan refuse of Bracebridge. Our destination was 
a couple of little islands toward the upper end of Lake 
Rosseau, and our first morning we set out to hunt fish. 
The most striking feature of these northern lakes to 
cne accustomed to the warmer pools and streams of the 
south, is the absence of visible life in or about the clear, 
cold, healthy-looking waters (except Muskoka). 
No fish break the surface ; no turtles bask on the logs, 
though the snapper is occasionally taken with the hook; 
the harmless garter and water snakes are very rarely 
seen ; no moss on the surface or in the depths ; no lily- 
pads save dwarfed stragglers in the quiet shallow reaches 
of the short streams between the lakes. 
The beds of these lakes are said to be the results of 
the infinite denuding forces of the glacial period, but it 
is impossible to fit a theory of currents that will account 
for the irregular cavities dug out to reputed depths of 
nearly two thousand feet; but the holes are there, filled 
with clear, cold water (except Muskoka), and the rocks 
are mostly bare and roiuided by the great drift. The 
sides of shores and islands are usually steep, and the 
pitch continues so abruptly down beneath the waters that 
in places one may tie the bow of the boat to the shore 
and fish in forty feet of water at the stern. 
Remarkably few insects were seen on the lakes, no 
vegetation pouring to the water's brim to harbor them; 
no mosquitoes, or practically none ; no black flies ; no 
midges. The only large winged insect, besides an occa- 
sional LimulidcB, was a black lace-wing larger than a 
May fly that was numerous and busy at early candle 
light. It was harmless and stupid, and had to be brushed 
out of the way at table or around the camp-fire. It 
covered the ridge-poles of the tents in the morning, but 
was never seen in the open by daylight, and probably had 
no part in the fish economy. 
This big fellow was identified at the Agricultural De- 
partment as Polystoccothes punctatus, a link related to 
the ant and aphis lions, and lil'le is yet known of his 
class. Mr. Chittenden, of the Department, has taken them 
occasionally at Ithaca, N. Y., but they fairly swarmed 
under the hemlocks at Crane Lake. 
Four specimens were brought loose in a pasteboard box 
and on opening it seven days later only one savage fellow 
remained, and he had eaten his three tnates, leaving only 
the tiniest fragments of wings and chitine. 
If these had been collected by an expert, chloroformed 
and stuck on a pin, science would not yet know that they 
are carnivorous and cannibals when in the perfect or 
winged state, though in the larval stage they are expected 
to be always hungry. 
We saw no schools of minnows while away, and no 
minnow net save one we took with us and had no occa- 
sion to unlimber. 
W.e tried c?rth wonns about tlie r.pper end of Rosseau, 
and took some small bass and large yellow perch, fishing 
on the bottom at six or seven feet. 
Off the Venezian group of islands, near Clevelands, 
and at points above the Royal Muskoka, we were told 
good bass fishing could be found, but we did not find it. 
On the day before our arrival a 5-pound small-mouth 
black bass was said to have beeti taken in Indian River, 
just below Port Carlin, hut this short river was very 
muddy from the operation of a little dredge for every 
day that we saw it. 
We saw nothing but pan fish, as perch or sunfish, 
caught by any parties, and all with whom we talked spoke 
discouragingly of any prospects of fly-fishing. Some ac- 
counted for scarcity of fisli on the theory that the won- 
derfitl popularity of the locality as a summer resort, with 
its hundreds of season residents and thousands of trip- 
pers, had ^bausted the former plenty. On the oi|ie|- 
hand, it was said that one cottager had a seine to be 
hauled in Lake Rosseau which could with difficulty be 
landed, containing, besides bass and salmon trout, im- 
mense quantities of so-called lake herring. His theory 
was that there was such an abundance of feed in the 
waters that the game fishes were never hungry. 
VVhateyer may have been the reason, we found no fly- 
fishing; it may be only that we were in such complete 
ignorance of the life of these fish, and to know the fish is 
the biggest half of the art of angling. 
From Lake Rosseau we took a launch, towing our 
boats and dunnage through Joseph River and Lake 
Joseph to the head of Portage Bay, paddling through 
a ditch into Portage Lake and camping at its head. 
About a shallow here we picked up a few small bass and 
sunfish with the fly, but nothing encouraging. 
A sixteen-mile portage by wagon brought us to Jen- 
nings, at the head of Blackstone Lake, said to be 800 feet 
deep and full of maskallonge, wall-eyed pike and bass. 
This empties through Crane River, a narrow, shallow 
outlet into Crane Lake, the greatest fishing water in the 
Parry Sound Disrtict — and that is almost equivalent to 
anywhere — but there are no trout. Of our happy camp 
here under the birches and hemlocks it is enough to say 
the summer girl would call it a dream — and so it seems 
now. 
The fishing is all that could be desired for a bob or 
bottom angler, but surface fishing is at a discount. For 
bait we had shipped from Toronto a thousand or more 
dew-worms, a great earth worm of six inches or longer, 
much like the marsh worm of the south, except they are 
lighter in color, inclined to be slimy, and not nearly so 
tough, but if one must use worms, these are of the best. 
With the worm bass are taken freely, though rarely of 
above a pound and a half, and rock bass and sunfish in 
plenty. 
The first rock bass prepared for the pan disclosed the 
yellow muscle worms in the thick flesh of the back. He 
may have been the only one so afflicted in the lake, but 
investigation went no further. Fish were so plenty it 
was no sacrifice to let the rock bass go, and he is a won- 
derfully numerous individual here — pestiferous Avhen you 
don't want him. 
The worms for bait after the first day were principally 
used on No. 14 hooks to catch small fish, which are much 
better for large fish. The guide was able to take min- 
nows, as they call all small fish, from the bow of the 
boat in four feet of water while we fished from the stern 
in twenty feet for the larger fish, and this he could do 
much faster than we could use them. 
These fish, which made excellent bait, were ring perch 
or yellow-neds up to six inches in length, and also a 
variety of chub the guides called herring. At Rat Lake, 
a small bay of Blackstone, the guides went one morning 
and brought back several buckets of this chub running to 
eight inches, quite dark above and silvery below ; these 
proved a very killing bait that was difficult to keep in the 
buckets if at all crowded, but overboard or on hook or 
troll lived longer under rougher treatment than any we 
had ever used. 
The wall-eyed pike took them nearly as freely dead as 
alive, and if one must fish with bait, the sport here is 
hard to beat. From our experience it is easy to believe 
that a boat could take a thousand pounds of fish here in 
a day. 
In two hours, from five to seven in the afternoon, we 
took here with one boat, within a half mile of cainp, 
above a hundred and fifty pounds of bass and yellow piko 
perch, not counting the small ones and rock bass returned 
to the water. 
This would have been inexcusable but for a promise to 
the superintendent of a neighboring lumber camp to ftir- 
nish the men a mess of fish. He had been kind to us in 
the matter of warm bread and even cake, and we were 
glad to reciprocate. 
The bass were mostly small-mouth, though occasionally 
a large-mouthed bass was taken, and this gives oppor- 
tunity to repeat that no man knoweth the difference be- 
tween the two until he is landed — nor on the table until 
he is told. 
The heaviest taken by our party was 3^ pounds with 
the average of the keepers, but little above a pound. The 
wall-eyed pike or yellow pike perch— the jack salmon of 
the Susquehanna, and called pickerel through this region, 
to our confusion — is said to reach 14 pounds. Seven 
pounds was our liinit ; several were caught of six arid 
e ver, and the average weight was nearly three pounds. - 
So plenti' are they that four times in the two hours' 
fishing just mentioned, three rods were playing a fish 
each, and as two of them were light fly-rods debased to 
bait uses, it was much good fortune that kept us from 
disaster. 
We found other points in the lake where these fish 
seemed as plenty, but we avoided them thereafter on 
the theory that they kept the bass away, though, wheit 
freely biting both were caught in the same places, and 
we really caught more bass with the pike-perch than 
where the bass were alone. We found a good many 
times places where the bass seemed very numerous, 
but after a little while they left. 
The waters are clear, the boat's shadow, a menace, 
ana the guides, though sure the fish could hear just 
as positive that noise in the boat or moving freely 
about, had no effect in driving them away. As a con- 
sequence, they were a little more careless and noisy 
than any we had ever seen, and remonstrance was use- 
less. The very brightness of the water makes the 
greater caution necessary, and a dead easy angler 
might have been able to find them in shallower water 
than the average 15 feet, at which we found most of 
our fish. 
To those intending to fish in Crane Lake, it is safe 
to promise more fish than you can use — more than 
any man has a right to take, but the fishing is not 
surface fishing — the fly, as far as we knew how to 
use it, useless — as was the spoon, except for trolling — 
and casting spoon or bait neither amusing nor profit- 
able where the old trees, which do not decay, have been 
accumulating along the shores for a hundred years 
and worry the angler, who drifts or casts along the 
edge, and yet with the immense middle depths it is 
along the edge he must get his fish. 
Our best success was in water so feet in depth, and 
the better way to fish was with the sinker a foot or 
more below the bait and without a bob. 
This IS the experience of a fortnight. More skill or 
inoie kitowledge may develop good fly-fishing there, 
but it seems to us improbable. 
One of our party devoted himself principally ta> 
trolling for muscallonge, but without success, as were 
the eft'oi-ts of a dozen other anglers on the lake in that 
period. The guides gave various reasons for this. 
One, that it was too late in the season — ^June and July 
being the best months. Another, that damming the 
outlet into Georgian Baj^ to secure a head of water 
for the loggers about the lake had raised the lake 
three feet above last year's stage of water. All these 
were very consoling at the time, and would be yet if 
a couple of days after his departure his host had not 
taken a 12-poimder. A Yarrum Idler. 
Some Musings at Sand Lake, Mich. 
I. — spurious Writings About Angling and Nature, 
It is astounding that so much counterfeit writing about 
sport anu nattirc passes for super-excellent work. Some 
writers actttally boast of their blindness to nature's 
beauty and grace, and secure adtniration as "realists." 
Worse, other writers rhapsodize about that beauty in ti>e 
language of the blind, while their owit writing convicts 
them of not havmg visited the scenes they inisdsscribe. 
For exaniple, here is an extract from a much exploited 
poem bv Kipling: 
"Do you know the blackened timber? Dou you know that racing 
stream. 
With the raw, right-angled log-jam at the end. 
And the bar of sun-warmed shingle, where a man may bask and 
dream 
To the click of shod canoe poles round the bend? 
It is there that we are going with our rods and reels and traces, 
To a silent, smoky Indian that we know; 
To a couch of new-pulled hemlock, with the starlight on our faces, 
For the Red Gods call us out, and we must go." 
The real log-jam consists of the mistruth and inexact- 
ness in this double quatrain. 
Stripped of its rhythm-tinsel, that "poetry" is to trite 
nature-love and insight, what a daubed chromo-picture is 
to a painting by Turner. By what poetic license can 
readers be supposed to "know" some unlocated "black- 
ened timber," and "that racing stream?" 
No actual log-jam is "raw," right-angled," or "at the 
end" of sttch a stream. It is a wonderful study of hues — 
browns, umbers, faint pinks and purples, and dull reds 
and yellows, silver of lichens and green and crimson of 
mosses. Not one canoe-pole in a thousand in either the 
United States, India (outside of army equipm.ent), Nor- 
w£y, British Columbia, or any of the Maritime Provinces 
of Canada, is "shod;" and when it is, it does not "click;" 
and if it did, even its impact on rocks "round the bend" 
would not be heard along quiet water, much less in the 
tumult and uproar of "that racing stream." Thus the 
falsehood makes the whole word-picture an affront to 
correct taste. Any megaphone "word-artist" can fling a 
potful of language-paint at a canvas; but it is reserved 
for some Quack of Error to demand that the resulting 
rent and hole in the canvas, and the "splotteration" that 
surrounds and befouls it, shall pass current for a magnifi- 
cent picture, "tender, grand, and true!" 
It would be difficult to place more false description in 
a like nttmber of words than that contained in those eight 
lines of "poetry." Its "art" is far inferior to the inten- 
tionally distorted and burlesque description, intended as 
ridicule of just such false work as this by Kipling, that 
appeared thirty years ago in a poem entitled "Caramel" 
(burned sugar), as follows: 
"The scintillant zephyrs gleam; 
The moon rides over the rack; 
The lightning rods, with cream, 
Comb their purple tresses back. 
But down where the fir trees fume. 
And the mermaids curl their teeth. 
Rath corals glide in gloom, 
And the red moon swords its sheath." 
Finally, note the rough, bungling words, "It is there 
that we are going," in the above citation from Kipling, 
and the pompous conceit of the words, "Red Gods !" 
What a credit and honor he deems it that he is possessed 
of those crimson deities ! What a triumph of absurdity 
to give such a name to the heart-longing, so natural, sim- 
ple and beneficent, to be right with Nature. 
The word "traces" is meaningless — an Anglicism that 
refers to a section of spinning tackle that is never used 
on "racing streams;" so "traces" is misused as a rhyme 
for "faces." An Indian is not "smoky," but dark- 
skinned. Real canoeists and anglers who are sportsmen 
would not "go" to the Indian, but to the stream. A 
"bar" is always a deposit of alluvium earth-sediment which 
has gathered and formed a mud bank or island. There 
never was a "bar" of "shingle," for that is very coarse 
gravel or small, water-worn stones to which the word 
"bar" cannot be correctlj' applied. (See Standard Dic- 
tionary for definitions of these words.) No sportsman 
v/ould dream of sitting or reclining on such a hard, hot, 
uncomfortable seat as "sun-warmed shingle." "Bask and 
dream I" The real words should have been "bake and 
steam." Neither do campers sleep on a "couch" (bed) 
of hemlock twigs if they can get spruce boughs ; and 
when they do, there is no "starlight on their faces." They 
"bask" in that as they smoke on some moss-covered log 
beside lake or stream. 
In short, that rhyming is mere fakir vociferation, 
squawking of a brood-goose on addled eggs, self-conscious, 
mountebank strut and posing, brazen assumption by 
ignorance of real truth, insight, and knowledge, bawling 
claim to Nature-photography, vivid, "picturesque" word- 
painting and virile rhyme-gospel by a wonderful, "versa- 
tile" seer. 
Such is the more offensive writing about sport and 
Nature. But laote the other extreme, a demonstration that 
another writer is blind to Nature's charms ; and far worse, 
note his boast that such blindness is admirable. A promi- 
nent sporting magazine contains in its current issue an 
article by a life-long and prominent fisher, in which he 
