260 
POHEST AND STREAM. 
[Oct. 3, 1903. 
Mr. Swaync, of Wisconsin, got a fine moose last month 
while fishing on the Triton Tract; Mr. Armvis got another 
small one at Lake Edward; Mr. Darling, of New York, 
one on the limits of the Quebec Piscicultural Association, 
while two Quebec boys, Arthur Chambers and Rockett 
Power, were lucky enough to get a splendid moose with 
a good head about thirty miles back from. Lake Edward. 
I'he lads had been fishing and saw the moose emerge from 
the woods on the opposite side of the lake like a small 
moving mountain. Sighting their rides, one a .44 Marlin, 
the other a Stevens .38-55, at four hundred yards, they 
fired together, and brought down their quarry, both bul- 
lets taking cfTect. Mr. George E. Hart, while fishing the 
otiier day on Lake des Passes, was almost run down by a 
.splendid bull caribou, which got safely away from him, 
nolwithstaiuhug that several shots were fired after him 
from the cn noc. .Several caribou have since been killed, 
on both the Tourilli and Triton Tracts by anglers who 
wkcre carrying rifles with them over portages and in their 
eanoes. 
Successful Trout Fishing. 
Some of the trout fishermen are still in the woods, not- 
withstanding that the fishing terminated on the 30th inst. 
llaviug packed up their trout rods they are now out with 
rifles looking for big game. There will certainly be some 
interesting fhh stories when they return home, for the 
last month of the trout fishiiig season this year has yielded 
better sport than for a number of years past. Lake Ed- 
ward has not produced so many six-pound trout for many 
seasons as it lias during the "last few weeks. y\lmost 
equally satiifartory reports come from all the fish and 
game clulw in uorihcrn Quebec. In Lake des Passes, in 
Lake Bniiscaii, in tlic Lij;hlcning River and the River 
Moisc on ihc I riton Club limits, ilie fisliing during the 
last month li.is bicn simply superb. The fish have not 
only been pKntiful, but have run large as well. Cloudless 
daj-s, \viih n warm, bilmy air, and cool, starlight nights 
that pniiucd the woods with crimson and gold, made the 
out-of-door life a continual benediction. The beauty of 
all created things wiiliin the range of vision and the pro- 
fusion and wc:ilth of tisli and forest life in these high 
latitudes arc an in.^pirniion at all times to those of us 
who love to hold comunmion with nature, to study to be 
sometimes quid, ami to go a-fi.sln'ng; and though, as 
Father \Valion reuiiiul.s us, "Everything is beautiful in 
his season," ii fccuis to me that the season of all seasons 
for the matured and perfect bcatUy of nature's year is the 
month of Sepltmlicr, at least in the sun-kissed forests of 
northern Canada. The heavy trout which sought the cool 
retreat of the deepest holes during the months of July and 
August felt the bracing clTecls of a few cold nights", and 
freely rose to the anglers' flics in the soft dreamy light 
of the recent balmy September days. General j". Fred 
Pearson and General McKibbin were among those who 
enjoyed exceptionally good sport on the Triton Tract. 
The members of the Mctabetchouan Club fared equally 
well. They never had better fishing than durhig the last 
month. I\rr. Wilco.x, of New York, and Mr. W. D. 
Bishop, of Bridgeport, who have spent some time on the 
club waters since Senator Piatt came away, have made 
some excellent catches. On Lake Commissaire several 
members of the Nonantum Club remained at the club 
house until the end of the season. Among them were 
Mr. Brown, of New Haven, president of the club, and Mr. 
A. W. Hooper, of Boston, a prominent member of the 
Winchester Arms concern. They have had splendid 
sport, taking a number of five-pound trout on the f\y, 
both in Big Ear Lake and also in Haycock's Pool in Lake 
Commissaire. 
Heavy MabkinoDge. 
Opposite Brockville, in the St. Lawrence, a party of 
Montreal anglers had the good fortune to kill two maski- 
nonge, both exceeding thirty pounds in weight, a few 
dajs ago. Of course much larger ones are occasionally 
tak< n in the St, Lawrence, and I have before me a letter 
tellinc; of a maskinonge taken in Lake Bemidji, Minn., 
a f< w \yeeks ago, which is said to have measured four jfeet 
seven inches in length and to have tipped the scales at 
fifty-four pounds. But two in one day weighing over 
thirty pounds each is a catch not to be despised. 
E. T. D. Chambers. 
Fishing Up and Down the Potomac. 
S^a Spots and Potomac Fishiag. 
The sum of human knowledge is so small, and resist- 
ance of belief to the unaccustomed so strong, that the 
suggestion of even a remote relation between Old Sol's 
freckles and a fishing line is apt to excite derision rather 
than inquiry, yet circumstantial evidence, or perhaps it 
would be more accurate to say a series of coincidences, 
would seem to establish an intimate connection. 
There are many agriculturists who regulate their rural 
routine by the phases of the moon. It is notorious that 
potatoes planted in the dark of the moon thrive best. 
Anglers, too, have found our satellite a guide to seasons 
when they may catch and when they are sure to fail. 
There is an old lunar calendar for anglers fitted for 
every day in the year which declares the very best, the 
middling and the poor days in which to try for nibbles. 
If the inconstant moon may thus point out the days 
and nights when fishing is good, why should it be con- 
sidered impossible that the parent and supporter of our 
universe should determine the years of plenty and the 
years of famine of our watery harvests? 
The period of maxima of sun-spots has not been very 
accurately determinedi,^ It was for long thought to be 
ten and a half years f a later authority fixed the period 
at 1 1. II years, and, roughly speaking, eleven years haS: 
been the average for the comparatively few years the 
subject has been under investigation with the aid of 
modern appliances that will in time make a scientific Re- 
duction possible. ' ■ • . • - • ' 
The later recurrences of sun-spot maxima took place in 
1848, '60, '70, '81, '92, 1903. The period is not quite fixed, 
as it is twelve years from '48 to' '60, and ten from '60 to 
'70, but the eleven years average held good. 
Beside the eleven-year "period is' the shadow of one at 
nine years, and indications which seem' to point to a grand 
climacteric in fifty-six year periods which has been' at- 
tributed to, or at least, a coincidence noted' with- the 
occurrence of the conjunction of a couple of the major 
planets, but these we need not take into account. For 
our purposes the fairly established eleven-year periods are 
plenty. .. ^ 
The curves of sun-spot recurrence are far from regular. 
As an mstance, the decrease from i860 did not reach a 
mmimum in 1865 and then mount again to 1870, but 
there was a diminution for seven years to 1867, and then 
a thaximum reached again in three years or 1870. 
The cause, the progress and the influence of these spots 
have not yet been clearly demonstrated by science, but a 
comparison with tabulated observations of other meteoro- 
logical phenomena has, it has been universally conceded, 
shown such coincidence of recurrence as to establish 
some intimate connection, if not prove a direcf effect, 
from this cause. 
Among these is excessive rainfall; while freshets may 
occur in any year locally, the general devastation which 
comes with such regularity throughout the States having, 
of course, its worst demonstration in the immense valley 
of the Mississippi, comes with singular coincidence about 
those years when the sun-spots are at a maximum. 
Take as an instance the floods in the Central Mississippi 
Valley and '81, '92 and 1903 coincide exactly with the 
sun-.spot periods, though it would not be fatal to the ar- 
gumciU if they did not. Floods a year before or a year 
after the maximum sun-spot date would still be referable 
to the same causes, since excessive precipitation may 
run along for two or three years during the sun's high 
point for spots. 
It is not claimed that high water is always fatal to 
good fishing. In salmon fishing, for example, patient 
anglers must sometimes wait until there is a "spate" or 
freshet on before the fish will rise. In the rock-bound 
lakes of the north no harm is done save a little rise in the 
waters, and in mountain streams where mud does not 
follow rain a few hours' fall may leave the stream as 
inviting as before; but in low ground rivers, in settled 
communities, where the destruction of the forests sends 
the water hurrying all at once to the channels, and where 
the fields along the riverside send their yellow drainage 
to its bed at once, days must pass and sometimes weeks, 
in a stream hundreds of miles long, like the Potomac, be- 
fore there is any reward for wetting a fly or watching a 
bob. 
Last year the rains were so heavy and so many that 
few fish were caught; and this year has been one of dis- 
appointment to the anglers of the Potomac, for there have 
been few days since the season opened when the water 
has not been discolored. 
A still more serious result in the lessening of the bass 
supply by floods is in the destruction of spawn beds. As 
is well known it has been found impracticable to arti- 
ficially propagate bass— not only from the difficulty of 
stripping the milt from the living buck, but because the 
roe is so viscid as to at once adhere to any thing it 
touches and clings so closely to the bottom of the re- 
ceiving pan as to interfere with the fertilization of the 
ova. This, fortunately, is no great drawback to stocking 
waters with bass, since pre-eminent among fishes as 
nurses the parent bass take such good care both of nests 
and young as to raise a great proportion of . their pro- 
geny, and so any waters with favorable environment may 
be easily peopled with this king of the rod and platter 
simply by the introduction of a few pairs. 
His nest is a bowl of gravel which is carefully cleaned 
and the ova adhere to this gravel. Freshets in the spawn- 
ing season work great havoc to the crop not only by 
washing out the gravel beds if the flood is strong enough, 
but in covering the beds with mud, and thus smothering 
the eggs and young. 
To this must be added the dangers of heavy floods to 
the local stock by the washing down of both young and 
adult fish caught in the torrent. Instinct sends the fish 
with fixed abodes to favorite places of shelter when the 
storm threatens, but, as with man, their places of shelter 
are sometimes destroyed. So altogether flood years may 
be taken as most disastrous to the supply of bass in the 
Potomac; and add to this the days and weeks when the 
stream is yellow and thick with the waste of the valleys 
hastening to the sea, and the angler's heart grows sick 
with the hope deferred of a holiday by the river's brim. 
The application of this theory has been confined to the 
PotOi)i:ic, where experience has den-.onstrated there must 
be .scmething in it, but it is readily conceded that dis- 
similar circumstances and conditions may m.ike flood 
years or sun-spot years good fishing in other localities. 
As a case in point, the Great Arnerican Bottom, a val- 
ley nearly ninety miles long on the Mississippi River, on 
the Illinois side from Alton, past St. Louis to Grand 
Tower, and from three to five miles broad, has been over- 
flowed in the sun-spot periods for the last thirty years. It 
:s just drying out from a recent flood; it should be 
threatened next year, and there is a reasonable certainty 
of trouble in 1914. The river-bed has been silted up, 
leaving a depression between the channel and the Illinois 
bluffs four or five miles, away. 
When a general flood comes,, this valley is so covered 
with water that steamboats may reach the bluffs in places, 
and there, is a sea of five miles in breadth and an average 
depth of four or five feet full of the fish from the river. 
As the waters subside these are gradually let down into 
a chain of narrow lakes down the center of ^he valley, 
and these lakes become tremendously overstocked. In the 
following year, when the waters have had a chance to 
clear, these overstocked lakes sometimes afford, the most 
wonderful fishing in the world; at any rate no angler's 
story has yet been written that is any exaggeration over 
the sport that has been secured under the.se conditions 
with fly and bait in this Iccality. 
One other suggestion occurs in connection with poor 
fishing.years in the Potomac. and that is if the destruction 
of fish is not too serious, the discolored Waters act. as a 
close law or protection by preventing the capture of the 
bass^ and as a consequence one is jystified in expecting 
vety much better scores when the good seasons, arrive. 
This river has proven one of the very .best as a. country 
by adoption for both the black basses; the small-mouth 
thriving in the rocky channels of the system above Great 
Falls,, and the large-niouthjhas found the great tidewater 
estuary, below just suited to his needs. The latter in 
particular has so multiplied as to form, an important fac- 
tor of the- netters': income, and .the great number rap- 
tured; m ibis way only ha« prevented iht fif^ mjle* be- 
low Washington from being as famous as the Florida 
streams lor size and numbers of its yield. 
Henrv Talbott. 
Lake Champlain Pollution. 
Strong pressure is being brought to bear on the State 
authorities to_ close the two pulp mil's whose refuse is 
said to be poisoning the waters of Lake Champlain, the 
Bouquet and Au Sable rivers, and the waters of the Au 
Sable chasm. The warfare between the Lake Champlain 
residents and the owners of the pulp mills has been on 
for over ten years now, and the latter have invariably 
won out, their mills never ceasing to grind, despite all 
dictnms of the law. 
A'Teanwhile hundreds of tons of fish, according to an 
.Tccredited authority, have b=en killed, either being thrown 
up on the shore or remaining in the lake, still further add- 
ing to its pollution. It is asserted by property owners 
along the lake that poisonous substances from the mills 
are being discharged into it in such large quantities that 
unje-;.'; the practice is stopped fishing in the lake will be 
ruined wiUiin a few years. Added to this the shore line 
for many miles on the New York side of the lake, it is 
reported, has been rendered unsightly by accumraulations 
of noxious slime, to say nothing of the destruction of the 
grand historic forests in the interests of the owners of the 
pulp mills. 
Early this last simimer formal complaint was made to 
the State authorities by riparian owners on the lake, and 
in response to their representations Prof. Qlin H. 
Landreth, of Schenectady, consulting engineer of the State 
Department of Health, has finished an official investiga- 
tion, which, it is said, will result in definitely establishing ■! 
the fact that the waters of Lake Champlain are polluted i 
by the sludge from the two mills. It is believed that on 
the basis of the report that will soon be made to Governor J 
Odell by Prof. Landreth the Governor can proceed under • 
section 6 of the public health law to force the local offi- 
cials to abate the nuisance. 
On his tour of investigation Prof. Landreth was accom- 
panied by Edward P. Hatch, jr., of the firm of Lord & 
Taylor, of this city, who, as a large property owner in 
the Lake Champlain section, has been active in the fight 
against the pulp mill nuisance. When seen by a representa- 
tive of Forest and Stream, Mr. Hatch said he thought 
that the evidence obtained by Prof. Landreth was conclu- 
sive in substantiating the complaints made by the property ' 
owners along the lake, "We first looked into the pollu- 
tion of the Bouquet River," said Mr. Hatch, "by what is 
called the soda mill of the New York and Pennsylvaniai 
Company, one of the chief offenders in this direction. 
This company uses poplar logs and the refuse of the tons, 
of chemicals is carried out into the lake. Prof. Landreth 
made soundings to find out about the banks in the lake 
formed^ by this refuse — a gray precipitate. These banks 
are agitated and spread through the water every time 
a strong wind blows. He also took samples of the slime 
that was to be found on the banks, 
"From the neighborhood of the Bouquet River we went 
along to Willsboro Bay, and on the shores and the point 
we found the same conditions of pollution apparent. The 
Au Sable River water looked like coffee, and has such a 
fetid odor that it made one of the ladies in the party 
ill. A dog we had with us refused to drink the water, 
and even the cattle, we are told, will not drink it. 
"The hack drivers at Au Sable Chasm told us that 
visitors were now noticing the odor from the water. It is 
now a well-known fact that the discharge of chemicals 
from the mill into the Au Sable River has left a sedi- 
rnent in the chasm which throws off an extremely offen- 
sive odor, kills vegetation, and coats the rocks with slime. 
This substance collects on the eddies of the river, where 
it pours through the chasm, and has practically ruined its 
attractiveness as a resort. 
"The water mains of the village of Keeseville are known 
to have become so clogged with the refuse from the mills 
that rnuch of the_ force of the water has been lost. The 
attention of the insurance campanies has been called to 
this feature of the case, and their representatives are now 
making an examination with a view to cancelling poHcies 
or raising rates, if the reports are substantiated. 
"The position of the mill owners is simply one of dol- 
lars and cents. It is conceded that the refuse can be dis- 
posed of in other ways, but in no way so cheaply as dump- 
ing it into the stream on which the mills are located, and 
so for financial reasons they are ' likely to continue the 
practice until compelled to stop it. 
"The waters of Lake Champlain, once so noted for 
their purity, will in a few years be polluted beyond re- 
demption. The enormous amount of impurities that are 
dumped into the lake by the Wellsboro and Au Sable 
pulp mills for at least ten years has pretty nearly con- 
verted a part of the lake into a huge sinkhole. 
"As I said before, the chemical deposit is not soluble. 
It is a precipitate, and sinks to the bottom, but is of such 
light specific gravity that the slightest disturbance of 
the water will suspend it, and send it to discolor and be- 
foul the shores. 
"The State chemist of Vermont tells me that after each 
west wind quantities of dead fish come ashore, and the 
peculiar odor and taste of the water in Burlington is due 
to the same cause. The stones on the shore of Four 
Brothers Islands and Wellsboro Point are covered with 
slime, and I have seen a long streak of the pollution as it 
spread itself in a 'milky way' on its travels down the 
lake. 
"As the two mills are daily dumping tons of impurities 
into the waters of the lake, it is a self-evident proposition 
that in a few years, unless something is done, the whole 
body of water will become a cesspool. Immediate action 
must be taken to preserve the waters that hL^tory and 
nature have rnade famous throughout the world. 
"The_ mill o\yners say they wish to abide by the law, 
but claim that although they have spent enormous sums 
of money for the purpose they cannot dispose of the bane- 
ful residuum. All poppycock. 
"I have talked with the leading citizens of Keeseville, 
and they are in great distress over the destruction of the 
Au Sable River and the personal inconvenience the 
nuisance is causing them. They cannot drink the water, 
and the plumbing is so choked with refuse that it neces- 
sitates frequent pverbauliiig. The proprietor of the hotej 
