Oct. 17, 1903.3 
FOREST AND STREAM 
BOB 
sits back in the bushes, where a good view of the 
stream can be had, to wait for the fish to begin feed- 
ing. A slight motion in the water tells him that the 
big fellows are coming up out of their hiding places 
and slowly moving into shallow water to lie in wait 
for the nice, fat caddis fly. 
Now the last ray of day has disappeared, and every- 
thing is quiet save the flap of a fish as he leaps for a 
flly which is rather high, or the splash of a muskrat as 
he plunges off a nearby log to pursue his nightly oc- 
cupations. The angler creeps quietly out of the bushes, 
pushing his rod ahead of him. The first few casts are 
made where the fish are not feeding, merely to get out 
a little line. Then a cast is made just behind a bunch 
of watercress, where a good-sized trout has been feed- 
ing. There is a rush, a swirl, and tht; fun begins. A 
small net is produced from somewhere, and the fish, 
a fine brook trout, is stowed away in the basket. In 
like manner several others are landed. He has_ just 
made a cast clear up to the projecting bank, a mighty 
swirl and a ting as the hook strikes solid. Now is 
the time that the angler forgets all his worldly troubles. 
A thrill of excitement shoots through him as the fish", 
"an old socker," rushes across the stream toward a 
friendly stake. To allow him to make one turn around 
this stake would mean a broken leader and a free fish. 
All this passes through the angler's mind like a flash, 
and at the risk of his tackle he holds him fast, and 
finally succeeds in turning him up stream. The slack 
line trick, with which the old trout has freed himself 
several times before, is resorted to, but the automatic 
reel is equal to the occasion, and never an inch of line 
does he get. Several more rushes, each one shorter 
than the one preceding, and he begins to sulk, occasion- 
ally coming to the surface with a splash. Thus, after 
being drawn several times almost to the net, he is 
landed, the largest of the season, a good three-pounder. 
He is rapped on the head to kill him. and this time the 
cover of the basket has to be opened, the hole in it 
being too small. 
The fish in this place being thoroughly frightened, 
our night fisher moves on to the next hole with mixed 
feelings of congratulation and anticipation. By this 
time it is far into the night and very dark. The bare 
flies fail to attract the fish so well, so. out of the depths 
of the inside pocket come the worms which are used to 
capture a few more. These being safely landed and 
put with the others in the basket, the angler, now well 
.satisfied with his catch, winds up his line, securely 
fastens it, picks his way back through the woods, and 
takes his way across the fields to his home. 
Of course, this kind of fishing is not without its diffi- 
culties. The slippery log, the overhanging tree, etc, 
hardly ever f?iil to play their part; but to the true dis- 
ciple of Izaak, these only serve to add to the fascina- 
tion of the sport, as well as to furnish pleasant 
thoughts for many a weary hour. It also brings us 
into touch with that part of nature which is only seen 
at night, and which I dare say a great many of us 
know little about. H. K. A. 
The Devirs Lake and its Big Trcut. 
Situated in the very heart of the Canadian Rockies, 
and surrounded by scenery of the grandest description, 
the watering place of Banff is one of the garden spots 
of the New World. From May to September the 
splendid hoteld built by the C. P. R. is crowded \yith 
visitors from every part of Canada and the United 
States, brought there either by the beauty of the place 
or by the fame of the natural hot sulphur springs, 
which are reputed to be an unfailing cure for rheu- 
matism and many of the other ills which poor human 
flesh is heir to. There are plenty of trout, too, and 
grayling in the Bow and Spray rivers, which join their 
waters just below the hotel, but to the angler the great 
attraction is Lake Minnewanka, or the Devil's Lake, 
nine miles away. It is a long, narrow sheet of water 
lying embosomed among the everlasting hills, and no 
one looking at it, as I did. for the first time on a per- 
fect August day, with its calm surface of brilliant blue 
unbroken by a ripple, and reflecting the mighty sur- 
rounding peaks as faithfully as a mirror, would think 
that it could possibly deserve its ill-omened name, or 
the many bad stories told of it by both red and white 
men. 
Nevertheless, the lake has always borne a bad repu- 
tation among the Indians, who are very chary of ven- 
turing upon its surface either in summer or when 
sheeted with ice in the hard Canadian midwinter. The 
popular notion is that deep down in mid lake His Sa- 
tanic Majesty has his abode, or at least one of his 
abodes, and that if anyone afloat ofifends him in any 
way, either by word or deed, a huge hand and arm is 
thrust up out of the depths, and both boat and occu- 
pants dragged down to a watery grave. A sure way 
of giving offense and bringing retribution upon oneself 
is to sing or whistle while fishing, and even the white 
men in the neighborhood — though, of course, they pro- 
fess utter disbelief in these legends — are in reality very 
careful to suppress their musical tendencies on the lake, 
even in the calmest of summer weather. Like all long 
and narrow mountain lakes. Lake Minnewanka is very 
subject to sudden and fierce squalls, and no doubt in 
days past many a boatman has paid the penalty of 
over-confidence; hence the lake has gained its diabolic 
name and reputation, a reputation shared more or lees 
by the whole neighborhood, as a few miles away the 
Ghost River, with its uncanny name, will show. Be 
these things as they may, there is no doubt about the 
number and size of the trout who share his majesty's 
domicile in the lake. Ten, twelve and fifteen-pounders 
are common, twenty-pounders by no means rare, and 
occasional monsters of thirty pounds, and even forty 
pounds, arc dragged from the infernal regions into the 
light of day. One of over forty pounds is to be seen 
in the museum at Banff^, and Air. Astley, the host of 
the small hotel on the lake shore, has the heads and 
measurements of several over thirty pounds. 
Singularly confiding, too, are these big fellows. There 
is no need of fine tackle; anj'thing_ finer than a ship's 
cable is fine enough, and that notwithstanding that the 
water is the clearest I have ever seen. Mr. Astley him- 
seU never uses b gut trfice, but Bttache« his lure direct 
to a good, strong reel line with the best of results. The 
best, indeed, I found it the only, bait is a good-sized 
gold spoon, the efficacy of which is much increased by 
the addition of a strip cut from the side of the first 
victim. Phantom and Devon minnows I have tried in 
vain, but no doubt if I had not been trolling a spoon 
on the other side of the boat, I might have accounted 
for one or two with them. I have paid two visits to 
Lake Minnewanka — the first in August, 1899, when I 
stopped off at Banff on my way across the continent 
to hunt wapiti on Vancouver Island, an account of 
which trip appeared in the columns of the Field. 
Beautiful as Banff is, and amusing as the cosmopoli- 
tan throng of visitors was, I had not come to Canada 
for that sort of thing, and one fine morning I packed 
my bag, and two rods, a single-handed 13-foot white 
trout rod which had already been the death of many 
a white and brown trout and not a few salmon, and a 
small lo-foot Farlow, and hired a "rig" for the nine- 
mile drive through the National Park, and past the 
enclosure of 500 or 600 acres, where a thriving herd 
of some twenty buffaloes are kept. 
Arriving at the lake, I was most hospitably received 
by Mr. Astley, a good sportsman, and like many others 
in the same position in the New World, a cultured 
and refined gentleman, and, therefore, a charming com- 
panion as well as host. I set to work as soon as I had 
swallowed luncheon, and it was not long before my 
little lo-footer was bending double under the strain of 
a six-pound fish. I fished with varying success for 
two days and a half, losing many fish from the fact of 
my rods not being stiff enough to drive the big hooks 
home, and the total bag amounted to nineteen trout, 
varying from four pounds to nine and a half pounds, 
besides six grayling, caught one evening with blue- 
bottle flies, varying from one and one-half to three 
pounds. Mr. Astley told me that I was too late in the 
season to get any of the real big fellows, and that he 
very seldom got anything over twelve or fifteen 
pounds after the end of June. 
I determined, therefore, to have another try earlier, 
if anything brought me into this part of the world 
again, and last year (1902), on my way to Alaska, I 
again stopped off at Banff early in May, and after one 
night spent almost in solitude at the Sanitarium Hotel, 
as the tourist season had not yet commenced and the 
big hotel was not open, drove out along the well-re- 
membered road full of eager anticipations. Alas, when 
I arrived in view of what ought to have been an open 
sheet of water ruffled by a strong northeast wind, an 
ominous stillness was apparent, although the lake was 
still some two miles distant. It was quite obvious that 
the ice had not yet gone, and I could only hope that 
there might be enough open water to give me some 
sort of a chance. I found Mr. Astley at the door of 
his house, just the same as before, and very pleased 
to see me, and his daughter, who had been three years 
before a little golden-haired tot of ten, and a great 
friend of mine, grown into quite a big girl, and a 
trifle shyer than she used to be, but still not forgetful 
of her old friend. There were about three acres only of 
open water at the near end of the lake, and along its 
whole length of eleven miles not another spot could 
we see._ Mr. Astley was not hopeful. No trout had yet 
been killed, but if the wind did not change we could 
at least go out and try. But change it did before I 
could swallow some lunch and get the boat in the 
water, and in ten minutes the ice was grinding on the 
shore, and not enough water in sight to float an egg 
shell. 
There was nothing to be done but to try for trout in 
the Cascade River, which runs out of the lake, which 
I did all the afternoon without moving a fin. Next 
morning a good off-shore wind gave us great hopes, 
but after exactly .in hour's fishing .and a six-pound 
trout, the first of the season, round it went again, and 
home we had to go. This time I had no rods of my 
own with me, and liad bought an American split-cane 
rod at Banff, which cost $6.50, or 26 shillings. The 
wretched thing snapped short across above the reel like 
a carrot directly my first fish .struck, and I had to 
hand play the fish and borrow another rod from my 
host. The third day was worte than ever — an un- 
broken sheet of ice for some three miles from our end 
of the lake, though the gap of open water beyond was 
evidently widening, the ice having been broken up a 
good deal by the strong wind which had blown all 
night. 
This day I did not fish at all, but went for a long 
Avalk along the trail which leads through the moun- 
tains by the Ghost River country to the plains. The 
next day hope returned, there was a couple of miles 
of water at our end and an open channel a couple of 
hundred yards wide on each side for at least a mile 
further. We went at first along the right hand side, 
and, alter trolling without success until we were nearly 
at the end of this channel, I suddenly noticed that 
it was getting perceptibly narrower, although there was 
not a breath of wind. We had to turn and race for it, 
as it is an ugb' thing getting nipped in the ice, which 
moves with irresistible force on these big sheets of water 
and piles itself up sometimes 10 or 12 ftti. high on the 
shore while breaking up. We just did it .'ind no more, 
and then decided to try the onnosite channel, which 
this movement of the ice had naturally made wider. 
On our way across the end of the lake my host's 
small boy, who was with us. uiid who was trolling a 
sooon on a hand line, hooked a trout, which he hauled 
in manfully hand over hand, until he had it within a 
couple of feet of the boat. I had, meanwhile, reeled up 
my line all except a few feet, and my spoon was 
dangling close alongside. As I leaned over to gaff 
the trout for the boy, the hold gave way and the spoon 
dropped out of his mouth, but without losing a second 
he just darted round the slorn of the boat and seized 
my bait, almost pulling ro'd and all overboard. I 
caught it just in time, and, luckily, finding all clear, had 
the satisfaction, five minutes later, of landing a lusty 
nine-pounder. This shows how voracious the trout of 
this lake are just when thejrost breaks up. Two min- 
utes after I was stuck in'^'hother, but lost him after 
five minutes' play. By this time we were well into the 
left-hand channel, and here I hooked a third, which I 
landed — another nine-pounder. After trolling up the 
channel as f^r as the ice Wbuld ajlow, tuVned to go 
back, and just at the same spot where I had killed the 
last trout I found myself fast again. This was evi- 
dently a bigger fish, and a better fighter than any I 
had yet encountered, and it took several minutes to 
get on terms with him. Before I had well done so, I 
became aware of a crashing, grinding sound all round 
us, and saw the ice again in rapid motion coming back 
to us, and rapidly filling up the narrow channel and 
piling itself up in high banks on the shore. Astley ad- 
jured me to break at once before it was too late to 
get out, as, although we were so close to the shore 
that there was very little danger to ourselves, there 
was every probability ©f the boat being crushed like 
an egg shell. I dropped the rod, and with the line in 
my fingers, pulled for all I was worth, either to break 
or to haul my friend in by main force. A good, new 
reel line and a steel trace enabled me to do the latter, 
and a big, fine trout it was I pitched inboard amid a 
tangled mass of line, without even taking the hooks out 
of his mouth, just as the ice closed in on us. In a sec- 
ond we, two men and the small boy of nine, were out 
of the boat, and not without considerable exertion, had 
her up on the ice just in time to save her being stove 
in. 
We had then to drag her about 200 yards across the 
surface of the ice, which, although still some 7 or 8 
inches thick, was quite rotten on the top for about 2 
inches before we could float her again, and then ensued 
another race to the beach opposite Astley's house. 
Five minutes after we landed, all that end of the lake 
was ice-bound again, and thus ended my second ex- 
pedition to the Devil's Lake, as I had to go away next 
day, and it never cleared again before my departure. 
We agreed that although we had got the better of him 
this time, the tutelary genius (?) of the place must 
certainly have taken offense at us and have been doing 
his best to thwart us and spoil our scheme. This last 
trout was the best and biggest of the lot, weighing 
twelve pounds, and is, I suppose, the best I shall cap- 
ture in this lake, though I know from ocular experi- 
ence that many finer specimens are there to reward 
anyone lucky enough to be on the spot late in May or 
early in June. 
These trout are unlike any I have seen elsewhere, and 
the natives say they are peculiar to the lake. They are 
not handsome to look at, though broad and thick and 
well shaped. Their color is a dirty gray, and they are 
rather mottled like a mackerel than spotted like a 
trout. They have an adipose fin like all the Salmonidce, 
and their flesh is rather a pale orange than pink, but 
firm and very good to eat. I took memoranda of the 
number of fin rays. etc.. but have unfortunately lost or 
mislaid them. They are not champion fighters, and 
play rather more like a sea fish than a trout; in fact, 
they remind me strongly of the many bouts I have had 
with coalfish and lythe on the west coast of Scotland. 
Still, with my small single-handed fly-rods I had good 
enough sport with them to satisfy anyone, and on my 
last day, if the titular owner of the lake had been more 
charitably disposed, and had kept the ice off a little 
more than an hour and a half, I had three fish weigh- 
ing twelve, nine and nine pounds, respectively, and lost 
another. The chance of a forty-pounder may be re- 
mote, but they assuredly do exist, and apart from the 
charm of the locality, this chance is enough to make it 
worth the while of any sportsman traveling across 
Canada to pay a visit to the Devil's Lake. — R. Claude 
Cane in London Field. 
Pollution of Lake Champlain. 
The wealthy residents and landowners round and 
about the region of Lake Champlain have been aroused 
by the actions of the lawless clement in the Adirondacks. 
That element, emboldened by the immunity from arrest of 
the assassin of Orrando P. Dexter, last week threatened 
the life and property of Mr. Edward Hatch, Jr., whose 
preserve lies due east of the scene of the Dexter tragedy. 
These summer visitors to Lake Champlain are more de- 
termined than ever to support Mr. Hatch as leader in the 
fight against the owners of the pulp mills who have been 
turning their chemical refuse into the rivers which pol- 
lute the lake and kill the fish. They have also determined 
to make every effort to capture the men who have threat- 
ened Mr. Hatch's life, and to that end have engaged 
detectives to take up the case. 
There has been some delay in presenting the results of 
the official investigation of the waters of Lake Cham- 
plain and the Bouquet and Au Sable rivers, recently 
made by Professor Olin H. Landreth, consulting engineer 
of the State Department of Health, to Governor Odell, 
but it is expected that the 'report will be placed in the 
latter's hands earh' next week. Meanwhile the mills are 
keeping up their work of pollutiou and destruction in de- 
fiance of the law. 
With each succeeding week the ranks of the residents 
aiid property holders engaged in the fight against the 
offending mills gains in numbers, strength and influence. 
Dr. Seward Webb, who has just returned from Europe, 
has announced that he is determined to stop the lake's 
pollution. His famous preserve, Shelbume Farms, 
stretches for eight miles on the shore oppositti the river 
on which the pulp mills are located. It is expected that 
Dr. Webb's wealth and social and political influence will 
be an important factor in bringing tlie mill owners to 
terms. 
As president of the Catholic Summer Home Associa- 
tion, with its fine sweep of property on the shores of the 
lake near Plattsburgh, the Rev. Father Lavelle, rector 
of St. Patrick's Cathedral, Fifth avenue. New York, has 
interested himself in the contest. In speaking with a 
representative of Forest and Stream on the pollution of 
the lake, Father Lavelle said that he had often noticed 
the presence of impurities in the waters, which he had 
been told was_ caused by the refuse of the pulp mills. 
"However," said he, "I am not as well posted on the sub- 
ject as the superintendent of the Catholic Summer Home, 
and I will write him at once to make a full investigation 
and to let me know at the earliest moment the exact con- 
dition of affairs. I have decided to await this report be- 
fore taking an active interest in the matter." 
Mr. A. G. Paine, Jr., General Manager of the New 
York and Pennsylvania Company, was see.n in New York 
city the other day and asked to make a stsrtement in re- 
gard to ^he pulp mill nuisance. ?aid he : 
