894 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
[May 14, 1904. 
Floating Down the Mississippi. 
v.— Reelfoot Lake, Concluded. 
There are some pretty little things in the way of law- 
making which appeal to the lovers of the round-about 
and the indirect. For instance, who would suspect a 
game law as a means to perfect one's title to property 
in dispute? The law of iQOi for Tennessee (Section 
I, Chapter 91, Acts 1901) says a man must have the 
written permission of the owner of the land if he wishes 
to hunt thereon. Suppose I should claim a sandbar, 
and all hunters who came along, or even a large pro- 
portion of them, came to me and got my written per- 
mission to hunt thereon — I take the list of names of 
persons to whom I've issued permissions and shake 
them at the judge trying me for ordering a man off 
a public sandbar, using force, etc., and say: "It's mine; 
don't everybody say so, admit it, and here are these 
men — some at present in court — to testify that they ad- 
mit I own the sandbar!" A mere citizen, liable to be 
a juryman, sees the force of such an argument. Frank 
Sparks, at Tiptonville, said that there was something 
in that written permission business which smelled of 
an old man Harris notion. 
Judge Harris told me that he would give anyone per- 
mission to hunt on Reelfoot Lake when they came to 
him. He also said he owned all the lake, and its shores 
— that it was his, and he'd fight for it in court. But 
Sparks says that he owns land cornering in the lake, 
and that if anyone wants to go on the lake they can 
do so without anyone's permission. In the drainage 
case, because of that Stone's Ferry, which, in the old 
days, was operated to carry folks to the county seat 
of Obion county, and to the unflooded hills. Judge 
Swiggart decided that it is navigable, "in a technical 
sense." Being navigable, it's public, perforce— if the 
Tennessee Supreme Court says so in the suit which 
neither side is in a hurry to bring to an issue, but which 
will be tried some time — perhaps this winter. 
Harris owns a lot of claims covering parts of the 
lake. He owns a good deal of the land around it. He 
has the deeds to show for it, and the quit claims. 
Ranged against him are the "always hunted there," 
aome claims or titles he could not purchase — so it is 
said — the fact of launches and ferries on the lake — a 
mail route across it during high water, when the road 
can't be followed with a loft. pike pole— some scores 
of fishermen, a lot of hunters, and public sentiment. 
Harris claims two objects in getting possession of the 
lake. He wants to control the output, and eventually 
to make it a club's preserve. Seventy thousand dollars' 
worth of fish and the best duck shooting in the Missis- 
sippi Valley are worth contending for; any sportsman or 
commercial mind will admit that. Harris does not shoot 
or fish, but, as remarked, takes delight in a camera, and 
some of the best photographs of Reelfoot so far taken 
he made. Some are shown with these articles. 
The people who are opposing Harris are ranked, so 
to speak, behind one John Shaw, who is buying fish 
under bond at Sandberg, near Burdick's dock. One 
hears that these men get about the same amount of 
fish and game. The rivalry is keen, but the prices paid 
are about the same by each. The markets are Cairo, 
St. Louis, Memphis, etc., and the wholesale rates at 
these markets are about three times as much as the 
above prices. If $70,000 is the value of the year's catch, at 
four cents a pound (too much), 1,750,000 pounds is the 
total catch, or seventy pounds to the acre— 25,000 acres. 
I asked for an estimate by Burdick, but did not get it. 
The fishermen claim that they make "lots of money-- 
more than some of those white-collar fellows in town." 
Storekeepers at Tiptonville said that when fishermen 
came to town they made good purchases, about like 
sixty-acre cotton farmers, which indicates between 
$700 and $2,000 a year. But the farmers are much closer 
fisted than the fishermen, so it is likely the fisher- 
men do not run much over $2 a day, if they do as much. 
Their "rag houses," or tents, and their looks do not 
indicate even this much. Stakes at the card tables go 
$100 in sight at once sometimes, and only the best 
brands of whiskey are used, as a general rule "to keep 
oflf the chills." A few of them have farms back in 
the hills, to which they retreat at times, but others live 
the year around on the borders of the lake, or on one 
or the other islands, cultivating a little patch of a 
garden, raising some cane-rooters for pork, keeping 
a cow or two for milk and butter, and soda biscuit. 
The stock is put on a raft when high water comes, or 
else ferried to the hills. The islands were under water 
so long this summer that the cane was killed. 
In summer, a thick green moss, almost impenetrable 
to boats, covers much of the surface near the shore or 
in shallows, and is thick enough to prevent skifif navi- 
gation in some of the pockets. The water grows so 
warm that the fish are driven to the deepest waters 
and even there the nets "burn," as in the big river. In 
.spitp of the plentiful use of tar, nets are destroyed, even 
if used only during the cold months. Pole and hand- 
lings are viged during the summer, and live bait or trolls 
bring in fine bass, up to seven or more pounds, it is 
said. "It is said" must be used by the note-book maker 
in regard to what he hears concerning Reelfoot Lake. 
I was told that "we make $4 or $5 a day all the year 
around, and it isn't nothing to have a $25 haul at a 
running of the nets." Harris warned me not to be- 
lieve all that I heard about the large number of fisher- 
men on the lake, and their great wages. "There are 
500 of us, and we've got $20,000 worth of nets in 
this lake," they told me. These figures meant $40 per 
man, of four hoop nets each, at $10 a piece (a liberal 
value). Some fishermen run forty to eighty nets — $400 
to $8co in tackle — so it is said. Ten or twelve nets are 
considered enough on the river. Figured by the forty 
nets would make the number of fishermen fifty. Harris 
said there were not over sixty two or three years ago, 
when hi,s father counted them up. A hundred receiving 
$500 to $700 apiece per year would use up the $50,000 
to $70,000 worth of fish the lake probably yields. 
They use a trammel net on the lake. From a single 
line at the surface are hung three nets, two of them 
eight-inch mesh and hanging from three to nine feet 
deep, and between them an inch and a half mest net 
a third deeper, but fastened to the bottom line. The 
fish, scared in by the splashing of the fishermen driving 
toward the net at night, dart through the eight-inch 
JAMES C. HARRIS. 
mesh, catch up the little mesh net and pass on out 
through an eight-inch mesh on the other side. A twist 
then leaves the fish in a pocket, secure till the drawing. 
Two places — Blue Basin is one — admit of 600 or 800- 
yard seines. The seine is run down one side of the long 
open among the dead stubs and up on the other. Where 
the ends come opposite is a box of netting. The fish 
are crowded in toward this box, and when all are in, 
the front of the box is raised and the fish lifted out. 
Burdick runs the seines himself, and got $1,000 or there- 
about at orte haul of spoonbills. 
FIoop nets— a long, round bag, kept open with hick- 
ory hoops, with "throats" or funnels centering toward 
the bottom of the pointed bag — are employed. They 
are used winged in the lake, sometimes with a hoop net 
at each end of the wing, so that whichever way the 
fish runs along the fence it will go down the succes- 
sion of funnels and into .the fisherman's pocket at ^last. 
I found a Lake Huron fisherman setting up a "sub- 
marine net" on the Reelfoot shore at the end of the 
road from Tiptonville one day. It was an eight-foot 
covered net box, led to by two long wings. For a dis- 
tance out on these wings the top and bottom are netted 
as the apex of a letter A. Two cross-bars, each broken 
in two at the middle and sloped toward the box at the 
apex. A fish came to either leg of the A and ran to 
the break in the cross-bar into clear water. Going 
ahead, it came to another section of the leg, and fol- 
lowing this, went back into the angle caused by the 
broken cross-bar and a leg, or else on into the apex 
of the A, beyond which is the cubical box, approached 
b" a funnel, opening in the center , of the eight-foot 
cube box. The fisherman said the cross-bars are called 
hearts. A fence of netting leads to the break in the 
lower cross-bar on a line bisecting the angle of the A, 
so a new and more deadly contrivance has appeared in 
Reelfoot waters. A Reelfoot fisherman said: "I'm going 
to keep an eye on that net, and if it works I'll have 
one." 
The Huron man said that if the Reelfoot Lake fisher- 
men were any good they'd have the lake fished clean in 
three months, that the hoop nets were used when he 
was a boy on the lake, and that two men right there 
had taken $1.60 worth of fish in two days, of which 
half went to Burdick for furnishing the twine of which 
the nets were made, leaving twenty cents a day to the 
men for their work. It was a bad fall for the fisher- 
men, however, and until cold weather drove the fish 
out of deep water and started them to moving around, 
it would not begin to be good fishing, and most fisher- 
men didn't have their nets in. The $1.60 for two days 
by two men did not tally by many dollars with another 
man's statement that "of course we're only making a 
couple of dollars a day now." 
"There are no twine men on the lake here," the , 
fisherman from Lake Huron said. "They don't know 
how to make a net. When they put this one in they'll 
see a difference in catching fish. But I'm going right 
back to Huron, that's where I'm going, just as soon 
as I get this set up for my brother." 
Uncle Bug Spain is eighty-two years old, and still 
sets his hoop nets, after fifty years on the Reelfoot. 
Old Man Standick is named as the best trotter — trot- 
line man — and John Fry and Dick Harper had to hire 
five or six negroes to dress the catch they made, tram- 
meling one night. Burdick does the seining himself. 
It is unnecessary to tell any of the fish stories, _ but 
one who sees black bass swirl out from under the big 
lily pads every rod or two as he paddles along need 
not be told how a man could whale them out there in 
the good old fashions known to fly and live-bait casters. 
I saw fish rising by the score among the gray stubs, 
though it was frosty times. For the man who wants 
real excitement with a light rod, this lake and its mates 
offer a field for nerve. Poets, however, would better 
keep away, else they never will cease to shudder at the 
memory of fishing in a cemetery. 
At Tiptonville I met for the first time a professional 
hunter- — a man who makes a living business of supply- 
ing game to the markets. There were several of these 
men — Frank Sparks being one of them. ITe had killed 
"feathers" as well as game. He runs a hotel at Tipton- 
ville now, and one need not talk to him long on his 
favorite subject of hunting to learn that here is a man 
thoroughlv in love with shooting, not only as a business 
but as a "sport as well. "I'm a pot hunter," he said 
fairly and squarely and convincingly. "I left a good 
business to become one. I like to hunt. They tell 
you that a pot hunter bunches his game in the water 
and then kills them — sneaks through the brush and 
gathers them in sitting. It isn't so. I won't shoot a 
duck in that way. It wouldn't pay. I take them as they 
come in over the decoys, their wings whistling — and 
so does every other market hunter who makes his 
living so. I'll tell you one thing — a market hunter 
knows more about ducks than sportsmen. Flow many 
sportsmen can call a duck? I've seen a market shooter 
who was a poor shot miss a mallard drake six times 
with his shotgun, and then call the bird back and kill him. 
I'll tell you what you want to do. If you want to save 
the game fowl, you abolish the use of the duck call- 
prohibit its sale — and compel the hunter to sit over their 
decoys in silence. There isn't a pot-hunter but would 
rather go back to an old single-barreled muzzleloader 
than give up his call. _ - 
"Another thing. Take our game law as it stands 
now. All kinds of ducks except woodducks are pro- 
tected from April 15 to October i. A man can go 
out on Reelfoot, however, and kill woodducks after 
August I. Think of that! 'Woodduck!' Can you 
tell what kind of birds are coming down around a 
hunter half a mile away? It makes an open season on 
Reelfoot Lake from August i till April 15. Here's an- 
other thing. Our duck season opens on October i— 
nice warm weather, with the lake as smooth as glass 
and any quantity of cormorants— water turkeys-^flying 
round. About the fifteenth in comes the first flight of 
mallards, say. They don't reach the water before some 
one is coming in on them with a sneak-box. Scared, 
the ducks hurry away south unrested. And so with the 
next flight— all hurried past by fear. What's the result? 
When the main flight comes late in October they go 
right past. Now, let's have the law November 15 as the 
opening day. For weeks the ducks have been coming 
in. They've hit the water unshot at. They've had 
time to preen their feathers. They've had a good feed. 
They've grown fat. They've grown rested. They are 
stool for every flock that comes within five miles, and 
perhaps the whole flight is laying around here when 
the open season begins. Then you'd have shooting. 
When ducks get used to laying around a place, they're 
a lot harder to drive away than if they come in strangers 
and meet a hail of shot." 
Sparks is a convincing talker, and a direct one. He 
approves the law forbidding night shooting— a most 
destructive way of getting ducks and geese is fire-hunt- 
ing. He swings as he walks, and long practice of hunt- 
ing has given him a seeing eye. But the three market 
