420 
FOREST AND STREAM, 
[May 21, i^. 
time to replace your hook by a small star or kidney spoon, 
and to troll silently back and forth over the weed banks; 
and see to it that the hooks be sharp and your line trusty, 
tor at such a time many a fierce tug will be felt, and 
many a fierce "water wolf" should feel the sharp prick of 
your gaff. . 
It is only after such experiences oft repeated that we 
at last really come to know a pond — to learn the true sig- 
nificance of "pickerel weeds," and long, rank grasses 
growing thick about the bottom, of sloping logs and 
shadowy rocks, and all the fickle twistings of the shore. 
And then only do we begin to understand a little about 
the life of those mysterious, elusive creatures that lie hid- 
den somewhere in the water beneath. We could each 
tell the precise spots where a bass has rushed frantically 
for our frog, and the identical weed or stump behind 
which some gaunt pickerel lurked; and we could each 
point out only too well the exact places where big fish 
have escaped — those largest long fellows that might even 
now — who knows? — be lurking there awaiting in silence 
some perch or foolish frog to cross their paths. One 
learns a good deal by following the banks around all the 
points and exploring all the coves; and one can see a 
lot if he will look steadily into the lake's darker depths 
along the shore. It is then that he will begin to find out 
rare truths, and some of those things that are not printed 
in books — the peculiar sloping of a submerged log; the 
significant circle of green pads covering a cove; the calm 
and mystery of a shadow falling black upon a pool. Then 
only will he understand the charm and fascination of the 
sudden deft dropping of a frog to one of these. 
In such a way only does one really learn to know the 
meaning of the water and the shore, and the rocky ledges 
and the deep pools; in fact, all those significant signs 
which forever stamp some inland pond upon our memory. 
In such a way only do we think out our_ own little 
theories and notions, and discover, each for himself, "the 
times and seasons when fishes bite best." 
Wm. Arthur Babson. 
The Way of the Fish in Stream 
and Sea. 
; 
Editor Forest and Stream: 
The theory advanced in your issue of the 14th ult., 
that migrating fish are guided to and along their natal 
streams by some distinctive peculiarity contained 
therein, and derived from the territory drained, seems 
to find some support in the behavior of the shad of 
the .Connecticut River. This river, in emptying mto 
Long Island Sound, discharges its current to the west- 
ward, or at right angles to its landward course, and in 
former days, when the run of shad was abundant, nets, 
in some instances extending a mile into Sound waters, 
were stretched at intervals for a dozen miles along the 
track of the westward flowing current. The shad, ap- 
proaching from the east, proceeded in a direction par- 
allel with the current, entered it at its furthest end, and 
then retraced their course to the river's mouth. Obvi- 
ously, if there was not some clue afforded by the cur- 
rent itself, the fish would not burden themselves with a 
loop of over a score of miles, but would proceed direct 
to the river's mouth. After the current eludes human 
perception by its dispersion in salt water, it doubtless 
escapes through the eastern or nearer and broader en- 
trance to the Sound to then lose itself in the ocean 
waste; and it is some peculiarity of the attenuated river 
water that the fish seem to follow up through sea and 
sound. This fluvial characteristic may be due to dis- 
tinctive mineral particles, which, retained in solution 
far out to sea, may be revealed to the delicate percep- 
tion of the fish, and so guide it from the deep to its 
bourn. 
Fish, by the motion of their gills, are constantly m 
the most intimate contact with the medium in which 
they exist, and in the unceasing passage of large quan- 
tities of water over delicately perceptive surfaces, it 
can be assumed that a cognition of certain minute pe- 
culiarities may be imparted by a sense akin to, but 
probably distinct from, taste or smell. A bloodhound 
that unerringly follows a man's track, after two days' 
exposure to the wind and sun, cannot with certainty 
be said to be guided in its quest by what we know as 
an olfactory sense. Even when the trail leads the ani- 
mal over the flagstones of a busy street, it may be 
distinguished from thousands of others; but it is un- 
likely that, out of a great multitude of odors of varying 
degrees of strength, one in particular is recognized as 
such. Just as with increase of shrillness sounds pass 
beyond our auditory sense, to then become revealed 
to other and more perceptive creatures, so there may 
be emanations that, while ceasing to be odors, are 
nevertheless impressed upon the animal consciousness. 
The susceptibility of the fish, like that of the blood- 
hound, may be a recognition of subtle differences in 
objects by a perception of exhalations too ethereal to 
be classed as odors or flavors. 
An odor or other material impartment to water 
should be more abiding than its communication to the 
mobile and inconstant air. The atmosphere is so 
permeable to the sun's rays, so tolerant of their chemi- 
cal action, that its purification is more rapid than that 
of water. A fish, therefore, by reason of the presump- 
tively stronger stimuli thus afforded, should be, and 
doubtless is, as efficiently served by its perceptions as a 
mammal, and possibly to even a greater degree. 
An inherited memory of an odor or of an emanation 
akin thereto, such as appears to be the endowment of 
anadromous fish, is no more extraordinary than that of 
a sound. A chick from an incubator will fly to a cluck- 
ing hen, and a turkey chick will exhibit fear upon hear- 
ing the cry of a hawk, the action of each infantile 
creature being instinctive and untaught. Whatever may 
be the particular perception that guides the wander- 
ing fish to their native streams, be it odor, flavor or a 
subtle cognition unknown to us, there can be little 
doubt that, in its specific application, it descends as a 
heritage. The salmon of the Yukon or the Columbia 
that, after journeying many hundreds of miles, ascends 
some chosen tributary, to finally conclude its voyage, 
like the nesting bird, at a particular spot, cannot, it is 
evident, be guided by the same instinct th^ dipect-s the 
aerial waflderer to the cra4ie of its ewstfaioe. Tfe 
latter is enabled to pursue its course in straight lines, 
and its impressions of direction probably travel to it 
in like manner. Fish ascending a winding stream may 
need to turn toward every point of the compass; they 
cannot therefore readily act upon a monition emanating 
from one point only. Just as a buzzing fly upon the 
window pane is attracted by the light and avails itself 
of no other line of progression, so would migrating 
fish, blindly following a certain influence, probably be- 
come stalled if confronted with an obstacle in the path 
of their direct advance. A bird is not restricted to any 
one line .of approach, but a fish that se:eks its birth- 
place must penetrate the coast line at a particular point. 
It therefore needs a guide that will direct it over the 
sinuosities of its route, and infallibility of guidance can 
only be aft'orded by stimuli imparted to it along every 
portion of its devious trail. It must be assumed that 
it is an inherited perception of something in the current, 
and not the current itself, that enlightens the finny 
voyager. A fish in deep waters may be compared to an 
aeronaut whose balloon is immersed in a drifting cloud 
bank; to neither the aerial nor to the fluvial traveler is 
the direction of the current revealed, or even its ex- 
istence, save hy a glimpse of a stationary object. 
- Thus, the Potomac River shad, generation after gen- 
eration, were guided from the ocean through the 
waters of the Chesapeake Bay to their natal stream. 
The distinctive quality of the river water that is recog- 
nized by the fish is seemingly derived from its source 
in the Blue Ridge, and when a number of shad fry, 
natives of the stream, were planted in the Kanawha, a 
river whose iieadwaters adjoin those of the Potomac, 
they voyaged their way to the distant gulf with a prob- 
able constant perception of the ancestral clue in the 
long stretch of virgin waters so venturesomely navi- 
gated. Nowhere, except along their journey's track, 
are their presumptive descendants, the Ohio River 
shad, found. When the ascending fish, upon their re- 
turn from the gulf, sought a spawning place, they found 
their course, hy virtue of an inherited instinct, in- 
fallibly charted in the river's bosom. Probably so 
guided and directed, their descendants turned, 1,202 
miles from the Mississippi's mouth, into that of the 
Ohio, and 704 miles further turned into the Kanawha, 
ignoring the multitude of other streams that they 
passed on the way, their accomplishment at the point of 
ultimate attainment, exceeding two thousand miles. 
In the open ocean the fish is probably guided by the 
same impulse of direction that actuates the bird, the 
insect and the beast, the perception being apparently 
received along straight lines. This directive impulse 
may be related to an entirely new class of phenomena 
that has lately come under scientific observation, viz., 
that of the so-called radio-active minerals, radium, pol- 
onium, uranium, etc. It seems likely that all substances 
possess radiating power, varying in kind and in degree, 
the more material manifesting itself as an odor, and 
in all its manifestations, projected along straight lines 
like light or sound. We know that fish wander widely, 
some, like the swordfish, shark, etc., not improbably 
voyaging from one continent to another. The fish of 
the under sea must traverse its depths of gloom with 
certainty of direction, and in the darkness of the night 
those of the surface pursue ways that are infallible. 
Nor can it be said that man is devoid of this mysterious 
power, the endowment of the fish slumbers within him, 
to guide him, when evoked, over the trackless waters 
of the deep, a power that, coupled with his vestigial 
gill slits, affords evidence of a lowly and a far-off link 
in his chain of ancestry. 
In the equatorial Pacific from time immemorial a 
race of savage seafarers have found their way over im- 
mense stretches of the ocean waste, voyaging from 
island to island without compass or the simplest form 
of device for ascertaining position. They place, how- 
ever, a probably imaginary dependence upon a sort of 
charm, a network of dry twigs, interlaced at random 
and jumbled together with shells, shark's teeth, beads, 
bright seeds, etc. Without these so-called charts, they 
will not go to sea, and no reasonable explanation has 
been offered by the various naval officers and other 
witnesses of the remarkable results apparently effected 
thereby. It may be suggested, however, to use a 
psychological term, that the mysterious accomplish- 
ment is a manifestation of savage subjective conscious- 
ness. In fuller explanation, it may be said that when a 
lowly organism receives an impulse to act, it responds 
• about as automatically as a rubber ball upon impact. 
With that organism's advance in the scale of being, 
with its possession of widening spheres of perception 
and multiplication of sensory impressions it acquires a 
supervising intelligence that classifies the impressions 
received and relegates them to their proper source 
like the automatic switchboard of a telephone exchange. 
When a man sees, he knows that i't is his eye that sees, 
and his mind dwells understandingly upon the color, 
form and other attributes of the object. Thus the un- 
derstanding associates its perception with material ob- 
jects, and its cognizance of the outward world is de- 
pendent upon the operation of familiar senses which 
long and constant use have rendered the only avenues 
of knowledge. When the operation of an obscure or 
dormant sense is sought, the mind seems to need a con- 
centration upon its object, so that an opportunity may 
be given for the manifestation of the strange through 
the famili'ar sense. Perhaps it is thus that the divining 
rod becomes an exponent of the perception of water, 
and the savage's collection of trash may enable him to 
give expression to his dim consciousness of a far-off 
land. 
In use, the contrivances alluded to are merely sub- 
sidiary, the pilot directing his entire attention to the 
sea. When a particular portion of the barren waste is 
reached, which to all appearances is empty water, all 
on board will scan it closely; they maintain that it is a 
critical point, and will even taste the water to insure 
a suppositious identification, then the chart is re- 
ferred to, and a course adopted in line with some par- 
ticular stick. These seeming trifles seem necessary to 
attach Ihe mind to its subject, to give it a means of 
expression, and to constitute an invocation to the dor- 
mant sense to assert itself. It is a noteworthy fact 
that these so-called .charts are available only to those 
who have pas's'ritt Wer tlie rdufe btefofe; in bthfer 'wteV'ds, 
to those who have been to the particular island or 
group of islands, and so absorbed a secret conscious- 
ness of its radiation or emanation. So also may it be 
inferred that the wandering fish, once in contact with a 
particular land area, becomes familiar with the outward 
projection of its peculiar characteristics, and is enabled 
to direct its course thereby. 
The third_ and perhaps most mysterious of the ways 
of the fish in the water is that which seemingly owes 
its impulse and direction to the telepathic sense, or 
the faculty of remote recognition of fellow members of 
its species. Whether this faculty can be exerted as 
distantly as that of a perception of land areas we can- 
not know, but it would seem probable that the funda- 
mental attributes of matter, whether organic or in- 
organic, are the same, and thus an indefinite outward 
projection may reasonably be predicated of all its- forms. 
That this property of subtle extension and diffusion 
exists would seem clear, else the distinctive attributes 
of various colonies of migratory fish could not be main- 
tained. Every shad or salmon stream has its distinctive 
fish; it is obvious, therefore, that the fry of each sea- 
son's hatching must be enabled to search out in the 
depths of the sea the wandering parent school or par- 
ticular colony to which they are related. In a watery 
void there can be no local distinctions, one portion of 
the waste is as barren of abiding characteristics as 
another; everywhere the monotony is absolute and un- 
broken. It cannot, consequently, be argued that the 
parent fish await their union with their tiny progeny 
at a recognized spot in empty water, and the roaming 
bands must, for such reason, form their junction by a 
far distant perception of each other, a perception that 
guides thern, with unerring certainty, through the path- 
less obscurity of the deep. 
It may thus be seen that the ways of the fish in stream 
and sea are three, and that each of these ways is deeply 
and darkly mysterious. Of the three wonderful things 
of old that passed the comprehension of the biblical 
sage none survive to confound the modern understand- 
ing. So, too, the ever rising sun of knowledge will 
enlighten the fish's obscure and doubtful pathway; the 
crooked will be made straight, and the inscrutable be 
made clear. A. H. Gouraud. 
Fish Chat. 
BY EDWARD A. SAMUELS. 
Early Salmoa Fishing. 
It was stated in a Nova Scotia newspaper about the 
middle of last March that the season for salmon fishing 
had opened in the Port Medway River, although the ice 
had not all gone out. If this was the first announcement 
of the opening of the season, it was made later by two 
weeks this year than formerly, for in several of the rivers 
on the eastern coast of that Province salmon have been 
taken with the fly on or before the beginning of March. 
Now, that is saying a great deal, for it means that those 
streams are the earliest salmon rivers in the world. 
This condition is probably owing to the fact that the 
westerly edge of the Gulf Stream, in sweeping up by that 
ccast, has its effect upon the movements of the fish. The 
water in those rivers is as cold as in any others in the 
Dominion, the ice along their shores being two or three 
feet in thickness. Now, in New Brunswick or Quebec 
rivers salmon do not begin to come in until early in June, 
and the first run is not a large one at that, and why they 
ascend the Nova Scotia streams as early as they do, un- 
less their movements are hastened by the warmth of the 
Gulf Stream, can only be conjectured. 
These are bright and fresh run fish — not kelts. For the 
information of those who do not know what kelts are, I 
will state, quoting from "With Fly-Rod and Camera," 
"that black salmon or kelts are those fish that after spawn- 
ing remain all winter in the river, instead of returning 
to the sea. They will take any bait in the spring; they 
are lean and lank, and the flesh is quite unfit for food, as 
it is soft, brittle, entirely devoid of the pinkish color, 
and, when cooked, the odor is often repulsive. These fish 
are as hungry as spring bears, and voracious as vultures ; 
they snap eagerly at anything from a trout fly to a pork 
rmd, and feed freely on the spring smelts that are ascend- 
ing the river to spawn." 
Yes, they are fresh run salmon, and not spent fish ; in 
fact, I never heard of a kelt being taken or seen in any 
of the Nova Scotia rivers; for, in the first place, the 
streams are all too short to offer any temptation to fish to 
linger in thern after the spawning season, and besides 
that, the ice' forms on them a foot or two in thickness, 
and under that "slush ice" often permeates the water, so 
that the salmon cannot breathe it. 
This slush ice is often fatal to young salmon and 
trout. I have been informed that on one occasion this 
formed so quickly in the Jacquet River, New Brunswick, 
that the sea trout — which could not escape from it — came 
floating down the stream on their backs in such numbers 
that several bushels of them were dipped out with nets, 
they being unable to offer any resistance. 
Now, the great majority of salmon fishermen pursue 
their fascinating sport when the summer breezes gently 
stir the foliage of the trees around them; to them such 
accessories as the song of forest birds, the flitting across 
the river of gaudily painted butterflies, the perfume of 
thousands of wild flowers, and the persistent attentions 
from black flies and mosquitoes are almost deemed essen- 
tial to a thorough realization of the pleasures of this 
their chosen recreation; and to these it would seem, 
strange to clambor over huge blocks of ice or wade 
through saw two or three feet in depth which often 
cover the river banks when the early run of salmon 
comes in. 
But there are many anglers— enthusiasts they are, to be 
sure — who enjoy the early fishing, rough though it be: 
and after all, if one hooks and plays his salmon, it does 
not much matter what the season may be, does it? He 
has the sport anyway. 
People from the States have not, to any great extent, 
availed themselves of this opportunity for early fishing; 
but officers Of the English army and navy, and anglers 
resident in Halifax, hail with delight the announcement 
of the first appearance of the fish, and lose no tiffle in get- 
ting to thHr favtJrife casting plates. 
