July 9, 1904.] 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
38 
home I hunt for a four-ounce rod that I know I have 
among all the rest — and it is gone! Loaned and never 
returned. 
Why will people borrow rods, and why will the owners 
of the rods loan them put? There are two things a man 
never should loan — his wife and his rod. 
But what can a man do — sometimes? A neighbor calls 
and asks for a rod. He knows you have them, and he is 
not enough of a fisherman to understand how a man feels 
about loaning a rod. Well, you succumb. And the rod 
comes back. You look it over and find that the friendly 
services of a doorjamb has been brought into play to dis- 
joint the rod, and your ferrules are crushed. Sacre bleu! 
you say to yourself, and you send your rod to the repair- 
man. Then you resolve to become diplomatic, and invest 
in a fourth dozen split bamboo rods — "Three-jointed, 
hand-made, highest quality, to-day 79 cents each" — and 
these be your loaning rods in future. 
The train is speeding along the headwaters of the Mis- 
sissippi. We are nearing the land where white pine is 
king. Booms and dams are in evidence in the infantile 
Father of the Waters, and train loads of logs are being 
emptied into the streams to float down to Minneapolis. 
The lumber jack with his canvas turkey is in evidence — 
as is his inseparable companion, a great flask of whiskey 
hidden in some capacious pocket netherly situated about 
his person. A crowded lumber jack filled car makes you 
think of the Kentucky audience when asked by the slight- 
of-hand performer if any man present had a pint bottle 
of whiskey about him. For a second there was no 
response, when a spectator asked : "Wouldn't a quart bot- 
tle do?" An affirmative answer resulted in the instan- 
taneous production — held high in the air — of a quart bot- 
tle to every man. So with the lumber jack. 
Poor devils ! They work and toil and slave at the 
hardest kind of work all winter, chopping and sawing 
waist-deep in snow and with the mercury at thirty below, 
and yet sweating in their shirt sleeves sometimes ; to bed 
fish at so much per diem are not very satisfactory; the 
salmon in them are generally few and far between. And 
so I have dropped the more noble fish and am getting all 
the sport I can out of black bass, striped bass, and 
squeteague." 
"Squeteague !" I exclaimed, "that is rather a come 
down for you." 
"Well, I don't compare the two fish," he replied, "but 
really there's a lot of sport to be had with weakfish, as 
they are commonly called, if they are of good size and 
biting freely." 
My old friend was right, for one may obtain quite ex- 
citing sport with those gamy fish, and they are so get- 
at-able in numerous localities they may be justly called the 
most popular of all the salt-water game fishes. Good 
fishing localities we have all along the New Jersey coast, 
around Long, and Staten Islands, and in the Sound along 
the shore almost everywhere up to Narragansett Bay and 
on to Cape Cod are numerous good feeding grounds on 
which the fish may be taken. New York anglers follow it 
enthusiastically from its first appearance in May until it 
leaves for the south in November. Around Staten Island 
it is taken in considerable numbers, and in many locali- 
ties, such as, for example, Tottenville, Prince's Bay, 
Annandale, Richmond Valley, Rossville, South and Mid- 
land Beaches, at which last named place good fishing may 
now be had from, the long pier, a boat being unnecessary 
at that point. 
Habits of the Squeteague. 
Although it is a common game fish all along the At- 
lantic Coast from Cape Cod to the Chesapeake, and even 
further south, its favorite localities seem to be Vineyard 
Sound, Narragansett and Buzzard's Bays, where the 
largest and most gamy specimens are now taken. While 
the average weight in a day's catch around Staten 
Island will not greatly exceed a pound, it would be con- 
siderably larger in fish taken in Vineyard Sound, such 
by many that this rig is the best, because it permits free 
play to the hooks. Feathered trolls * * * made strong 
with stout hooks and heavy, strong gimp, or wire snells, 
would be most killing among such coast fish as the Span- 
ish mackerel, bluefish, and squeteague." 
Phantom Minnows. 
In my tackle kit are several phantom minnows which 
were imported a number of years ago from England; 
they are of precisely the same size and pattern as those 
which are used in trolling for salmon trout in some of 
the Irish lochs; they are made of thin aluminum, nickel 
or silver-plated, and differ from the ordinary phantom 
that is sold in this country in that they revolve more 
freely, and the hooks are so arranged above and below 
the minnow that they very rarely foul, and if a fish 
strikes, it never misses a hook. I tried them with the 
landlocked salmon in the deep water of Grand Lake, one 
of the Schoodic chain in Maine, and found them singu- 
larly successful. Subsequently I pitted them against 
squeteague in trolling in Vineyard Sound, and the avidity 
with which the fish seized them was astonishing. They 
revolved quite rapidly, even when the boat was moving 
at a slow rate of speed, and owing to their texture they 
were always as bright and silvery as a small herring. I 
do not know whether that make of minnow is now sold 
in pur tackle stores, but if it is not, it would be good 
policy for the dealers to import some and keep them, in 
stock, for they are greatly to be preferred to the soft, 
destructible ones that are commonly sold, which are 
continually fouling, and which will not revolve at a fair 
rate of speed unless the boat moves quite swiftly through 
the water. 
Peculiarities of the Weakfish. 
I have stated that, as a rule, the young flood tide up to 
three-quarters of the full is the best water for squeteague 
angling ; of course those hand-line, fishermen who anchor 
at dark, and up at the crow of the cock, and with his 
money coming to him when the break up of winter comes, 
he goes out into the world. One glass— the first glass— 
of whiskey is his undoing, and when he sobers up he is 
lucky to have the clothes on his back. But he has had 
a "good time," and he can earn more money, and he starts 
in at odd jobs until the snow falls, and he can go into 
camp once more. 
We are making Brainerd when we stop for lunch, and 
then continue up to Pine River, where we take a stage 
and ride for twenty miles through the pine forests. 
Already the fresh air blowing down from the pines 
gives one the appetite of youthful days — which is a very 
good sign that we can't arrive at Brainerd any too quickly 
for us now/ 
The headache and the chunk of lead at the base of my 
cranium already begin to leave me, and I feel it in my 
bones that a week from now I will return to my desk 
bronzed up and with energy and capacity for work of a 
trained athlete. And with everything pleasing in front 
of me, I'll close this letter. Charles Cristadoro. 
Fish Chat. 
The Lively Squeteague. 
"Salmon angling is royal sport," said an old friend to 
me a short time ago, "but I have been obliged to give it 
up, and for several reasons. In the first place, I'm too 
old; it's all right for the younger men, but when one 
reaches his seventieth birthday he can't do it; the spirit 
is willing, but the flesh is mighty weak. Fancy me racing 
down a river fast to a salmon who has taken it into his 
head to run from one pool to another, perhaps a half mile 
or more away. I don't think you could imagine me dis- 
playing such nimbleness and endurance as would be 
needed. I couldn't climb over the rocks and boulders 
half fast enough. I could fight a salmon in a good deep 
pool, all right, if I were in a canoe, or had a reasonably 
smooth shore to keep my footing on, but when it comes 
to the rough work I can't do it. Another reason why 1 
have had to give up following old Salmo sa!w is because 
all the good rivers are leased, and at high prices, too ; 
I used to have a one-third interest in a New Brunswick 
river — had it, in fact, for ten years — but when the lease 
finally ran out, we let it slide, for the reason that the 
netters around the mouth of the river got about all the 
fish. We did not, along the last part of it, kill enough 
to supply camp needs ; lessees of rivers ought to be better 
protected than they are. 
"Of course, one can always get on a salmon river some- 
how by paying for the privilege, and there are still a 
few streams that are open to the general angler, but my 
experience has been that those rivers on which you can 
THE SQUETEAGUE OR WEAKFISH — From "Fishing Industries." 
small ones as those which are common further south be- 
ing rarely seen. 
Methods of Angling. 
Now, I suppose that every squeteague angler believes 
that his own method is the best, but that some must be 
better than others is shown by the fact that while the 
anglers in one boat may obtain from forty to sixty in a 
day's catch, those in another boat not thirty or even 
twenty rods distant consider themselves lucky if they get 
a dozen fish. Squeteague, like other game fish, have their 
caprices, and "there are days when they will and others 
when they won't" accept the bait, and in order to be really 
successful with them, the angler must study their pecu- 
liarities, not only in different seasons of the year, but also 
in different conditions of the weather and tides. We may 
set it down as a rule that for weakfish the young and 
half flood tides are the best in most localities, and the 
last half of the ebb tides are the poorest, but even that 
rule is governed by circumstances. There are localities, 
such as, for example, near the Orchard Shoal Light, 
about four miles off Staten Island, where the water, 
which _ is from fifteen to twenty feet in depth, rushes 
along in both flood and ebb tides almost with the speed 
of a salmon stream, which seems to be a favorite locality 
for good-sized squeteague, and they are there almost 
always ready to bite well in all conditions of the tide. 
Baits. 
One may anchor his boat there at the edge of a reef, 
and he will find that almost any bait goes; shrimp, flood 
worms, sand worms, a piece of quahog or clam or men- 
haden, and from the first of July on a bait of sheddar 
crab will prove a most captivating lure. The angler will 
also find that a No. 4 fluted spinner — Skinner's preferred — 
will do good work, the strong current carrying the spoon 
rapidly away from the- boat, and causing it to revolve 
quickly. In such a locality I have found that the phan- 
tom minnow proved a very attractive lure, and even good 
success was had with an old Buell's spoon. In fact, as 
the squeteague is chiefly a surface-feeding fish and is 
almost always ready to seize anything in motion, nearly 
any trolling bait will answer to bring it to the landing net. 
How to Rig Spinners. 
Ordinarily in using the spinning bait, I have rarely em- 
ployed a sinker for squeteague, but no matter what it was, 
I have found that at least two swivels were necessary to 
prevent fouling the hooks and kinking the line, and in 
addition to the use of these have availed myself in my 
more recent fishing of the hint given by Genio C. Scott 
in his "Fishing in American Waters," in which he says, 
in describing a spoon bait: "It is so arranged that differ-, 
ent fly-hooks may be looped on by their wires at the 
joint" [above which the spoon revolves] ; "it is supposed 
their boats and throw out their lines, which are baited 
with pieces of clams, crabs, etc., do not pay very much 
attention to the tide. They have out sometimes three or 
four lines, and their catch is made up of blackfish or 
tautog, scup or porgies, sea bass and squeteague ; they are 
. not weakfish anglers pure and simple, and the niceties of 
the fishing are. entirely ignored by them. But the angler 
who is out for squeteague with rod, reel, and light tackle, 
is obliged to study the conditions of the tide or he gets 
no fish. 
I have found this to be the case in many localities in 
Buzzard's Bay; if I could reach my favorite fishing 
grounds just before the turn of the tide, my success was 
almost always assured. The fish were then hungry, and 
bit ravenously at anything in motion, and if my supply 
of shrimp ran short when the fish were biting freely, I 
found that a strip cut from the belly of one of my sque- 
teague and tied to the shank of the hook a la striped bass 
bait, was quite successful as a lure. Ordinarily, however, 
one has his best success in Buzzard's Bay and Vineyard 
Sound, at any rate, by "chumming" with shrimp, and a 
goodly supply of these little crustaceans is necessary. 
While I have always made it a point to chum sparingly, 
I have, in order to keep the squeteague about my boat, 
used up my stock of nearly two quarts of shrimp, and 
been obliged to throw out as successors to them small 
handfuls of salt-water minnows or "mummy chows," as 
they are commonly called in those waters. 
Exciticg Sport. 
I shall never forget the glorious sport I had at sque- 
teague fishing on July 4, 1901. Our yacht was anchored 
just off a headland, two or three miles from Wareham, 
a locality which was, I believe, a favorite one with ex- 
President Cleveland, who was, and I think is still, an 
ardent follower of this gamy fish. We arrived on our 
fishing grounds at exactly the right moment, the young 
tide having just begun to move in. As soon as our tackle 
was rigged and hooks baited with a couple of shrimp, 
our skipper began chumming, throwing the shrimp not 
too sparingly on both sides of the boat, but at a good 
casting distance from it in order that the little crusta- 
ceans might not swim back to its protecting shelter, which 
they are very often inclined to do, they seeming 
to know instinctively that if they can get near the boat 
they wiir not be molested by their destroyers, the weak- 
fish. 
I always prefer to kill my fish on light tackle, the sport 
I obtain with it seems to me to be more genuine and 
exciting than that which is obtained with heavier. My 
rod on this occasion was a quite light split bamboo, an 
ordinary trout rod, in fact; but my reel contained 75 
yards of new and rather heavy line, for your squeteague 
often makes quite long runs, and I wanted to be prepared 
for any emergency. My casting-line was. a short salmotj 
