162 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
Disappointment. 
I HAVE always longed to catch a big salmon, oui' de- 
lightful experience with Newfoundland grilse in August 
of last year much intensifying the desire, and was as- 
sured that plenty of them could be got in the same 
waters about July i. So the rather elaborate prepara- 
tions necessary for such a trip were promptly begun; 
guides were engaged; routes' and rates decided on and 
transportation secured; supplies ordered from one St. 
John’s firm to meet us at one point, and fishing tackle 
from another firm at another point, and my son and I 
left Cleveland late in June full of hope and confidence. 
In fact, some extra salt was ordered, so that the sur- 
plus salmon not used in camp could be salted and 
sirtoked, and we could fish with clear consciences, cer- 
tain that none of our catch would be wasted. 
All the preliminaries went so smoothly that we might 
well have known that fortune had a bad turn in store 
for us at the last. Trains were on time; sleeping car 
berths were to be had at the last moment and usually 
the last, berths; tackle arrived at Port au Basques on 
time and ail right. Fred met us at St. Georges, report- 
ing the other guides waiting at Deer Lake, and all the 
supplies turned up at the last station, as did trunks and 
other baggage, without mishap. Then came the re- 
verse of the inedal. I had planned the year before to 
fish the' Willov/ Steady pools on the upper Humber, 
where my guides had the greatest sport in the previous 
season. Now there were still great masses of snow 
and ice on the north slope of the Central Mountains, 
the Humber was in full flood, making a through route 
to the headwaters, and there were no fish in the pools 
at all. 
'We decided to try Sandy Lake River, where there 
was such good, sport with grilse last fall, and got to 
the first rapid after two days’ delay. The water there 
was at least three feet higher than in the previous 
August, the river unrecognizable, and absolutely no 
salmon to be found, though trout fairly swarmed. Two 
more wasted days brought us back to Flat Bay River 
on the western side of the island, a fine salmon stream 
and ordinarily most productive; but now very low, with 
only a thin sheet of water purling through a waste of 
bowlders, and so clear that every stone and fish in it 
was as plain to our sight as we doubtless were to the 
latter. There are two fine pools just above the railway 
bridge, one beneath it, and two or three more in the 
hail mile down to tide water, and these we flogged in- 
dustriously, getting tO‘ the water in the early dawn,, tak- 
ing a long rest through the bright hours, and then 
swinging the rods again till dark, with nothing to show 
for it all but a few grilse, a good deal bruised from 
climbing over rocks and an occasional sea trout. 
In the lowermost pool were clearly visible ten or a 
dozen salmon, running from ten to thirty pounds in 
weight, and every now and then one of the big fellows 
would roll out on the surface, just to taunt us. Now 
and again capricious fancy, or perhaps a change of fly, 
would make one rise to a cast,, make a great swish on 
the water, fill us with hope and then settle back without 
a touch. So it went for three days until even my 
guides — good sportsmen and law-abiding citizens — be- 
gan to drop into lurid language and express unhallowed 
wishes for dynamite or a net; but we kept our tempers 
pretty well, flogged away with the big rods, fought flies 
day and night, and hoped for better things to come. 
Now we had an experience of the courtesy of English 
officers and gentlemen. Our two rods were more than 
sufficient for this lower river, and it is not customary 
to intrude on a previously established party, but two 
or three officers from a gunboat then at St. Georges 
came down and camped on the lower pools, flailing them 
night and day. We were told they would only stay 
for a day or two, so kept away from those pools; but 
I strolled down, met one of the party and told him that 
we were in camp at the bridge and had been fishing 
those pools for three days, but would leave them alone 
until their party were gone. They expressed regret to 
have interfered with us and said they were leaving next 
morning. That afternoon, while I was waiting at the 
pools above the bridge for the sun to drop a little 
further, one of this party appeared and promptly caught 
a grilse out of the pool I was watching. I walked over 
there and politely suggested that it was not quite fair, 
after we had left them the best pools, for them to also 
fish the small and inferior remnant of water in front 
of our camp, and this officer declared he had misunder- 
stood the matter, apologizing and departed, taking with 
him the only fish I saw that night. The cap sheaf .was 
put on, however, when the other two men appeared 
early the next afternoon and thrashed those same pools 
all over again, to a running accompaniment of curses 
from my guides, in which I felt rather inclined to join. 
This party left the next day, having three large salmon 
and a lot of grilse from our pet lower pool, and we put 
in a week more hard work over this and the Red pools, 
some three miles up the river, without getting hold of 
a single salmon above five pounds. Then we both grew 
so sick, tired and disgusted that we would not have 
stayed a day longer for all the fish in Newfoundland, 
gave it up, scored the trip a failure and came home. 
All the way down fishermen fairly swarmed, every 
available pool, on any river visible from the train, being 
occupied by one or more men wielding big rods, ac- 
cording to general report with small success. _ 
“Fishing with the fly” carries two meanings, one 
patent to the general public and another which comes 
home with particular force to those who have pursued 
Salmo salar in his. haunts. The lordly salmon selects 
for his visits to fresh water the season and the country 
in which the insect plague is at its worst, and how bad 
fhis is only experience will teach. Certainly the hordes 
of flies that swarmed about us, and made ordinary 
comfort attainable only by constant thought and pre- 
caution, was far beyond my experience or imagina- 
tion, large as both of these already were. During the 
daylight hours, from 5 in the morning to 8 at night in 
the northern summer, the black fly swarmed, with a 
thirst for gore that made their personal safety a matter 
SEA TROUT. - BROOK TROUT. 
of indifference and a persistence that made nets of 
any kind nearly useless; coming in millions, creeping 
like a serpent, biting like a bulldog and entirely indif- 
ferent to being squashed. The cold nights of the north 
have caused the mosquito to pretty well abandon the 
nocturnal habits which he displays in softer climates, 
and to carry on his pernicious activity regardless of 
SEA TROUT. GRILSE. 
ITi/oin., 21bs. 6oz. 
daylight. Among the trees and bushes they swarm be- 
yond estimating, but the strong winds that generally 
blow all day keep them pretty well away from open and 
exposed spots, so that a refuge can generally be found 
where they are not beyond endurance. They are active 
until about Q at night, and start in again with the first 
light of morning, when they are at their very worst. 
A faint idea of their numbers will be given by the fact 
that I once killed twenty-six by a single slap on my, 
guide’s 'back as he sat by a salmon pool. 
It is difficult to make it clear how great an annoy- 
ance the constant plague is. By keeping all exposed 
parts well smeared with dope, renewed at interval of 
not more than an hour (we two used nearly a pint ofi 
oil of citronella in eighteen days), and using a little 
tent of mosquito netting, well tucked in, to cover the 
head and hands at night, one can escape being badly 
bitten, but the brutes give you no rest, dressing, wash-j 
ing, bathing, or anything else that exposes the body,| 
are very difficult to effect without suffering acutely, and’ 
it requires a great deal of very good sport to make' up,' 
for the constant discomfort caused by these wretched 
beasts. When Moses induced Jehovah to send a plague 
of flies upon Egypt he showed an expert knowledge of, 
the infinitely, disagreeable. ; ! 
In the Sandy Lake stream we found abundance of 
bright-colored and active brook trout, so many, in fact,^ 
that catching them was soon not amusing; but during^ 
the first two days on Flat Bay Brook saw no trout at 
all. The third morning a handsome silvery fish took 
my salmon fly, and the trout rod took half a dozen 
more from the same pool, and after that we generally 
got several every morning, which I supposed had run 
in from salt water the night before. These were the 
famed “sea trout,” concerning whose identity with 
fontinaUs there has been so much controversy. Natur-; 
alists, I think, are now agreed that these are only the 
common brook trout gone to sea, and that, after a short 
stay in fresh water, they resume the usual appearance| 
of that fish, but the differences, both in shape anc 
color, are so great that it is difficult at first to accepi 
this view, correct as it probably is. 
These fresh run fish were deepest in the center of 
the body, tapering decidedly toward tail and head, the 
later being triangular with upper and lower lines nearlj 
straight and muzzle acute. The back was dark sea- 
green without vermiculations or spots, though the dor- 
sal and caudal bore some lighter mottling. The sides 
showed some greenish shading toward the top, thgi 
rest of the fish being bright silver and the fi.ns 
streaked with sea-green. Usually there was no red 
tinge of any kind, though a few specimens showed. twe 
or three very faint pinkish spots. The two trout showr 
in the first photograph were taken at the Red Rod 
pools, some four miles up stream, on the same morning 
and were of exactly the same length, one being a set 
trout and the other a typical brook trout. The formej 
had doubtless been in the river for some days and was 
decidedly darker than the fresh run specimens taker 
lower down, was 17)4 inches long and weighed twc 
pounds and six ounces. The latter was I 7 f 4 inches lon^ 
weighed two pounds and two ounces, had the bodj 
elongated, the head elliptical with upper and lowei 
lines strongly curved, and the muzzle rounded. Bad 
dark greenish-brown, with prominent vermicular rnark-i 
ings in lighter shade, sides light brownish-gold with £ 
great number of vivid carmine and pink spots, bellj 
silvery. Fins edged with white and balance red witl 
dark streaks. The whole body was suffused with a 
strong purplish glow fading to pink on the belly. Thi.' 
fish had evidently not been in the salt water that yeai 
if ever. 
The second photograph shows the same sea trout 
with a grilse caught the same morning. Unfortunately 
the latter was unusually long and gaunt, and therefore 
much less like the trout in shape than most grilse, _bu1 
the coloration of the two fish was very similar 
Curiously enough all these trout acted like salmon 
taking the fly under water, not one making a clean rise 
or more than a mere break on the surface. _ The one 
figured made no splash at all and lay so quiet that 1 
thought the fly was on a stick and started my guide 
into the pool to clear it, when it seemed that the line 
was moving very slowly up stream. At first I thought 
this only the illusion which, when you have been look- 
ing steadily at moving water, makes any fixed object 
seem to move in the opposite direction ; but in s. 
moment or two a sudden rush removed any doubt, and 
it was a good ten minutes before he came to net. The 
flesh, both of the fresh run sea trout and salmon, was 
decidedly hard, tough and springy under the teeth, sq 
much so as to make them quite inferior for the table 
to either the brook trout or to the grilse taken late ir 
August of the previous year. 
A. Bt. J. Newberry. : 
New England Fishing. , 
Boston, Mass,., Aug 12. — Editor Forest and Stream: 
Proprietors of all the hotels at Nantucket have been com- 
pelled to find rooms outside in order to accommodatf 
their guests. The influx of summer visitors for the past 
fortnight is unparalleled in the history of the island. Sail- 
ing, fishing and bathing fill the summer holidays with 
pleasant variety. Many parties have had fine sport ir 
taking large numbers of scup and plaice at the entrance 
of the outer harbor. 
The local fishing stamers. Petrel and Waquoit, have had 
unusual success during the past week, capturing a num- 
ber of large swordfish, one of which measured 14^ fee’j 
in length. At Chatham there are many new arrivals anc 
few departures. The diversions here are largely sailing 
and fishing with some shooting of shore birds. This i;! 
the height of the season, and all the shore towns on Buz-' 
zard’s Bay afford an opportunity for combining the pleas-. 
Lires of angling with that of sailing, this being the onh 
body of salt water of any considerable dimensions whici 
is effectively protected from the wholesale slaughtei 
of fish by mechanical devices, such as nets, seines, etc 
This has been brought about through the efforts of the 
Old Colony Club mainly. ^ 
The annual meeting of the club will be held on Frida}^. 
Aug. 25, at Padanaram, South Dartmouth, in the sum-i 
mer station of the New Bedford Y. C. A clambake wil 
be served at Caban’s Folly Hotel. The death of Mr 
Joseph Jefferson has left the c:lub without a president 
