476 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
[Dec. 9, 1905, 
Fish and Fishing. 
Mf. Tasker's Experience at Lake St. John. 
It is a matter of much regret to me that I was not 
fortunate enough_ to have seen Mr. Stephen P. M. 
Tasker and his friends when they were in Quebec last 
September, on their way to Lake St. John. I knew 
at that time of the disorganized condition of affairs in 
connection with the hotels, steamers and ouananiche 
fishing generally, partially due to the remarkable want 
of water, and might have saved them the disappoint- 
ment they experienced at the lake. I can imagine of 
no excuse for failure to notify them that the accommoda- 
tion and the men, which were engaged beforehand, could 
not be forthcoming, though a poor reason may be found 
for it in the fact that the entire management were just 
then finally vacating their charge. I understand that 
a southern hotel man of considerable experience has 
been engaged as manager for next year, and that the 
superintendence of guides, camps, canoes, routes, and 
of the outfitting of camping parties is to be placed in 
the hands of Mr. Marcoux, for some time past in 
charge of the Island House and the Roberval hatchery, 
who will have his headquarters at the Hotel Roberval, 
to meet and look after the interests of anglers arrivng 
there. This change should fill a long-needed want. 
When I wrote for Forest and Stream of Nov. 4 
that, “as a rule the fishing at the Discharge cannot be 
depended upon late in the season, because of the 
danger of low water there, such as we had in Septem- 
ber last,” I had not heard of the unfortunate experience 
of Mr. Tasker and his friends, related by him two 
weeks later in this paper, and so fully bearing out my 
statement quoted above. That experience in no manner 
surprises me, though candor compels me to say that 
in the matter of low water and the consequent early 
closing of the ouananiche season, the recent fall was a 
very exceptional one. 
I sincerely hope that Mr. Tasker will make another 
attempt to reach the ouananiche fishing grounds, and 
that next time it will be in the height of the season 
instead , of after its close. If he visits the Grand Dis- 
, charge in the month of June or even in July, or if 
he tempt the ouananiche later in July and in the month 
of August in the Ashuapmouchouan River, the Mistas- 
sini or Lac a Jim, I ana pretty sure that he will revise 
the statement, “that th^ place is fished out.” No at- 
tention is merited by the stories told by certain of 
.the loafing residents of the place, who view with con- 
siderable jealousy the taking of fish by non-resident 
anglers, anxious, as they are, to have them all to them- 
selves. They have so far succeeded, it is true, with 
the use of nets, in considerably reducing the supply of 
the fish in the lake_ itself, opposite to Roberval and 
Pointe_ Bleue, that it is scarcely worth while to try 
the bait-fishing that alone produced any result there. 
But in the preserved waters of the Grand Discharge 
and in the rivers already referred to, where alone there 
is any of the fly-fishing that proves attractive to 
anglers, it is by no means correct to say that the 
waters are fished out, as I am quite convinced that 
Mr. Tasker will be the first to admit, if he succeeds 
in reaching any of the localities where the ouananiche 
are successfully sought by the angling community. To 
attempt to take them with rod and line in the vicinity 
of Roberval or Pointe.. Bleue, is something like angling 
for salmon in the sea. 
The Abolition of Netting. 
Perhaps the rnost promising feature about the out- 
look for ouananiche in Lake St. John is the promised 
abolition of_ the netting privileges. It would scarcely 
appear possible to sorne people that those in authority 
should have become so blind to the future as to de- 
liberately permit the use of nets for the purpose of 
taking, for commercial purposes, the magnificent game 
fish which were being propagated and planted at such 
considerable expense, in the same waters from which 
they were being taken. Yet this is what has been done 
at Lake St. John for some time past, with the conni- 
vance and at the very request of the member of parlia- 
ment for the county in which Lake St. John is situated. 
A short time ago, the Quebec Fish and Game Pro- 
tective Association attempted to make a test case as 
to the right of the netters to use seines in Lake St. 
John for the taking of ouananiche. An officer seized 
several boxes and barrels of fish which had been 
shipped from Lake St. John to Quebec, and when they 
were opened, a large number of very beautiflil ouan- 
aniche were found, some of which weighed from six 
to seven pounds each. The court ordered the fish to 
be returned to the dealer to whom they were ad- 
dressed, because it was admitted by the government 
officials that licenses to net the fish had been issued to 
the man who had taken them as well as to others. 
There was not even a pretence that the license limited 
the rights of the netters to the taking of coarse fish. 
How long this condition of affairs might have con- 
tinued if a change of_ government had not occurred 
this year it is impossible to say, for the member of 
parliament already referred to publicly proclaimed that 
the game and fish of the Lake St. John district belonged 
exclusively to the people of the district, with whose 
right to take and kill and use them in the manner in 
which they thought best, it was nobody’s business to 
interfere. It is needless to say that this opinion was 
not shared by a very large element of the community, 
including those who profit so largely as guides, etc.j 
by the money expended in the country by visiting 
anglers. The netters were influentiaT politicians, how- 
ever, and having the support and backing of the parlia- 
mentary representatives for the constituency, must, in 
a few years have ruined the ouananiche fishing entirely, 
had they not been stopped in. their nefarious work.’ 
The end of the netting was reached, however, when the 
new Minister of Colonization, Mines and Fisheries— 
the Hon. Mr. Prevost— visited Lake St. John last 
September. Mr. Prevost has been an enthusiastic 
angler from his youth, but had never fished for ouan- 
aniche before this year. Last September he had all 
the sport of ouananiche fishing that anybody could 
desire. He could not reaph the fishing grounds of the 
Grand Discharge, for the same reasons that prevented 
Mr. Tasker from going there about the same time. 
But he spent about a fortnight in visiting some of the 
best of the rivers flowing into Lake St. John, in which 
the fish are found at that period of the year, and he and 
his party took ouananiche on the fly until they were 
surfeited \y-ith the sport, and landed fish after fish, only 
to replace -them in the water. During his stay in the Lake 
St. John cbmitry, Mr. Prevost had splendid sport with the 
large ouananiche found in Lac a Jim, which is reached by 
the ascent ot the Ashuapmouchouan River; the return 
being niust easily made by way of the Mistassini. This 
trip, allowing two or three days for fishing en route, 
takes about ten days to make. Mr. Prevost also in- 
spected the working of the Roberval hatchery, and saw 
for himself what heavy expenditure had been made for 
the accommodation of visiting anglers and what large 
sums of. 'money were annually expended for their sport 
by these, latter, among the people of the country. The 
iniquity, of the netting licenses immediately appealed 
to the Minister, who despite the protests of the Mem- 
ber of Parliament, promptly notified the netters that their 
licenses 'W.ould not be renewed. Several attempts have 
since been- made, to create sympathy for the netters, and 
only a few days ago I was shown a letter frotn a supposed 
fishery expert in the United States, who declaimed against 
the cancellation of the netting licenses, on the ground that 
it was unfair to prevent the people of the district from 
taking the coarse fish for food, and also because he 
thought, it was in the interest of the fishing that the 
nettings should be allowed, since with the advance of 
civilization and the pollution of the streams with mill 
refuse, etc., the fate of the ouananiche was virtually 
sealed. There might have been something in these 
arguments providing none but coarse fish were taken 
in nets,- .but unfortunately, as shown when a number of 
cases containing the netted fish were seized and opened, 
it is largely the ouananiche that are sought and taken 
by the netters. Then again the bulk of the settlers 
never profited^ by the nets, which belonged to less than 
a dozen individuals. Nor is there any intention of at- 
tempting to prevent the residents from taking what 
coarse fish they wish for their own use, though they 
rnust take them legally, as the visitors do, with rod and 
line; and there is scarcely any limit to the number of 
fish that may be so taken, especially with the aid of a 
troll. 
The Nellers at Work. 
The netters have too much at stake to sit down 
quietly at once and submit to Mr. Prevost’s decision. 
A few days ago, the niinister presided at a Coloniza- 
tion Congress, to which all those interested in the 
cause of the settlers in the newer districts of the 
Province were invited. The netters from Lake St. 
John were there, and so was their member of parlia- 
ment.' It was the cause of the poorer settlers in the 
country that was at stake, and not that of sportsmen. 
But Mr. Prevost, who is Minister of Colonization as 
well as of Fisheries, knows very well that the causes 
of the sportsmen and of the colonists, if well under- 
stood, are perfectly identical. He invited the under- 
signed to read a paper before the Congress to illustrate 
this fact and the invitation was accepted. Mr. Prevost 
stood to his guns, and by what was practically a unani- 
mous: vote, the congress of settlers and colonists and 
their friends, including a large sprinkling of their parish 
priests, approved the policy of the Minister in sup- 
pressing netting in the inland lakes of the Province. 
The Miishquoi Bay Affair. 
Mr. Prevost’s policy in this respect naturally in- 
cludes the tennination of the Canadian seining licenses 
in Missisquoi Bay. The results, in this particular case 
is a very great and very gratifying victory for our 
principal international association of sportsmen — the 
North American Fish and Game Protective Associa- 
tion.- For years past this seining has been a burning 
question for the States of Vermont and New York, and 
those '.Canadian sportsmen who have stood loyally by 
them In this connection. Year after year the leading 
members of the North American Association worked 
with a determination that seemed as if it could not 
fail, to induce* the Canadian authorities to render the 
common justice of refusing to license the netting of the 
pike-perch of Lake Champlain upon their spawning beds 
in the Canadian water of Missisquoi Bay. Deputation after 
deputation came from New York and Vermont to Ottawa 
and ’Quebec and Montreal to interview the various 
Canadian governmental authorities on the subject, and 
time after time it seemed as if victory was just about 
to perch upon their banners, when some new device of 
the netters and their attorneys and political wire-pullers 
succeeded in preventing the fruition of their good work. 
It wlis not very surprising that about a year ago discour- 
agement was so general among the New York and Ver- 
mont members of the Association that some of them 
felrhke giving up the fight and ceasing their interest 
in the international association and its work, fearing 
that it was unequal to the task which it had undertakeh. 
The Canadian workers in the Association knew that 
it was up to them to leave nothing undone to evidence 
their good faith in tlie movement, and their ability to 
rightly influence their own government, and though 
undoubtedly very much discouraged in the matter, they 
bent themselves, at the last annual meeting in St. John, 
N. .B.,_ to a supreme effort to overcome the baneful poli- 
tical- influences opposed to them ^ in this matter. Tjie 
unanswerably strong petition drawn up by them for 
presentation to the Minister of Fisheries at Ottav^a, 
which was published at the time in Forest and Strea|i’ 
asking him to prohibit the issue of licenses by the 
Province of Quebec for netting in Missisquoi Bay, was 
willingly signed by the Prime Minister of New Bruns- 
wicli, ,Hon. Mr. Tweedie, as President of the Associa- 
tion, although a very warm political supporter of the 
Minister at Ottawa, and when presented, a little later 
td' •^he latter, in Montreal, by a deputation of members 
of the Association, it was evident that Mr. Prefontaine 
was struck by the justice of the plea, but that political 
considerations were pulling extremely hard the other 
way. As Mr. Prefontaine did not act, it was up to Mr. 
Parent, the head of the department at Quebec to re- 
fuse the licenses if he chose to. He did not, how- 
ver, and they issued as usual. Yet I may say for my- 
self, and I believe, also, for the other Canadian mem- 
bers of the Association, that we never, amid all our 
disappointments in this matter, felt otherwise than 
that we must eventually succeed. It was still more dis- 
couraging to find that President Roosevelt’s corre- 
spondence with the Governor-General of Canada 
through the British Minister at Washington and the 
^J^P^rial government produced no effect. The hope 
that I expressed at the last annual banquet of the 
Massachusetts State Fish and Game Association, that 
steps would be taken to close the American market 
against the fish so netted in Missisquoi Bay, was in- 
deed fulfilled, but still the netting was continued. 
However, “all’s well that ends well,” and I am per- 
fectly sure that none of those who have labored so 
long and so faithfully for the accomplishment of this 
object, regret the time and the trouble that they have 
given to the subject. Not only have they assisted in 
the rightii'm of a grievous wrong, but they have been 
mstruraentTil in removing what threatened to become 
a cause of international dissatisfaction and discord. 
Mr. Prevost’s action in agreeing to issue no more of 
these licenses wfli clou.btless be always remembered to 
his credn by American sportsmen and fishery officials, 
and It is perhaps unnecessary to add that the utility 
and the raison el’etre of the North American Associa- 
tion have been established beyond any question of 
doubt. Its members will be interested in knowing that 
a copy of the report of its transactions at its last an- 
nua! convention, containing a full record of its action 
m this^ Missisquoi Bay affair was placed in Mr. 
Prevost s hands as soon as issued, which was even be- 
fore he assumed office as Minister of Fisheries for the 
Province of Quebec. 
It would be ungenerous not to recall some of those 
to whose efforts in the past is largely due the happy 
result now achieved in the affair of Missisquoi Bay. 
In years gone by, no members of the North American 
Association labored more assiduously for the cause 
lhan ex-President John W. Titcomb, now of Wash- 
mgton and the late Mr. L. Z. Joncas, of Quebec. 
Premier Tweedie, of New Brunswick; Dr. Finnic of 
Montreal; Messrs C. E. E. Ussher and L. O. Arm- 
strong, of the Canadian Pacific Railway; Messrs, H 
G. Elliott and H. R. Charlton, of the Grand Trunk 
Railway System; Mr. D. G. .Smith, of New Brunswick- 
Governor Nelson O. Fisk, H. G. Thomas, F. L Fish 
and General Butterfield, of Vermont, and J. Warren 
Pond, C. H. Wilson, and others, of New York State, 
have done yeoman’s service in the matter. 
Annual Meeting. 
I have just received a telegram from Mr. W. S. 
Hinman, president of the North American Fish and 
Game Protective Association, informing me that he 
has selected the 24th and 25th days of January next 
as the dates for the annual meeting of the Association, 
which is to be held in the city of Boston. This ought’ 
for various reasons, to be the most successful meeting 
in the history of the Association. 
Fish and Game Congress. 
The new Minister of Fisheries has various other re- 
forms in view, besides the abolition of netting in in- 
land waters, and has issued a number of invitations 
to Canadian and American sportsmen to meet him in 
consultation at the Windsor Hotel, Montreal on Dec. 
13 and 14. A large gathering is expected, and all in- 
terested in the cause will be made welcome, without 
any further invitation. Suggestions in writing may 
also be sent to Hon. Mr. Prevost at Quebec, or to 
the undersigned, who will act as Secretary of the 
Congress. E. T. D. Chambers. 
Fish and Game Convention. 
Quebec, Nov. 27.— Editor Forest and Stream: The 
incicsed letter of invitation, which has been sent out to 
a n -amber of those interested in the hunting and fishing 
ef the Province of Quebec, and in the preservation of 
our fish and game life, speaks for itself. In preparing the 
list of those to whom invitations have been addressed, it 
is quite possible that some of those who take an interest 
in fishing and hunting matters may have been overlooked. 
\^u are therefore at liberty to announce that the Minister 
Wfll gladl}^ welcome all such to the coming congress, 
whether they have received a formal invitation or not. 
Jean Prevost, 
Minister of Colonization, Mines and Fisheries. 
Minister’s Office, Department of Colonization, 
Mines and Fisheries, Quebec, Nov. 27.~Dear Sir: The 
more extensive knowledge of the value of our wild game 
and inland fisheries which has come to me during my brief 
charge— as Minister— of the Department of Colonization, 
Mines and Fisheries, has confirmed the impression which 
I had previously formed in regard to the necessity of our 
fur, fin and feather fauna. My earnest desire is to so 
improve existing conditions in this respect that sportsmen 
may always find here the success which is dependent 
upon an abundant supply of fish and game. 
I am more than ever convinced, too-, that there is room 
for quite a large increase in the revenue to be derived 
by the Province from those who come here to enjoy the 
sport afforded by the pursuit of the inhabitants of its 
woods and waters. 
Before enacting the reforms which I believe to be de- 
sirable, I am anxious to meet and to confer with a num- 
ber of those who are most interested and most experi- 
enced in the angling and the hunting of the Province of 
Quebec, and with this end in view have resolved to in- 
vite them to join me in a fish and game congress, to be 
held at the Windsor Hotel, Montreal, on the 13th and 
14th of December next. 
You are therefore cordially invited to attend this con- 
vention, and to send to me at my department in Quebec, 
not later than the ist of December next, any suggestions 
that you may propose Jo offer thereat, in order that the 
propriety of their consideration may be carefully studied 
before the preparation of a programme of proceedings. 
It is clearly understood, of course, that time will not 
permit of any important deviation from the programme 
