158 FOREST AND STREAM April, 1922 
SALMON FISHING AT STERLING LAKE 
WITHIN FORTY MILES OF NEW YORK CITY THERE LIES A 
NATURAL BODY OF WATER WHERE OUANANICHE THRIVE 
By BILLY KEIL 
specimen, but without results. The lake 
trout undoubtedly was the greatest con- 
tributing factor towards the final extinc- 
tion of the saibling from this water, for i 
in a small lake of this kind they are re- 
lentless in their pursuit of all fishes 
smaller than themselves, even their own 
progeny being devoured during the hot 
summer months when all sizes of this 
species congregate in the cold waters of 
the bottom. 
Lack of food, with its resulting can- 
nibalism, had just about caused the lake' 
trout also to disappear from this water, 
when the writer in 1903 restocked the 
lake with 30,000 fingerling lakers secured ' 
from the Bureau of Fisheries at Duluth, 
Minn. For about ten years following 
this plant, excellent angling for these 
fish was to be had by the few individuals 
fortunate enough to obtain a permit to 
fish this water. It was not unusual for 1 
an angler to take four or five trout, aver- | 
aging 7 or 8 pounds, each in a day's fish- i 
ing, though from the size of the fish i 
taken it was plainly evident that if natu- 
ral reproduction was taking place (as no 1 
doubt it was) none of the resulting prog- ! 
eny were escaping the voracious maws 
of the mature fish. 
From 1913 to 1918 not over a dozen 
in all of these fish were taken, most of ; 
them old specimens and none in very 
good physical condition. We made a 
great mistake in planting lake trout in 
this water again after the old stock had 
apparently run out, for, although most 
of the conditions In this lake are ideal 
for fish, its area is entirel}^ too small for 
this variety of Salmonidae. This fish I 
requires plenty of range and a tremen- ' 
eral rights of the property for a long 
term of years. As the crow flies, the 
lake is only 36 miles from Times Square, 
Xew York City. To a person standing 
on the shore of this wonderful sheet of 
water, in whose crystal depths are mir- 
rored the pine-clacl precipitous hills, it 
seems almost unbelievable that such prim- 
itive surroundings are possible in so 
short a distance from the pulsing heart 
of the Nation’s greatest city; but climb 
up any of the overlooking hills, and if 
the day be clear the tall buildings of 
lower Manhattan are plainly discernible 
with the naked eye. 
S TERLING LAKE is one of the very 
few waters in this part of the coun- 
try that remains in what might be called 
a natural condition, for its shore line and 
the surrounding watershed has not been 
changed to an appreciable extent from 
that existing a hundred years ago. To 
this fact alone can be attributed the 
purity of its water and the freedom from 
silt and slime upon the bottom. It is 
also one of the few deep, cold, natural 
Characteristic leap of the ouananiche 
lake. None of these fish have been taken 
since 1900, and it is thought that they 
must have entirely disappeared from this 
water long years ago. The waiter tried 
for a number of years after this last fish 
was said to have been taken to secure a 
dous amount of food, at least a hundred 1 
times its own weight in a season. 
1 N 1918 the writer was engaged by the 
^ Midvale Company to make a thorough 
examination of this lake, and to report 
N estling amid the Ramapo hills 
of Orange County, at an elevation 
of over a thousand feet, and sur- 
rounded by an almost unbroken 
forest of a hundred thousand' acres, lies 
one of the most l)eautiful little lakes in 
New York state. It is about a mile and 
a half in length and a mile in width, and 
the entire shore is simply a tumbled mass 
of immense boulders and abrupt rocky 
points, with the exception of a white 
sand beach at the northern end. The 
water is as clear as a mountain spring, 
and in truth this is just what it is, for 
there are no tributary streams and its 
supply must be drawn from subterranean 
sources. The maximum depth of the 
lake is 126 feet, with an average of more 
than 75 feet. It contains very little 
aquatic plant life on account of the al- 
most sterile character of the bottom, 
which is composed of rocks and sand. 
Such is Sterling Lake, owned by tbe 
E. FI. Fiarriman Estate, and at present 
under the control of the jMidvalc Steel 
Corporation, who har e leased the min- 
trout lakes in the eastern part of the 
United States that has not been ruined 
by the introduction of black bass. 
Sometime back in the late ’70’s lake 
trout were introduced into this water by 
Abram S. Hewitt. These fish apparently 
thrived for a time and produced fair 
angling, considering the small area of 
the lake and the comparatively meager 
food supply. In the fall of 1887 a small 
number of Alpine saibling, part of a con- 
signment sent to this country from the 
Swiss lakes through the courtesy of 
Baron vom Behr, was planted by Mr. 
Hewitt in this lake, and a year later a 
specimen was secured and forwarded to 
the National Museum at Washington for 
preservation. This is the only instance 
on record of the successful introduction 
of the saibling into the waters of this 
country. 
Although few of these splendid charrs 
were taken by angling, they were ob- 
served for a number of years afterward 
in great schools apparently spawning on 
the sandbars at the northern end of the 
Steelhead trout caught in Sterling Lake 
