January, 1920 
FOREST AND STREAM 
21 
headed for that picturesque craggy isl- 
and called Polk’s Folly. 
The waters were green as an opal. 
Flocks of tiny “Sea Geese” fluttered and 
swam about us, while around the head- 
lands the tides swirled with tremendous 
power. We headed into a wisp of fog 
through which the sun shone wanly. 
Then we heard them — that inimitable 
rustle and surge and splash of hundreds 
of large fish leaping after their food. 
Straight on to us they came, and in the 
wisps of fog we cast our flies, and found 
that these fish were as wary and peculiar 
in their way as the far-famed salmon. 
The flies soared and fell full in the 
midst of the school. We could see the 
huge fish swimming madly in the glitter- 
ing waters; see the long, pearl-gray 
median line running along their sides 
like the stripe of a warrior’s trousers. 
We could even see their eyes, gleaming 
like moonstones, so near us they were, 
and so clear was the water, and the deep 
red of their gills as they chased the 
shrimp or leaped after them as the little 
grasshoppers of the deep hopped up 
above the tide. 
Again and again we cast, but the first 
rise came to my comrade. With a rush 
and a surge a huge fellow took the whirl- 
ing fly and dove for the deeps as he felt 
the sting of it. 
I have seen many a fine fish taken, 
but none that interested me more than 
this one. Reeling in my line I watched 
where my comrade’s rod bent and quiv- 
ered to a loop and, as he gave him the 
butt, the tip hung lurching within an 
inch of the water. He had a long Grilse 
rod, and I a full-grown salmon rod of the 
best and latest make. I wanted to see 
what would happen. For half an hour 
that sea pollock fought with all the punch 
and thud of a hookjawed salmon, and 
at the end of that time, broke away, ap- 
parently as fresh as when he started. 
We had drifted away from the school, 
and could see the fight from start to 
finish. There was no wavering as the 
fish broke away, no groggy tossing, as I 
have seen both salmon and bass do under 
such conditions. That pollock simply 
plunged his massive, muscle-armored 
sides, shook himself, and went away as if 
he had not spent a half hour of intense 
fighting at all. 
We could see our powerboat dimly at 
the edge of another wisp of fog, so we 
signalled for a tow — the tides rage along 
so. In a few minutes we were uptide 
from the place where the pollock were 
schooling, and we sat listening intently 
till the fish rose once more. 
T HIS time it seemed as if several 
schools had joined into one. All 
around us the fish leaped and rolled, 
scores and hundreds of them, amazingly 
alike as though they were all of the same 
weight and size and mould. And once 
more in spite of our determination to 
keep calm, we were casting the fly madly 
among the thronging host; indeed they 
seemed as mad as we were, for they- 
leaped and surged right up to our boat. 
Then my time came. I cast the fly- 
far out in the throng, and drew it to me 
with a steady pull. Suddenly it stopped 
and I saw a fish take the fly. I could 
recognize him even as he swirled among 
his comrades with my fly deep in hia, 
maw, for on the top of his shoulder, just; 
back of the gills, was a bunch of blood! 
red, either some gash from a sea enemy, 
or perhaps it was a mass of sticky 
, (CONTINUED ON PAGE 42) 
BOBBING FOR EELS — Continued 
THE SEVENTH INSTALLMENT OF A SERIES OF STORIES DEPICTING THE 
SIMPLE JOY OF FISHING AS EXEMPLIFIED THROUGH THE EYES OF YOUTH 
By LEONARD HULIT, Associate Editor of FOREST AND STREAM 
4 4 ¥ AM glad you do not think eels be- 
I neath your endeavor,” said Mr. 
Adams, as they sat down on the 
grass. “I would rather have them to eat 
than any other fish that swims.” 
“So’d me an' Aunt Mary,” broke in 
Matt, “ ’sides, when I get many I can al- 
ius sell ’em better’n any other kind.” 
“I attended a lecture once,” said Mr. 
Adams, “and during its course I heard 
some of the most astonishing things in 
relation to the eel. The man was lectur- 
ing on the value of fish as a food and he 
particularly dwelt on the eel. Their 
habits have in the past been but little un- 
derstood and their value to man not fully 
appreciated. 
It has been determined for only a com- 
paratively short period of time and then 
only after the deepest research just how 
eels breed. Investigation proves that 
they spawn only in the ocean. While it 
is true that eels planted in ponds or 
lakes where it is impossible for them to 
get out will thrive and grow large, still 
there is never any increase in numbers.” 
Matt lay giving breathless attention to 
this revelation of things he had never 
even dreamed of, and Mr. Adams was un- 
consciously planting seed in virgin soil 
which was in after years to give full 
fruition in the man Matt. Many of the 
words used by Mr. Adams were but vag- 
uely understood by the boy, still, all were 
comprehended in a general way and he 
was being schooled much more rapidly 
than even he was aware of at the time. 
“While eels are regarded as scavengers 
and in a sense the claim is true,” con- 
tinued Mr. Adams, “yet, they are fully 
alive to the tid-bits of the waters as their 
fondness for the roe of other fish bears 
witness ; that of the shad being preferred 
to all others. In their wanderings up and 
down their favorite streams they at times 
do wonderful things. They have been 
known to completely clog city water pipes 
and will even cross wet meadows at night 
to get to other streams, instinct, of which 
we as yet know but little, telling them the 
direction in which the desired streajn 
lays. 
, “That they spawn only in the ocean is 
assured by the fact that in all of the 
streams leading inland during the early 
summer countless millions of the tiny fish 
may be seen working their way to the 
fresh waters ; this is particularly true at 
the foot of the dams which cross the 
streams.* 
“When the wind is not blowing they 
may be seen working their diminutive 
bodies, no thicker than a darning nefedle 
and from three to four inches in length, 
over rocks and the gates of the dam any- 
where where there is moisture — all in the 
same effort to get to the headwaters. 
What salmon and other fish do with wild 
leaps these midgets accomplish after the 
most tedious and determined effort.” 
*One Fourth of July morning the writer was 
taken by a friend to witness this wonderful sight, 
to the very stream being written of in these 
sketches. It was the lowest dam at the head of 
the Manasquan River, where a pool or basin, is 
naturally formed at such places by the. action 
of the waters. It was at least fifty feet wide and 
about one hundred feet in length and at least tpn 
feet in depth. This body of water was. a complete 
mass of eel life numbering untold millions. 
Matt could scarcely keep quiet. “Gee,” 
he said, “I’ve seen ’em more’n once clim’in 
the dam but I ’sposed they had been 
hatched in the mill gate hole. They was 
no longern’ my finger and the littlest 
mites!” “How many out of each thou- 
sand which finally reach their destination 
is mere guess work,” continued Mr. 
Adams, “but it is certain that immense 
numbers do, as thousands of tons of the 
mature fish are caught and marketed an- 
nually. They are a very important arti- 
cle of food and the market is never over- 
supplied, and they always sell at a good 
price. All eels are of much the same 
shape; the principle difference being in 
the shape of their heads; one species be- 
ing much broader than the other. In salt 
water the favorite is the silver eel; this 
kind apparently seldom goes beyond tide 
water. It is dark green on the back and 
bright silvery-white on the belly and in 
tidal streams is extremely abundant. In 
commercial fishery they are taken in eel 
pots in vast numbers.” 
“What’s eel pots?” asked Matt with 
great earnestness, “seems like goin’ to 
school on fish to hear you talk an’ the 
way you know.” 
Mr. Adams described the way eel pots 
were constructed and the manner of their 
setting, also how he had seen them in use 
in the different parts of the country, but 
many of the things he was telling them 
he had learned himself from a man he 
had heard lecture on fish who was in the 
employ of the government to instruct peo- 
ple on the importance of fish as food. 
“Seems funny,” said the lad, “you never 
