August, 1920 
FOREST AND STREAM 
439 
THE PROTECTION OF THE GRAYLING 
A PAPER THAT HAS RECENTLY COME TO LIGHT ON WHAT MUST BE DONE 
TO PREVENT THE ANNIHILATION OF THIS EXCELLENT FOOD AND GAME FISH 
By L. D. NORRIS 
I WAS indebted to Mr. Fitzhugh’s gen- 
erous courtesy and coaching for my 
first experimental knowledge of the 
haunts and habits, in the sunny ripples 
and cool shadows of the Au Sable, of this 
aristocrat of game fish, Michigan’s gray- 
ling; and some generous indignation we 
exchanged over its annual slaughter and 
rapid disappearance, doubtless led to his 
request that I should say on paper that 
which was so freely uttered over sundry 
glasses of whiskey-sour, taken, to be 
sure, as a medicinal corrective to a two 
weeks’ exclusive diet of grayling and 
bacon, served in the green shadow of the 
Au Sable cedar by that master of the set- 
ting-pole and “Jewell” of a woods-cook, 
“Len,” the guide, philosopher and friend. 
A middle-aged man’s first love is apt 
to be violent — which may account for 
the opinions that follow. Of all the fresh 
water game fish, the grayling is, as cent- 
uries ago the French found him in Lake 
Leman, “un chevalier,” just as certainly 
as the chub is “un villain.” 
His is no new family. Before the days 
of the “Gentle Isaak” under the name 
of umbra (ombre) he passed like a 
shadow or a ghost ■ out of sight in the 
clear and cold streams of Switzerland 
and la belle France. Much quaint learn- 
ing and fanciful discourse have been had 
anent him. That he fed on gold and 
grains of it were found on his belly; that 
he loves the water Thyme (hence thymal- 
lus) and smells of it, a habit that he 
keeps up in the Au Sable, as I have dis- 
covered leaves of white cedar in his 
breakfast, albeit he might have risen to 
and taken it, thinking it something more 
nutritious. 
Aldrovandus says, “they are made by 
their Mother Nature of such exact shape 
and pleasant colors, purposely to invite 
us to a joy and contentedness in feasting 
with her,” and that they are very “me- 
dicinable.” Gesner notes “that the fat of 
a grayling, being set with honey, a day 
or two in the sun in a little glass, is very 
excellent against redness or swathiness, 
or anything that breeds in the eyes.” 
St. Ambrose, of Milan, who kept the 
church fast days, calls him the “Flower 
Fish,” and was so far in love with him 
that he would not let him pass without 
the honor of a long discourse. Old 
Isaak, who tells this of the saint, adds, 
“but I must,” yet he tarries long enough 
with him to leave to us, as he wrote it, 
more than two centuries ago, an accurate 
description of Michigan’s grayling as I 
found him in the year of “Boss” govern- 
ment, 1877. 
“The biggest of them does not exceed 
eighteen inches, is very game-some at 
the fly and bites not often at the min- 
now; is much simpler than the trout and 
therefore bolder, for he will rise twenty 
times if you miss him, and yet rise again. 
He is taken with a fly of red feathers (I 
June 2, 1920. 
N going through my files recent- 
ly, 1 came across five bound 
-pamphlets and found that these 
were the printed proceedings of the 
Michigan Sportsman’s Association 
for five consecutive years, begin- 
• ning with 1878. 
What a flood of light was thrown 
upon the game and fish situation 
of those days, and the prophecies of 
what the ultimate result would be 
if something was not done to stop 
the slaughter. 
The grayling has been a subject 
of several most excellent magazine 
articles recently, and my eye catch- 
ing this article entitled: “The 
Michigan Grayling: What must be 
done to prevent the annihilation of 
this excellent food and game fish.” 
— I am sending it to Forest and 
Stream. It is a paper by the late 
L. D. Norris, of Grand Rapids, 
written under the date of Feb. 5th, 
1878, and will bring to the minds 
of the old-time anglers pleasant 
memories, I am sure. Mr. Fitz- 
hugh referred to was Daniel Fitz- 
hugh, the accredited discoverer of 
the grayling, and “Len Jewell,” in- 
separable from all of the writings 
of the early days of the Michigan 
Grayling. I saw him on the Au 
Sable once with Uncle Thad Nor- 
ris. That was fifty years ago this 
summer. [W. B. Mershon.] 
found he hankered after the ‘grass wid- 
ow’ most), an outlandish bird, and a fly 
like a great or small moth. He lurks 
close all winter, but is pleasant and jolly 
after mid April, and in May and the hot 
months. He is of fine shape and his 
flesh is white; his teeth, those little ones 
that he hath, are in the throat, and yet 
he has so tender a mouth that he is often- 
er lost after an angler has hooked him 
than any other fish.” 
That he has so tender a mouth and is 
so often lost after he is struck is one of 
his chief merits to the true disciple of the 
quaint old “semster.” And then, too, 
like the blue-blooded Princes of Europe, 
he has no end of learned names — cuss 
names “Len” calls them — as O’Connell 
put to route the Billingsgate fish-wife 
with the epithets rhomboidal and tetra- 
gonal. 
Linnaeus, Cuvier, Heckel, Kner, Rich- 
ardson, Agassiz, Milner and Cope have 
all baptised his tribe, or some family of 
it, with Latin words of learned length 
and thundering sound. Yet he is just as 
sweet a “Flower Fish” under his Es- 
kimo disguise of “Hewlook Powak” or 
the voyageur’s “Poison bleu” as the 
Coregonus and Thymallus of the savants. 
H IS American history seems to be 
this : Dr. Richardson first took him, 
17 V 2 inches long, in 1820 in Winter 
River, opposite Fort Enterprise, finding 
him only in the clear water, delighting 
only in the most rapid part of the stream, 
and requiring as much skill in landing as 
a trout of six times his weight. In 1859 
he was thought not to be found south of 
the 62nd parallel, but it is now made to 
appear that before that he had been 
killed by British army officers in the wa- 
ters of Hudson’s Bay, while thirty years 
ago he was speared by fishermen at the 
mouth of the Au Sable, but was not known 
as a game fish, nor classed. In 1865 Mr. 
Fitzhugh sent a specimen to the Academy 
of Natural Science at Philadelphia, and 
Cope christened him Thymallus tricolor, 
which is now his ruling Michigan name; 
though I like best the one Agassiz gives 
him, Thyvexillifer — Thyme-smelling ban- 
ner-carrier. It alone fitly designates that 
magnificent dorsal of twenty-three rays, 
of blackish-gray, blotched with white, 
crossed by Berlin blue spots, and edged 
with light lake, which he spreads and 
waves and fights with, as he comes broad- 
side to your fish-well, under the gentle 
leading of an eight-ounce rod (mine, by 
the way, was a much heavier one — for 
leading — as well my wrist, weak from 
long disuse, doth yet remember) . 
In 1867 Spencer, of the U. S. A., found 
and described him in Montana. He is in 
the Yukon, Alaska. The genial Genio C. 
Scott first hears of him in '68, and learns, 
which is true, that he is the swiftest fresh 
water fish that swims. While Hallock, of 
the Forest and Stream, knows more of 
him than any other of the tide (the t 
almost slipped into an h) bound fisher- 
men of the Atlantic Coast. 
His only habitat, for the average 
sportsmen, is north of Thunder Bay and 
in Michigan, and he can only be found in 
great numbers in the middle and lower 
Au Sable and the upper half of the Man- 
istee. He stops with his family on the 
spawning beds in winter, leaving numer- 
ous eggs which hatch in about two weeks, 
in April. 
I know of but one attempt to cultivate 
him. April 30th, ’74, Seth Green was on 
the Au Sable for spawn, but was too late 
and got but little. He found the water to 
be about 40° Fahrenheit and the air 20°. 
His calendar of what did hatch is as fol- 
lows : 
“Eggs arrived May 5th; 1st eggs 
hatched May 8th; all hatched May 11th; 
first began to rise and eat May 12th; 
all swimming May 15th. Though Mr. 
Green thought they would not live in 
the same streams with trout, and that 
trout would eat them, our Fish Com- 
mission in their report of December, 
1874, say they have kept sixteen gray- 
ling, from six to fourteen inches, at 
(CONTINUED ON PAGE 458) 
