August, 1920 
FOREST AND STREAM 
449 
pine-apples, and as their crops had to 
go to market in sail-boats, if wind and 
water conditions were unfavorable they 
lost their crops for lack of transporta- 
tion to market. Having lost the 1891 
crop from this cause they determined to 
open an inlet of their own, by cutting 
through the 200 yards of the Hutchin- 
son Island to give the St. Lucie an out- 
let to the ocean. 
Some $1,500 in cash was raised from 
all the settlers and a suction dredge 
was hired which cut a 50 foot channel 
from the river through the mangroves to 
the sand bar ridge at the ocean beach, 
and then the settlers anxiously waited 
and wished for a high northern gale, 
which did not come until the latter part of 
January, 1892, and then by agreement 
all the settlers gathered at the dredged 
canal, and cut a ditch 6 feet wide, with 
their shovels, from the ocean to within a 
few feet of the canal, and then they 
rested and waited for low tide in the 
ocean. At low tide they removed the dam 
between the canal and their ditch, and 
the river water went pouring down into 
the ocean, widening and tearing the 
banks of the ditch, until at flood tide 
there was a channel 50 yards wide con- 
necting the river with the ocean, and 
which by the next morning had widened 
to 200 yards. The rainy season of early 
March gave a great rainfall on the basin 
of the St. Lucie, and this was accompa- 
nied by a succession of northerly gales, 
with the result by the first of May, of an 
Inlet more than % mile wide through 
which the tides ebb and flow; which, in- 
let at the present time is about one half 
mile in width. 
The opening of this Inlet entirely 
changed the lower 18 miles of the St. 
Lucie River, up either fork, from a 
great inland lake filled with bass and 
other fresh water fishes, to a salt water 
estuary in which all the general varie- 
ties of salt water fishes are found; but 
the lakes and ponds scattered all over 
the Flat Woods region of the main land, 
are full of big-mouth bass, bream and 
other fresh water fishes, on which to 
the regret of all true sportsmen there 
is no limit as to the number, or weight 
of the catch. 
Permit me to hold up td the disgust and 
derision of all true lovers of the angle, 
one northern man, who claimed to be the 
Chief of Police of Terre Haute, Indiana, 
who stood by a channel between two 
lakes last winter, and caught 100 black 
bass, with an artificial minnow, and 
boasted about his catch, and then took 
his catch of 200 pounds to a fish market 
and sold them for 8c. a pound, and I sup- 
pose he now is bragging to his northern 
friends about his big one-day’s catch, in 
Florida. 
If Dr. Henshall would now come to old 
Fort Capron, now Fort Pierce, and make 
a trip in a cabin launch, equipped with a 
gasoline engine, he could, by trolling with 
a spoon-hook in the Indian River and the 
St. Lucie, catch all the kinds of fish he 
then caught in the Indian River, but he 
would have to go ten miles above the 
Fork, up either fork, before he could 
catch any black bass in the St. Lucie 
River; but what a change the main land 
would present to him. 
From Fort Capron to the St. Lucie 
fine dwellings surrounded by groves of 
orange and grape-fruit trees all the way 
to the St. Lucie, and up the St. Lucie 
to and above the Fork; while on the east 
and south of the Fork he would find the 
city of Stuart with its five hotels, which, 
with every available empty cottage and 
furnished room in private residences and 
many tents, are in the winter season oc- 
cupied by anglers from the north, many 
of whom have been coming to Stuart year 
after year to devote their winter months 
to angling in the St. Lucie, trolling in 
power boats, or surf-casting from the 
ocean beach, north or south of the St. 
Lucie Inlet. 
W. F. Rightmire, Florida. 
' 
Some boy but mostly fish 
A GREAT NORTHERN PIKE 
To the Editor of Forest and Stream: 
T HE great northern pike of our large 
spring lakes usually live at a depth 
where the water is cool and from the mid- 
dle of May you find them moving from a 
depth of one or two feet of water to an 
increased depth of about three feet each 
week until the first of August when they 
are found in thirty to thirty-five feet of 
water. There they lie just barely hidden 
in what we call perch grass — waiting for 
little fish to come along when they dart 
out and catch their dinner. This catch 
of my little boy’s is only a sample of the 
beauties taken each year. It is great 
sport to anchor in about twenty-five feet 
of water and with two hundred feet of 
enameled line hand cast your minnow sev- 
enty-five to a hundred feet toward the 
deep, and as the bait approaches the 
bottom you carefully take up the 
slack and if Mr. Pike has his meal 
you will feel him gorging hook and 
all. If no fish has struck you bring 
the minnow in with little jerks of the 
line, and often a pike will follow until 
his appetite gets the better of his curiosi- 
ty when he will grab, reel about and 
start at break neck speed for deep water, 
and when this happens it makes you think 
you have hooked onto a freight train go- 
ing in the opposite direction, and you 
want to be mighty quick to throw out 
line. After the fish has stopped running 
and after allowing sufficient time for him 
to swallow the bait you sink the barb 
and then the real fun begins. 
M. M. Scheid, Wisconsin. 
WEIGHT OF FOXES 
To the Editor of Forest and Stream: 
R ESPONDING to your request for re- 
ports on the weight of red foxes, I 
have usually skinned foxes near the traps 
with no scales handy, but this spring I 
brought in a fat red vixen which weighed 
twelve pounds. She contained six young* 
not weighed, which probably weighed not 
far from a pound. 
Some years ago at a village grocery 
the proprietor had a very large emascu~ 
lated cat which he was in the habit of 
saying would weigh as much as a fox. 
Bets were impending on the subject. Th& 
next fox that I caught happened to be a 
very large red male. I brought him 
in whole and the interest in wagers 
was pretty large. Bets ranged from 
ten cents to fifty cents, representing the 
financial situation of the locality. George 
Mansfield bet thirty-five cents, all that 
he had and all that he had had for some 
time, on the cat. The proprietor, of 
course, bet on his cat as a matter of senti- 
ment. Everybody “hefted” the cat and 
the fox several times before they were 
weighed and Ed Curtis said that a dead 
animal always weighed more than a live 
one. The live one “set kind of light on 
the scales.” The fox weighed fourteen 
pounds and won only by a trifling margin. 
The cat would have won as a rule. Both 
of these were Connecticut foxes and both, 
unusually large. 
Robert T. Morris, New York. 
To the Editor of Forest and Stream : 
I HAVE hunted foxes for years and" 
have shot a good many ahead of the 
hounds. It is the greatest hunting that 
I know of. Having weighed a number 
of foxes I have found that it takes a 
large male to weigh 12% lbs. They 
average from 10 to 11 lbs. when full 
grown. I shot one once that weighed 14 
lbs. and I secured the large price of 
$4.50 for the pelt and it was prime fur 
too. Last winter it would have brought 
$30.00. During last season I shot six 
reds and one gray ahead of my dogs and 
their skins brought $146.50. My young- 
est boy killed an old dog red fox New 
Years Day that weighed 13 lbs. 
F. L. Atwell, Conn. 
TXT'E are anxious to hear from those of 
'' our readers who are interested in 
hunting dogs as to the best method of 
training puppies for field work. There 
are so many ideas on this subject that ex- 
pressions of opinion from different angles 
are always interesting. — [Editor.] 
