500 
FOREST AND 
September, 1920 
S T R E A M 
THE RIG FOR LAKE TROUT 
By F._E. BRIMMER 
T HERE is a good deal of supposed 
secrecy about the fine art of woo- 
ing the lake trout to the boatside 
that is just plain Medieeval superstition. 
It is something to brag about when you 
get a little six or eight pounder to eat 
out of your hand and when the grand- 
daddy comes to compliment your skill 
with his presence it is something to tell 
your great-grandchildren about and let 
leak out to the newspapers as well. 
About the first thing to consider when 
you land in good lake trout country is 
what to do for a bait box. 
My idea of a bait box is one that I 
got up after several seasons of trying 
wooden boxes made-over and is one that 
I have found to be satisfactory. It keeps 
the live bait happy and active during the 
period lasting from their capture to the 
time I use them for baiting the hook or 
the buoy. And this is quite an extensive 
period as anyone will know who has 
tried living in the Adirondacks. There 
it rains every day and night, or rather 
two, three or four times every day and 
night, and you are lucky if you see the 
sun. Even in August it may rain for 
a week at a time in certain seasons. 
Adirondack weather is springtime all 
spring, summer and fall — unless the 
weather man slips a cog and lets the 
sun shine for a few days. So while you 
are waiting for a decent kind of a day 
to get out before daylight and watch the 
sun come up over toward the Hudson, 
you need a bait box that is a good one. 
I N the photograph at No. 1, and on the 
sketch at No. 2, is a bait box that does 
me good service. It is four feet long by 
two feet square at the ends and is divid- 
ed into two equal compartments by the 
partition, H, on the drawing. There is 
no wooden bottom on this box with holes 
bored through it, which is a poor means 
of admitting the water and keeping it 
fresh when the suckers are thicker than 
spatter in your bait box. The best floor 
is a wire netting, W, and such a screen 
made from galvanized wire is the best. 
The mesh should be about one-fourth of 
an inch, although larger would do no 
harm up to a limit of half an inch. 
The door, K, does not cover the entire 
top of the bait box but only just half of 
it. A cover that exposes the entire top of 
the box is the reason for some of the 
best minnows jumping to freedom when 
the door is opened for taking out enough 
for bait. While a cover that half opens 
the entire top does not permit of this. 
I/ffE f ire depending upon the 
rr friends and admirers of our 
old correspondent Nessmuk to make 
this department worthy of his 
name. No man knew the woods 
better than Nessmuk or wrote of 
them with quainter charm. Many 
of his practical ideas on camping 
and “ going light ” have been 
adopted by the United States Army ; 
his canoe has been preserved in the 
Smithsonian Institution; and we 
hope that all good woodsmen will 
contribute to this department their 
Hints and Kinks and trail-tested 
contrivances. — [Editors. ] 
The rear half of each compartment is 
dark and hither the captives speed when 
the door is opened instead of summer- 
saulting over the end to the deep sea. The 
best way to take minnows from the box 
is with your landing net and not with 
the bait pail or hands. The net will not 
frighten the minnows and you have noth- 
ing hard for them to bump into with 
fright, not. is water lifted oqt. In one 
compartment I place the minnows, as they 
come from the trap, that are just the size 
1 like for putting on the hook; while in 
the other half of the bait box are kept 
the big, little, and indifferent breeds that 
are useful for buoy baiting mainly. 
To anchor the bait box to the dock I 
never depend on staples or nails of any 
kind that a storm or high waves in the 
night may break out and overturn or 
break my box to pieces. Instead a rope, 
R, is run through a half-inch hole and 
knotted on the inside — the rope being 
half inch also. Of course some good lock 
must be put on the cover and I prefer a 
pad-lock that fits the key I carry on my 
key ring. Then you’re sure of live bait 
when you need it. 
T HE thing I enjoy about trout fishing 
at the lake is getting ready. You 
can always have a good lot of sport 
and day dreams without number when 
you are doing this part. While the con- 
quest is many times bitter and disap- 
pointing and the empty hands that you 
turn open to the camp cook tremble with 
disgrace, nevertheless the getting ready 
is always good sport and half the game. 
There are the buoys to put out first, or 
maybe you have to try a little trolling 
just to take the edge off your over-tense 
nerves, and maybe you try still-fishing 
with a live minnow without any buoy 
too. Then you steady down and get 
busy with laying plans for the season’s 
campaign. At No. 4, on the illustrations 
is a diagram of a pair of buoys that 
have helped to catch a good many lake 
trout. The first thing is to learn your 
lake. This you do from observation, ex- 
perimentation, or inside information. 
Take an old oar or a post seen aim- 
lessly resting beside the dock, or a piece 
of stray board floating on the water and 
anchor it, as at N, on No. 4, with a wire, 
K, or maybe a rope, attached to the 
stone, Y, near the good fishing ground. 
Maybe a hundred yards along the chan- 
nel you place another buoy anchored by 
the rope or wire, R, to the rock X. Then 
you are ready to bait the buoys. The 
water ought to be from twenty to fifty 
feet deep in some places, where you lo- 
cate the buoys, depending on your lake. 
To bait up the buoys you do what the 
gentleman in the photograph at No. 3, 
is doing — you chop up some suckers ! 
These are taken from the bait box and 
placed by means of the landing net in 
the bait pail. You had better take your 
tools of surgery down the shore for a 
few hundred yards and find some old 
log where the women and children don’t 
visit. This is a good place also to dress 
your catches — if you should ever happen 
