16 
BULLETIN OF THE UNITED STATES FISH COMMISSION. 
while from the west the number is much greater, including Willow, Warm Spring, Lost, 
Modesty, Race-Track, Dempsey, Punch, Tincup Joe, and Rock creeks. Although these 
are all comparatively small streams, they are, with few exceptions, well tilled with trout. 
Warm Spring and Silver Bow creeks are ruined by mining operations, and perhaps 
others are somewhat contaminated. 
Bock Creek , which Hows into Deer Lodge River near Garrison, is a good stream, 
rising in a large lake. A large reservoir has been made upon this creek about 12 to 
15 miles above Garrison, and this is said to be full of trout. 
Tincup Joe is a good-sized creek, coming in not far from Deer Lodge. 
Dempsey Creek is perhaps the most interesting one of this region. This stream 
rises in several small lakes lying near Mount Powell, flows about 20 miles or more, and 
joins the Deer Lodge River about 8 miles above the city of that name. Through the 
kindness of Messrs. N. J. Bielenberg and Prank Conley, of Deer Lodge, we were able to 
make a trip to the lakes at the head of this creek. In company with these gentlemen 
and Prof. Frank W. Traphagen, of the College of Montana, and Mr. Thomas Morgan, of 
Deer Lodge, we made a three days’ trip to these lakes. The first day we drove about 
18 miles southwest from Deer Lodge and camped on Dempsey Creek, perhaps 15 miles 
above its mouth. That portion of the creek lying between our camp and the valley is 
very rocky and very swift. There are a few short, quiet reaches, but most of the course 
is made up of rapids and small cascades which make it a very picturesque stream. In 
the vicinity of our camp there are some small mountain meadows, and the creek is 
more quiet as it flows through them. Its average width here was about 12 feet, the 
depth 2 feet, and the current not over 1 foot per second. The water was, of course, 
very clear and cold, and well suited to trout. A little time devoted to fishing with 
the fly in the evening near our camp resulted in a string of about twenty very nice fish. 
The next day we took saddle horses and followed on up the creek to the lakes at 
its head, a distance of 5 or 0 miles. This ride was a very difficult one, through dense, 
almost impenetrable pine forests, over rough, rocky ridges almost too steep for a horse 
to climb, and across marshy meadows in whose soft mud our animals were in danger 
of miring. The first lake we reached was about 5 miles from our camp; a few hundred 
yards to the right was a second one, and about the same distance to the left a third 
lake. Each of these contains perhaps three sections or less. About them the country 
is quite rocky, great bowlders and angular fragments of stone from the cliffs above 
being scattered here and there through the pine forests in which the lakes are set. 
These lakes are fed in great part from melting snows. Lying as they do around the 
base of the rocky peak of Mount Powell, they receive a multitude of little rivulets 
from a number of snow banks which linger in the gorges and canons above until very 
late in summer, or even remain throughout the year. Indeed, right upon the shore of 
the third one of these lakes, we found a considerable bank of snow at the time of our 
visit, July 24. The lakes are in most places very deep, and the water clear and 
extremely cold. We neglected to take a thermometer with us on this trip, and 
consequently had no means of determining the temperature exactly, but it could not 
have been much above 40°. 
In the first of these lakes we saw several trout, but though we fished quife a 
while they bit very poorly and we caught only a few. In the second lake we employed 
different methods with better success. At the lower end of the lake is the small 
stream which serves as an outlet to the lake. The beginning of this outlet is widened 
