2 20 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
[Aug. ii, 1906. 
about two hours. Then I stumbled into a hole 
and got well soaked, so tramped homeward as 
fast as possible. Wet shirt tails do not agree 
with my constitution, but, all things considered, 
I think sport was pretty good. 
On Tuesday last I had a delightful day on a 
quarter mile of water some distance up stream. 
Many of our best clergymen are anglers, and 
a gentleman of this persuasion kindly drove me 
to the fishing ground. We took things very 
easily, yet I had fourteen good trout in my 
basket when we drove home to tea. By staying 
on for the evening rise, doubtless the score 
might have been increased. 
The brown trout are often found in shallow 
water, and the fishing is very pretty. One 
wades up a broad, rippling stream and casts his 
fly near rocks, under banks and close to bunches 
of grass or drift wood. The size of the fish 
taken sometimes in water only a few inches in 
depth is quite surprising; but the fly must come 
down just right to bring them up. I fished for 
one large trout for at least half an hour, and 
got him at last by doing wrong, or what is often 
wrong. I hung a wet fly over him from above. 
This fish had viewed four other flies with calm 
disdain. A very small fly is usually best, but 
in the rough rifts, a larger one will often prove 
effective. In quieter water the bigger fly may 
move the fish without taking them. The flies 
in evidence upon the water are mostly small, ex¬ 
cept the stone fly, which hatches out irregularly 
all through the season. 
I think that the prejudice against the brown 
trout, which was common some years ago, has 
largely died out. It is a noble game fish, and 
certainly the average size of trout taken in all 
these mountain streams has greatly increased 
since the fario were introduced. 
During the months of May and June the 
trout taken with fly in the Beaverkill ran from 
half a pound to a pound and a half. Many 
anglers retained no fish under ten inches (say 
five or six ounces). A half-pound trout puts 
up a good fight in strong water and frequently 
makes the reel whiz in his first rush. All the 
trout, foreign and native, fought desperately 
this season, and were in good condition soon 
after the opening. 
I have great trouble in getting hackles and 
quills for my pet fly at this time. Really, the 
only way to get first-rate hackles, of all the 
colors required, would be to have a poultry 
farm. Not one cock in twenty has feathers 
worth taking. 
We have had sufficient rain for the crops and 
to keep the river in good order. The humidity 
of the atmosphere has been excessive, and quite 
unusual for this region. The barn swallows have 
already massed together for migration. In fact, 
the home flock, which inhabited the eaves of 
the big barn, has already taken its departure. 
The male bobolink lost his wedding clothes 
some time ago, and can hardly be distinguished 
from the females and young birds. Old and 
young will soon congregate on the marshes of 
the Delaware and elsewhere near the coast. 
There they are the reed bird, our American sub¬ 
stitute for the European ortolan. On the first 
of September great numbers will appear in the 
markets, with body feathers removed, to show 
that they are simply little rolls of fat. In a 
few weeks they will move in countless thousands 
upon the rice fields of the Carolinas and 
Georgia. Here also they are tid-bits, fit to tempt 
any epicure; but they are a curse to the planters, 
harvesting into their own little bellies a large 
portion of their crops. Negroes are employed 
with old muskets and cheap, common powder 
to keep them off the rice as far as possible. 
Some planters allow the market gunners to 
shoot the birds and wade out into the fields after 
them, but this injures the growing rice also. 
In Jamaica and other West Indian islands the 
bobolink, reed bird, rice bird, May bird, etc., is 
known as the butter ball. He rejoices in many 
names, and is a great traveler. 
The Beaverkill is up to-day after last night’s 
rain. The sun tries to break through the clouds 
at intervals, and by to-morrow morning, I fancy, 
there may be a chance to tempt one of those 
real big, old brown trout, which must have 
their homes in some safe retreat in the river, 
but venture forth at times when food is abundant 
and there is plenty of water to give them 
courage. I have heard of a buster or two; and 
two weeks ago a fish of j,y 2 pounds was taken 
on bait some miles up the river. 
Theodore Gordon. 
Propagation and Protection. 
A paper read before the American Fisheries Society by 
S. F. Fullerton, Executive Agent, Minnesota Game 
and Fish Commission. 
Mr. President and Gentlemen of the American 
Fisheries Society: 
The subject that I am asked to write a paper 
on—Protection—is so closely allied with propaga¬ 
tion, that it is a very difficult matter to separate 
the one from the other; alone either is worth¬ 
less. Protection is just as essential as propa¬ 
gation if we would reap the benefits from the 
money and labor expended in the propagation 
of our fish. 
I need not relate what every thinking man 
knows to be a fact, and that is, our fish are 
disappearing from the Great Lakes. Every 
housewife is reminded of that fact when she 
calls up the fish dealer, by the price—that great 
barometer of supply and demand. 
Now, when the American people are con¬ 
fronted with a problem they naturally ask what 
is the cause. Are not the waters in the Great 
Lakes just as pure as they were thirty years 
ago? No known disease has destroyed these 
fish. The Government has been most liberal, 
and year after year has supplied these waters 
with millions of fry. Have the States bordering 
on the Great Lakes, whose duty it is to look 
after the fish and protect them, done their duty? 
There is only one answer, an emphatic “No!” 
They have not appreciated the necessity of tak¬ 
ing care of that which was intrusted to their 
keeping for the benefit of all the people. 
Efforts from time to time have been made to 
get the States interested. I have attended three 
meetings in Chicago, myself, called for the pur¬ 
pose of arousing the States to action. Reso¬ 
lutions were passed and speeches made, but the 
matter ended when the meetings adjourned. 
There is only one solution—Federal control. 
Now, I do not want to say one word that 
would in any way detract from the splendid work 
done by the United States Fish Commission 
and the different State fish hatcheries and the 
men in charge of same, but I do claim that we 
do not get the results we are entitled to from 
the amount of fry propagated and distributed. 
Take for example one United States station 
located at Duluth, Minnesota, the amount of 
whitefish and lake trout fry distributed during 
the last ten years from that station alone, was 
228,808,628 (that does not include the blue-fin 
whitefish, pike-perch and brook trout), and I 
am positive that nearly all of these young fish 
were deposited in the Great Lakes; in fact, the 
great bulk of them went into Lake Superior. 
Now, with intelligent planting and proper 
protection, aided by the natural increase, we 
ought to have good fishing in Lake Superior. 
I know the other lakes in the Great Chain 
have been treated as liberally and they, also, 
ought to show results. Not only have the Great 
Lakes suffered by the criminal policy pursued 
by the States, whose duty it is to protect, but 
that splendid fish, the shad, is disappearing from 
the same cause. 
Twenty years ago in the city of Duluth, Minn., 
you could get all the whitefish you could carry 
home with you for five to seven cents per pound. 
To-day you are a lucky purchaser if you get any, 
but if you do, you will pay from fourteen to 
seventeen cents per pound, and then you will 
have to be careful that you do not get Winni¬ 
peg whitefish instead of the Lake Superior. 
While the lake trout is not so scarce nor the 
price so high, they are not by any means so 
plentiful as they were twenty years ago—all 
because we have been criminally careless. I 
just read a dispatch from Ontonagon, Mich., 
which I have inserted in this paper and bears 
out what I have been saying in regard to the 
scarcity of the fish in the Great Lakes: 
“A large Lake Superior fish company, operat¬ 
ing at Ontonagan, has suspended operations 
for a month in the hope that whitefish and trout 
then will be found running better. The lifts 
have been light this season, during the last few 
weeks especially, and the business has not been 
profitable. Similar complaint comes from other 
ports on the south shore of Lake Superior. 
Poor catches are reported from Marquette and 
Grand Marais, while instances are noted where 
commercial fishermen have transferred the 
scene of their operations to Minnesota waters 
on the north shore. At Manistique, the Coffey 
fleet of three tugs has been laid up for the sea¬ 
son. The fishing was poor last year, and im¬ 
provement was expected this season. But the 
contrary is the case.” 
Why, gentlemen, what would you think of a 
farmer, who, after carefully attending to his 
cows all winter, giving them best of care, when 
those cows had their young would turn the 
young out in barren pastures without food, 
shelter or water; or the poultryman who watches 
his incubator through the twenty-one days of 
incubation, when after the young were hatched 
would turn them out to be a prey for hawks, 
weasels and all other enemies of bird life. You 
would say that the dairyman and poultryman 
were crazy. Well, just as crazy things are done 
in the protection of our fish. The fishculturist 
selects with care his breeders, and after fertil¬ 
izing the eggs, watches them during the period 
of time to hatch, feeds them carefully until the 
time comes to plant, when they are turned over 
t© the man who distributes, either in a car used- 
for that purpose of in cans. If intended for the 
Great Lakes, they are placed on a boat running 
from eight to sixteen miles an hour, dumped 
from the gangway without any regard to whether 
the water in that part of the lake is suitable or 
not. If for the inland lakes, they are taken to 
the nearest place on the lake from the railroad 
station, and there deposited, regardless—the 
only condition that there is water. 
Why, gentlemen, I have seen twenty cans of 
pike-perch or wall-eyed pike fry, which were 
sent by the United States Government to a lake 
in our State, met at the depot by a committee, 
who with team took them to the lake, only about 
one-half mile from the village. Instead of tak¬ 
ing the fry out in the lake, they dump the whole 
twenty cans in a creek that runs under the 
road which divides the two lakes, where the fry 
was intended for. That creek was filled with 
shiner and chub minnows, and the way those 
minnows went after that pike fry was like a 
hungry tramp after a pie—-“the kind that mother 
used to make.” I don’t believe that in one 
hour there were 1,000 fry left of those twenty 
cans. The committee who met those fish ought 
to have had instructions where tO' plant them and 
how to plant them. This is not an isolated case, 
and I have no doubt that the members here pres¬ 
ent who are engaged in the work have experi¬ 
ences to relate where fry might better have been 
dumped in the gutter than taken to the lake or 
stream. 
A short time ago one of our wardens at the 
city of Minneapolis, Minn., seized several barrels 
of fish, mostly lake trout. They were shipped 
from a neighboring State to my own. There 
were over three hundred of those trout that 
would not average one pound, and several that 
weighed less than one-half pound. Now, what 
is the use of going to the expense of propagating 
lake trout and whitefish when fishermen are al¬ 
lowed to catch and sell fish of this size? They 
don’t do it in Minnesota. Our law is 2 pounds 
undressed, i J / 2 pounds dressed. After the seiz¬ 
ure, I wrote the proper authorities to take the 
matter up with the shippers, whose cards we 
took from the package, and offered to go and 
testify if necessary. So far, nothing has been 
done that I have heard of, but hope the parties 
responsible will be brought to trial and a lesson 
taught them, so that in the future they will be 
good. The great trouble with us as a people, we 
(allow our greed for gold to blind us, but, after 
the fish have disappeared, then we wake up and 
do things that should have been done years ago. 
In States where separate Boards exist, one for 
the propagation of the fish and another for the 
protection of the game and fish, the best of 
harmony does not always prevail between these 
two boards; but they ought to work hand in 
