262 FOREST AND STREAM. [Aug. 18, 1906. 
water to 68 on the morning of the 21st, to 67 
on the evening of that day, to 66 on the 226 and 
64 on the 23d. This change of temperature in 
air and water afforded some unexpected but 
much appreciated improvement in the salmon 
fishing, though by the afternoon of July 26 
the water had again gradually attained a tem¬ 
perature of 70 degrees, and the fishing for the 
season was over, several days before it had 
ceased upon some of the south shore streams, in 
which it had opened a fortnight before it was 
good on the Natashquan. 
By this time almost every salmon fisherman 
on the coast had left for home, excepting Mr. 
Plumb, who had gone down some days prev¬ 
iously to the Washecootai, forty miles further 
east, which he leases from the Government for 
$400 a year. 
Mr. Adams and the last of his companions on 
the Moisie, for the season, put up their rods 
and left their fishing grounds on July 17. 
E. T. D. Chambers. 
Massachusetts Angling. 
Boston, Aug. 11. — Editor Forest and Stream: 
The Sportsmen’s Protective Association of 
Eastern Massachusetts is posting in thirty-seven 
towns represented in its list of members notices 
that the club will pay rewards to persons who 
will furnish evidence to convict any one for vio¬ 
lation of fish and game laws. The rewards run 
from $5 to $15 for the various offenses; and the 
notice is signed by President C. H. Nowell, 
Secretary Vinton W. Mason, and thirty-seven 
vice-presidents, representing that number of 
towns and cities, chiefly in Essex and Middlesex 
counties. This club was organized less than 
three years ago. It now has a list of about 300 
members, and its officers are intent upon active 
work as well as sports afield. The club has 
placed^ with the State Association an order for 
6,000 fingerling trout for October planting, the 
second largest order received from any club, 
that of Northampton exceeding it by 5,000. 
The calls for fingerlings continue to come in, 
and have already outrun the supply for this 
year’s planting by. several thousand. While it 
was believed that there would be a demand for 
a large number, the orders have been in excess 
of our expectations. Should the same offer be 
made by the Association for 1907, it is doubt¬ 
ful if 100,000 would be adequate to supply all the 
orders that would be received. 
A Berkshire correspondent writes that he does 
not understand why sportsmen should be called 
upon to pay for “fingerling trout or any other 
living thing” which the State is supposed to 
provide and for which the citizens are taxed. 
But the fact of the matter is simple enough. Of 
late years the call has been for fingerling trout 
rather than fry, and the State has but one hatch¬ 
ery where the water in the retaining ponds is 
cold enough to carry the fry through the sum¬ 
mer until they reach the fingerling stage. Com¬ 
missioner Carleton, of Maine, is urging at the 
present time as a matter of economy that his 
State retain all trout until they grow to 5 or 
6 inches before turning them into the streams. 
He argues that the fish are bringing into the 
State so much money that she would be more 
than recompensed for the additional outlay. 
The late Capt. Collins in one of his reports 
stated the facts in reference to the Massa¬ 
chusetts hatcheries very clearly and emphatic¬ 
ally and declared that to supply what he char¬ 
acterized as the “reasonable” demands of the 
public, greater facilities for rearing trout must 
be provided. If further evidence of the “de¬ 
mand” were needed, it is furnished by the will¬ 
ingness of the sportsmen to expend their own 
good money in order to secure them. 
It is the purpose of the writer at some future 
time to treat this subject more fully. 
Another annual meeting of the Old Colony 
Club was held on Aug. 10 at Padanaram, Dart¬ 
mouth, near New Bedford, and not a word was 
uttered about the bluefish in Buzzard’s Bay or 
the porgy pirates, as far as I can learn. It was 
entirely a shellfish day, so far as the speaking 
went. Gathered about the tables in the sum¬ 
mer station of the New Bedford Yacht Club were 
about seventy-five prominent citizens of the 
Cape towns and of Boston. At a business meet¬ 
ing Hon. Charles S. Hamlin was chosen presi¬ 
dent; Maurice H. Richardson, M.D., Thomas 
Jefferson, and John I. Bryant, vice-presidents; 
Charles H. Taylor, Jr., secretary-treasurer, and 
an executive committee of some twenty-five 
members, the member at large being Mr. Horace 
S. Crowell, of Falmouth and Boston. There was 
also chosen a shellfish committee, consisting of 
James L. Wesson, Sandwich; George I. Briggs, 
Bourne; N. H. Emmons, Falmouth; Benj. F. 
Gibbs, Wareham, and C. W. Howland, of Dart¬ 
mouth. 
Dr. George W. Field spoke of the preliminary 
work of the Board of Fish and Game Commis¬ 
sioners in endeavoring to discover a method 
for the scientific development and cultivation 
of the scallop. The authority over shellfish beds 
now in the hands of Selectmen, the Doctor said, 
is but poorly exercised. He believes the idea 
of allowing the taking of lobsters between 8 
and 10]/ 2 inches and preventing the catching of 
adult lobsters is gaining ground. 
Hon. Herman A. Harding, of Chatham, spoke 
upon the shellfishery laws of the State, advo¬ 
cating the necessity of their revision. He also 
contrasted conditions here with those in Con¬ 
necticut, which, with no more shore than Massa¬ 
chusetts, gets from her shellfisheries $5,000,000 
to $500,000 received by the latter State. He 
pointed out defects in the present laws and ad¬ 
vised the cultivation of clams and quahogs, as 
well as oysters. 
Hon. Wm. A. Nye, of Bourne, spoke upon' 
the Cape Cod Canal, and said he firmly believed 
it would be built. 
Other speakers were Com. Wm. F. Williams, 
of the New Bedford Yacht Club; Augustus L. 
Thorndike, Esq.; Hon. Gerard C. Tobey, of 
Wareham, the retiring president, and Mr. 
Horace S. Crowell, who, as the most clerical¬ 
looking member present, was called upon to 
pronounce the benediction. This club holds 
itself in readiness at all times to fight off the 
menhaden seiners in case they renew the attempt 
to secure admission to the waters of the bay, 
and, after developing all the shore acres with 
shellfish, should they look for “other fields to 
conquer,” I would suggest the restocking of 
their fine covers with quail for the benefit of 
both farmers and sportsmen. 
It is reported that damages for destruction, 
caused by deer to farmers about Northampton, 
have been awarded amounting to $145. Grass, 
small trees and garden crops have been 
destroyed. H. H. Kimball. 
In Praise of Angling. 
Among various useful qualities of the mind 
which are developed by the exercises of the rod, 
an important one, of course, is persistency. A 
really good rodsman, who is certain to be philo¬ 
sophical, is aware of that unchangeable law of 
average whereby success is certain to arrive after 
a sufficient number of experiments. There is 
no such word as “despair” in his vocabulary; 
the longer his luck has been “out” the more 
logical reason he sees for hoping—expecting; 
after a blank day his prophetic soul is gratified 
to find that the fish are rising freely, perhaps, at 
dusk. When things are at the worst in angling 
he knows, as Shakespeare has phrased it, that 
“the worst returns to better.” A habit of per¬ 
sistency, cultivated on the river bank, will adhere 
to the angler’s character in other walks of life 
than those piscatorial. 
The hygienic philosophy of angling is as ob¬ 
vious as it is important. As George Eliot has 
remarked, it is impossible to do anything in this 
world without a motive; and angling is pre¬ 
eminently a sport which furnishes its practition¬ 
ers with a motive for taking that exercise and 
fresh air, without which neither body nor 
mind can possibly be healthy. The busiest man 
finds that the time he steals from business to 
ply his rod is time gained, not lost, for he re¬ 
turns to his work with trebled vigor. All the 
successful men I have ever known habitually re¬ 
paired themselves by the practice of some out¬ 
door sport—angling in an immense number of 
cases; of course, if they did not, working at a 
big strain, they would snap like a violin, as many 
over-ambitious men, who are so miserly as to 
deny themselves an outdoor recreation, do snap. 
Angler does not mean idler; and the break in 
business which is spent on the river bank is as 
much a gain of time as it is for the harvester 
to pause now and then to sharpen his sickle.— 
Frederick Seal in Fishing Gazette. 
Striped Bass on the Pacific Coast. 
Los Angeles, Cal., July 30. —Editor Forest 
and Stream: I note in your issue for July 21 
a query from R. B. Marsten, of the London 
Fishing Gazette, as to the destruction caused 
among other game fishes by the striped bass on 
the California coast. 
Around the southern ports, San Pedro, Santa 
Monica, Redondo, Newport, and the smaller re¬ 
sorts in between, this fish is just beginning to 
appear. I have not heard of it from Catalina, 
and inasmuch as I fish the channel every year, 
I do not think it has made its appearance there 
-—at least not to any extent, and quite possibly 
those few fishermen who have taken it, have not 
said much about their catches in places where 
it would be apt to reach the newspapers or other 
anglers. 
One of these bass, weighing, if I am not mis¬ 
taken, ten pounds, was landed at Playa del Rey, 
a small beach some twenty miles from Los 
Angeles, a few days since. Another was taken 
about the same time at Newport, thirty miles or 
so further down the coast. Several have been 
caught in Alamitos Bay, but all were of small 
size, the largest weighing but five pounds. These 
are the only records of which I can find trace in 
a hurried run through recent issues of local 
sporting sheets. So far as their devouring other 
game fish goes, they do not appear to have ar¬ 
rived from the north as yet in sufficient numbers 
to affect the southern range of game fishes. 
Harry H. Dunn. 
Stock the Waters. 
Malone, N. Y .—Editor Forest and Stream: 
About ten or twelve years ago, while living in 
the Adirondacks, where I maintained a hatchery 
for lake and speckled trout, a gentleman having 
a small pond on his farm sent in a request for 
a few fry, saying the pond was made from 
springs. I sent the fry and never heard any¬ 
thing from them, till to-day a man brought me 
a short, chunky trout of about two pounds 
weight, saying it was one of four caught last 
night—the first they had caught since the fry 
were put in. I was greatly pleased, as I have for 
years been trying to interest the people in 
stocking waters where no fish of any kind had 
been found. The distribution of the fishes in 
wild waters is very curious to me, and I often 
wonder why what looked to be good waters had 
been passed when the distribution was made, 
Chateaugay Lake among all the Adirondacks 
alone having the black-finned whitefish, one of 
the finest of fresh-water fishes. 
This variety of the whitefish takes a bait quite 
freely, also for a very few days each year will 
rise to a fly. They have been taken to Chary 
Lake and Bradly Pond, where they are now 
caught in quite large numbers. When our New 
York State Commission was putting in the 
whitefish of the Great Lakes into trout waters 
and enforcing the law against netting, knowing 
that the whitefish could only be taken by netting, 
I often asked them to propagate and distribute 
in the Adirondack lakes the black-fin. They did 
make a little effort, but for some reason gave 
it up. I recall several lakes and ponds where no 
lake trout were caught, which are now well 
stocked, and there seems no reason why all of 
our Adirondack waters should not be restocked. 
Some one will say it would be of no use; they 
woud soon be caught out. Very true, if we 
make no effort to restock we must make still 
greater effort than ever. There are two hun¬ 
dred fishermen now, where there were only one 
or two lone fishermen a few years ago. When¬ 
ever the conditions are right, ask for young fish 
and encourage every one to respect the law, and 
all could have the out-of-door sport we few used 
to have. I have had my share, but would like 
to see the youngsters have theirs. 
A. R. Fuller. 
