Sept. 15, 1906.] 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
419 
All the fish laws of the United States and Can¬ 
ada, reidscd to date and now in force, are given 
in the Game Laws in Brief. See adv. 
Fish and Fishing. 
Low Water Protects Ouananiche. 
The ouananiche season of 1906, which opened 
so auspiciously and proved so successful during 
its first three or four months, has ended very 
poorly in the immediate vicinity of Lake St. 
John, and two or three weeks earlier than it 
should have done. The cause is the extreme 
lowness of the water in the lake and in the 
Grand Discharge, due to the extremely hot sum¬ 
mer and lack of rain. So low is the water in the 
lake that the steamers have been unable to follow 
some of their usual routes. The result has been 
considerable disappointment to anglers, though 
this has been obviated as much as possible by 
the action of the hotel people in advising the 
railway agents in Quebec, some days ago, that 
they could no longer guarantee good fishing 
there. This line of policy is a great improve¬ 
ment upon that sometimes followed there in the 
past, and will tend to increase the confidence of 
sportsmen in the reports sent out from the ouana¬ 
niche country. 
The fish are to be seen in the Discharge in 
great abundance, I hear, but in the water as low 
as it has been for some days past, they will cer¬ 
tainly not take the fly. It will not be surprising, 
however, if the rain of the last few days should 
afford good sport to any anglers who may chance 
to try their luck in ouananiche fishing during the 
last two weeks of the season which closes on the 
30th instant. 
Except in the shallowest pools, trout fishing 
in the Lake St. John country is becoming quite 
good, and the number of American anglers in 
camp in northern Quebec is exceedingly large. 
Very big fish are again being taken both in Lake 
Edward and also in its discharge, the Jeannotte 
River. The camps on the Metabetchouan, the 
Triton, the Tourilli, the Stadacona, and the Lau- 
rentides clubs are fast filling up. 
Anglers are Hunters Too. 
I notice that almost all the fishermen now 
going into the woods are carrying guns and 
rifles as well as fishing rods, and some of them 
have already found good use for their firearms. 
The open season for ducks, partridges and big 
game commenced on the 1st of September in the 
eastern part of the Province of Quebec, and 
while I have not heard that many partridges have 
yet been killed, owing to the fact that the leaves 
are still quite thick upon the trees, yet ducks are 
plentiful enough and have already afforded good 
sport. Big game in the country north of Quebec 
is - exceedingly abundant, but it is a strange fact 
that more moose and caribou are met in the 
woods by sportsmen when armed only with a 
fishing rod than when carrying a rifle. However, 
within the first two or three days of the open 
season, Messrs. Wells and Harry Holmes, both 
American, the Iatter-mentioned being from Troy, 
New York, secured a moose each on the Lauren- 
tides tract, and Messrs. H. R. Goodday and Allan 
Boswell, both Quebecers, each bagged a caribou 
on the same preserve. In the Lake Edward dis¬ 
trict, as well as in the Squatteck territory, big 
game is equally plentiful at present, and similar 
reports come "from the back of L’lslet county, 
near the frontier of Maine. 
Bears are Fishers Too 
There is a big temptation at this time of the 
year to discourse of wild game while ostensibly 
writing of fish and fishing; but the angler is 
certainly not to blame when his way across a 
portage is blocked by a bull moose or a black 
bear, or when caribou come down to bathe in the 
lake in which he is fishing, and the red deer un¬ 
dertake to swim across the bow of his canoe. 
Incidents of this kind are almost eyery day oc¬ 
currences in Quebec’s north country in the month 
of September. Two of my friends, who were 
paddling up the Jeannotte River some time ago, 
where .the stream is very narrow, were con¬ 
fronted all at once, around a sharp turn of the 
stream by a combative-looking female moose, 
who pawed the ground as she challenged their 
further approach, as if confident of her position 
in the knowledge of the fact that the law pro¬ 
tected her from molestation. As a matter of fact, 
the fishermen were unarmed and compelled to re¬ 
treat, since the moose declined to budge, and 
showed signs of fight whenever the canoeists 
made any attempt to further advance. 
It is a common occurrence in this part of the 
country to come across moose standing up to 
their middle in water, feeding upon lilypads, and 
I saw no less than half a dozen of these animals, 
thus engaged, in different lakes, during a recent 
fishing . excursion in the Temagami region of 
New Ontario. 
One of my friends was on a small steamboat 
on Lake Edward some time ago, when a moose 
was seen swimming not far away. The steamer 
soon caught up to the moose, which was las- 
sooed by his horns by those on board. The big 
brute towed the little launch without the slightest 
difficulty, until he reached the shore, when he 
shook off the tow line, and tossing his head 
proudly in the air, trotted off through the woods, 
leaving the steamer grounded on the beach. 
While fishing in Little Lake St. John, behind 
Capes Trinity and Eternity in the Saguenay, I 
have watched a herd of caribou, nearly a Score 
in number, cross an arm of the lake; and only 
a few days ago, while whipping a small brook 
near Lake Beauport for trout, accompanied by 
some of the officers of H. M. S. Dominion, I 
was astonished to see three red deer come down 
to the stream close by us to drink. Catching 
sight of us, however, they immediately took 
flight, clearing a barb wire fence together, ex¬ 
actly like three horses taking a hurdle in a closely 
contested race. It was one of the prettiest sights 
I ever saw or ever expect to see. 
The Natashquan River, which I fished for sal¬ 
mon in the latter part of July, drains a good 
bear country. On our way up and down the 
stream, to and from some of the upper pools, 
we followed many bears’ tracks on the sand bars 
in the rivers and on the shores. We were cur¬ 
ious enough to examine them all, in order to see 
if we could find that of the animal with only 
three toes on one of its paws; for John Hounsell, 
the guardian of the river, had just previously 
found the other two toes in one of his traps, 
where they had been left by bruin as a ransom in 
order to obtain his own release. 
On Thursday, the 26th of July, I was fishing 
the pool near the sand bar about a thousand 
feet below the second falls of the Natashquan, 
when one of the guides in the canoe quietly 
called my attention to a black bear which was 
apparently drinking near the head of the falls. 
We had no rifle in the canoe, but I had my 
kodak with me; and so no time was lost in tak¬ 
ing up the anchor and exchanging the rod for 
the camera. At the distance which separated 
us from the bear there was of course no oppor¬ 
tunity for securing bruin’s portrait, and the 
canoemen therefore paddled as quietly and as 
rapidly as possible toward the fall. Almost at 
the same moment as we had started, the bear 
had also moved. He had not seen or heard us, 
nor had he got our wind, but was slowly walk¬ 
ing away from the ledge of rock upon which he 
had been sitting, carefully watching only his feet 
,as he clambered down over the rough rocks at 
the side of the fall, in the direction of the woods. 
We had gained considerably upon him before he 
turned his head and saw us, when he immediately 
scampered off at full speed for the bush, giving 
me no better opportunity of a picture than a 
snapshot, at such a distance, that bruin’s image 
can barely be distinguished upon the print with 
the naked eye. We looked in vain for a sandy 
spot in the route which the bear followed, 
in order that we might count the number of his 
toes in the imprint of his feet; for John Houn- 
sell’s son, who was with me in the canoe, had 
fully made up his mind that he was a bear with 
a sore foot, because of the caution with which 
he picked out his steps. In following his course, 
we got as near as we could, for the presence of 
the falling water, to the ledge of rock where 
bruin had first been seen, and then I made up my 
mind that that bear was no more out for drink¬ 
ing water that day' than we were, but that his 
business, like our’s, was salmon fishing. The 
ledge of rock upon which bruin sat when first 
we saw him, bordered a small, shallow pool, about 
two-thirds of the way up the falls, in which 
some twenty salmon were resting in their ascent 
of the cataract. If there was not at least one 
salmon less there that day, because of bruin’s 
visit, then he must have gone away a very dis¬ 
appointed bear. 
As is pretty well known, Ursus canadensis is 
quite a successful angler. On the Pacific slope, 
where salmon are plentiful, fish forms a large 
proportion of the food of bears. In eastern sal¬ 
mon rivers the conditions are not always favor¬ 
able for the success of bruin’s fishing. He can 
only catch such lively fish as salmon in small and 
shallow pools, like those already described in the 
rocks of a waterfall. His greatest success as an 
angler is in catching suckers, and his best sea¬ 
son is the spawning time, when the fish resort 
to shallow places in small rivers and brooks. 
Then it is that he squats as still as a statue upon 
the shallow of the brook, waiting till the silly 
suckers swim lazily against his sides, when 
quickly as lightning, his paw dashes in among 
the fish dragging out a struggling, splashing 
sucker for dinner or luncheon. Not . infre- 
ciuently, madame bruin and the family go 01.t 
fishing with the head of the household, the little 
ones soon learning by example and practice, the 
secrets of successful angling. 
E. T. D. Chambers. 
From the Beaverkill. 
Taking Notice of Yonkers* Growl. 
I am sorry for Yonkers, whose letter appears 
in Forest and Stream for Sept. 1; but his bad 
luck and disappointment were due to his care¬ 
lessness and want of forethought. If he had 
written to Forest and Stream, or had consulted 
any one who had fished the Beaverkill, he would 
have learned that there is no trout fishing at 
Cook’s Falls, except, possibly, for a short time 
early in the season, before the water becomes 
warm. The Beaverkill below its junction with 
the Willowemoc at Roscoe or Rockland is a 
river, with pools large enough for the biggest 
salmon, and right where the two streams join 
large trout are killed early in the season. It 
is a noble pool; but when I last visited it in the 
month of June, it was rather too late in the sea¬ 
son for sport. However, we caught trout all 
the way down to the “Hatchery” above Rock¬ 
land. 
There is no trout fishing in the lower Beaver¬ 
kill after June, except at spring holes. In July 
and August the angler must go up stream. He 
formerly had thirty miles of water at his dis¬ 
posal, but now there are several preserves, and 
