5oo 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
[Sept. 29, 1906. 
SEAMiisIwisirnaMRf® 
—- - -—-- * 
All the fish laws of the United States and Can¬ 
ada, revised to date and now in force, are given 
in the Game Laws in Brief. See adv. 
Arkansas Game and Fish Notes. 
Here in Arkansas we need plenty of associa¬ 
tions to cope with the game law violators, and 
in the associations we need men of influence 
and experience who will do something in¬ 
stead of talk about it whenever a crime comes 
under their notice or the time ripens for the 
passage of some kind of beneficent protective 
legislation. 
What we most sorely need is game wardens. 
Our only wardens at present, 1 find, are the 
sheriffs of counties and a few men. maintained by 
clubs over in the St. Francis River country. 
These sheriffs of the counties have their hands 
full with the regular duties of their offices, as a 
rule, and they do not score many convictions 
of the game law violators. 
I find, since being in Saline county all sum¬ 
mer, that there are a few of the farmers in our 
neighborhood who are ready to inform on the 
first dynamiter they catch. My eyes were 
opened when I learned this, for it had been my 
belief that the better element over there were 
all too timid to bring an offender to justice. 
As a rule, the timid ones will tell one that they 
did not have any “particular business” where 
they heal'd the shots being fired. This is in 
marked contrast to the action of a man f talked 
with recently. He stated that while plowing 
in his field one day this summer, he heard a dyna¬ 
mite shot fifed somewhere near in the river 
and went to investigate, but could find no one 
nor no signs of dynamiting having been done 
nearby, and concluded that the crime had been 
committed further away than he had at first 
supposed, so he gave up the search; but he de¬ 
clared that had he discovered the offender, he 
would have made matters very unpleasant for 
him. 
One of the methods used by dynamiters here 
is novel, to say the least. Mr. Shepard, a 
brother angler, tells of it. He states that he 
saw three men going along the bank of the 
Ouachita River, and while two were throwing 
in the sticks of explosive, the third man stood 
a little further back from the water, with a rifle, 
which he discharged e-dery time a stick of dyna¬ 
mite was exploded to disguise the sound of the 
blast. The rifle also undoubtedly served as a 
good warning to anyone happening near to 
“keep off.” That it warned Shepard off is cer¬ 
tain, for he did not find out who the men were, 
and who can blame him for not caring to run 
into that rifle and himself unarmed? 
Who taught the native to-dynamite streams 
and kill fish by wholesale? It was almost with¬ 
out exception the workmen employed at blast¬ 
ing out roadbeds for the railroads which came 
through the country some years past. These 
men would take a box of dynamite over to the 
river and slaughter fish unmercifully, I under¬ 
stand, and the natives very quickly took up the 
practice. A young man living at Klondyke tells 
me that empty dynamite boxes could be found 
all around in the woods along the river, grim 
evidence of what had occurred. The natives at 
first obtained their dynamite from the railroad 
crews, often stealing it from them. 
I have been told by several natives that they 
remember the time a man could take a gig and, 
when the fish were shoaling, capture a wagon¬ 
load of big ones in a short time. That means, 
of course, in the Saline River. They even say 
they could, when the river was muddy, gouge 
their gigs into the shoals in the muddy water 
into which they could not see and would be 
rewarded by plenty of fish. One man said that 
in punching his gig into the shoal waters in 
this manner, he would get fish nine times out 
of ten. This is undoubtedly exaggerating it; 
blit from the stories heard on the river one can 
safely draw the conclusion that fish were many 
times more plentiful twenty or thirty years ago 
thaJi they are to-day in this little river. Nearly 
every river, and lake, too, I suppose, in Arkansas 
has no doubt suffered the same fate. I know 
the Ouachita has been shamefully stripped of 
its fish. 
A deputy sheriff of Little Rock tried to get 
a leave of absence this spring to come over on 
the Saline to catch some dynamiters,- but his 
chief could not let him off at the time. Fie told 
me they had formed a sportsman’s club at Little 
Rock for protection, but had not done much. 
They don’t give much chance to game law 
violators down at Lake Chicot. They have 
an active sheriff there, and he is quick to pick 
up offenders. I know of his having caught one 
fellow who was shipping black bass by the 
barrel, and he soaked it to him good and hard. 
Our laws prohibiting the sale of game are a 
fine thing. Two or three years ago one could 
step down to the market and buy any kind of 
game from quail to venison. There is nothing 
but rabbits and squirrels in the open market 
now. But I know that considerable game is sold 
on the quiet to the large hotels. A woodhauler 
will cover a deer with burlap and hide it in a 
load of wood and thus haul it up to the back 
of some hotel and dispose of it. And the hotel 
stewards have always got their eyes open for a 
chance to buy game. 
During the third week in June the river was 
in ideal condition, and I enjoyed some of the 
best sport I have ever had with rod and reel. 
Every night that week I would come back to 
camp with twenty to twenty-five fine bass and 
perch. And what big ones I lost! Every day 
I would come home with several bass in the 
string weighing from two to four pounds. But 
I have never been able to take a five-pounder, 
though one day I had one hooked that I thought 
weighed fifty pounds, for I never succeeded in 
stopping him, as he made rush after rush until 
he reached a sunken treetop and bid me a kind 
farewell, leaving my wooden minnow in the most 
discouraging tangle imaginable, deep down 
among the snags. My line also was wound all 
over in the sunken treetop, where the bass had 
taken refuge. 
I have used about eighteen wooden minnows 
this summer, besides numerous spoons. Father 
brought a mechanical frog to camp week before 
last. The third cast he made, his line broke, and 
the frog went about 300 feet away, and is thought 
to be still swimming down the river. A friend 
who had been north on a visit bought the first 
frog and gave it to father, knowing his angling- 
propensities. 
The fishing was generally good from early 
spring until about June 25, when bad weather 
commenced, and the river has been kept muddy 
by heavy rains ever since, and there has prac¬ 
tically been no fishing. But the river has again 
cleared, and I expect to-be in my element again 
soon. 
The week I was having my royal sport, I had 
a bait-fisherman for a paddler. He was con¬ 
tent to paddle the canoe all day long and let me 
do the fishing,- as he could use neither fly nor 
bait-casting rod. He said he got as much en¬ 
joyment out of watching me catch fish by my 
method as he got out of catching them himself 
by his method. At first he thought the fish 
ought to be pulled into the boat as quickly as 
possible after being hooked, just as he would 
pull them out on the bank with a rush.when he 
hooked one on bait; but I soon showed him 
what angling is, and before the week was over, 
he was always wishing that I would hook a big 
one, so we would have a good fight and he 
would get to use the net. He got so that he 
wanted to see me hook bass around logs and 
snags all the time, so he could enjoy the spec¬ 
tacle of me matching my skill against a fish that 
had a big advantage over me. Fie became en¬ 
tirely converted to the “only way” to fish, and I 
think he will be in camp with us again in a few 
days with fly and bait-casting tackle. 
I would like to describe the Saline, but words 
fail me. There is a great variety of game fish 
in the river, and one often gets quite a mixed 
string. There is a large-mouth black bass with 
a broad stripe down his side. Then there is a 
large-mouth bass of a light green color. This 
variety is rare, as is also the striped or white 
bass. The king of them all is the small-mouth 
black bass. The large ones are more of a brown 
color than a black, but they are game to the 
core, and when hooked will leap from the water 
time after time before they can be netted. I am 
the only one, so far, in camp that has been very 
successful with the small-mouths—the large ones 
at any rate—for they seem to fight too skilfully 
for the rest of the folks. 
Then among the perches there is the common 
yellow perch, the sunfish which is as gorgeously 
colored as a rainbow, and the goggle-eye, the 
best of all the perches. The goggle-eye—he has 
a very large black eye rimmed with gold—-is the 
most persistent biter I ever saw; once one 
starts after the lure, he wants it, and will get 
it sooner or later if you do not push him away 
with a paddle. Their mouths being small, they, 
find it hard to get hooked on a wooden min¬ 
now, and I have had them follow the minnow 
right up to the boat, hitting at it all the way, 
and then when I would get the minnow so close 
I could reel no more, I would just troll it back 
and forth along the boat or canoe and the 
goggle-eye would keep fighting it till he hooked 
himself. 
Father and mother both seeing my success 
at bait-casting, have deserted their fly-rods and 
taken to their bait-rods. Dad carried off the 
honors at camp some time back by catching a 
5Id-pound large-mouth black bass, and he did it 
bait-casting. Fie is now as diligent a bait-caster 
as he was formerly a fly-caster, and really 
handles a reel well, considering the short length 
of time he has been practicing bait-casting. 
The canoe is an essential feature of all my 
fishing excursions, as I quite often go several 
miles up or down river during a day’s fishing, 
and dragging a heavy boat over all the shoals 
I pass with the canoe would wear a man out. 
I often see white cranes on the river, but 
never manage to have the camera along when 
I see the birds, so have not yet gotten a photo¬ 
graph of them. If I knew anything of taxi¬ 
dermy, I would shoot one and set him up. 
We have shot a few frogs, but they are hard 
to get in the day time, and I have not tried it 
at night. 
I do not do much woods tramping at camp 
right now, on account of the insects. I did a 
good deal of berry picking during the berry sea¬ 
son. and many a meal we had berries, huckle¬ 
berries or blackberries, for dessert. In the spring 
we had lots of strawberries sent out from town. 
We do not starve in camp by a long way. 
Sometimes I range the woods in search of bee 
trees, but have only found one so far; soon I 
am going to take a friend and cut it down, and 
will try to save the bees. 
I study the forest as much as I can while in 
camp, and am getting a good knowledge of our 
native trees and shrubs. Whenever I find a tree 
I do not know, I corner a farmer and get him 
to tell me all he can about it. Our Arkansas 
