Dec. 15, 1906.] 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
947 
The Ouananiche of Maine Waters. 
A fugitive from the bondage of routine at 
Madison. Barracks, N. Y., I left the poor 
wretches who live in houses far from the abode 
of trout and salmon to go to Grand Lake 
Stream, Washington county, Maine, in search 
of ouananiche. I have been a great trout fisher¬ 
man all my life. The ouananiche of Canadian 
environments I had learned something of from 
the writings of E. T. D. Chambers, and the late 
Eugene McCarthy, but the ouananiche of Maine 
had never been described to me. In my mind’s 
eye and in my dreams and when my fishing days 
are over I will recall the acrobatic feats of a 
certain aqueous creature with glimmering, 
magical fins and silver-streaked sides, called the 
ouananiche of Grand Lake Stream. The ouan¬ 
aniche to whom Mr. William George Ross in¬ 
troduced me often calls heaven to witness when 
hooked that he will not give up without a 
struggle; then he proceeds to get as near heaven 
as he can, throwing himself clear from the 
water. It is for this reason, I suppose, that my 
deceased friend. Eugene McCarthy, called the 
fish the leaping ouananiche. When the silver- 
streaked ouananiche is transformed through my 
luring hook into, an uncaptured captive in the 
rapids is one of the thrilling tingling moments 
of life. Life is not vapid or the world hollow 
then. Your mental coat collar begins to choke 
you, and undue precipitation or dilatoriness of 
action is equally bad. Either vice will result in 
losing the fish. An ouananiche does not en¬ 
courage indolence or reward haste. There is 
an instant when this kangaroo of the waters can 
be landed in your net. and when he is hooked 
you try to remember the theory adopted by you 
as your rule and guide for your practice, but just 
then you cannot remember what the theory was. 
It was either to haul taut your line and" keep 
the tip of your rod elevated, or else it was to 
give the scaly meteor all .the line he wants and 
depress the tip, but you have forgotten which. 
An old woman once told me how to test eggs. 
She said that eggs were of three classes, good, 
bad or suspect. Eggs of those three classes 
when immersed in strong brine will either sink 
or swim or remain poised between the top and 
the bottom. The old woman said that the eggs 
that did sink, or did not sink, or poise, were 
either good or bad, or suspect. I have forgotten 
which, but anyhow that was the way to test eggs. 
When I got my first ouananiche. using a trout 
rod and a one hundred feet of line, the voice 
of hope was caroling a headstrong solo to the 
cavorting, plunging fish until my wrists ached. 
You are breathing short and are conscious that 
you are getting excited. Neural ganglia and 
muscles must aid brain matter. You remember 
then that you forgot to change that frayed 
leader; and then an icy finger of apprehension 
runs through your spinal cord, an undercurrent 
of a penitential sort steals across your mind. 
Your sub-aqueous athlete does not signify ex¬ 
haustion, and steers for a snag. The vibrant 
line and pliant rod indicate that he has begun 
to draw on his reserve batteries of electricity, 
of diverting with dangerous variation of stren¬ 
uousness. The fish occupies several spots at the 
same instant. You become vociferous. Perhaps 
you say things mother would not like to hear 
you say; some of your sentences begin in the 
middle and work out at either end, not at the 
same time; your guide looks at you with a new 
expression on his sun-tanned face; the landscape 
begins to change color and the loon shrieks 
mockingly at you; you never knew before how 
malignantly you could hate a loon; some bare¬ 
footed boys standing at the water’s edge are 
looking at you and are commenting upon the 
style in which you play at fishing. One lout 
bets a cent “that sport won’t get him.” You 
suddenly form opinion that King Herod has 
been treated with injustice by most writers, and 
you wonder that you had not earlier noticed 
what vulgar little wretches they were. From 
some lunges that your fish now makes, you are 
quite certain that he has doubled in weight dur¬ 
ing the last four minutes. 
When a neophite finds out that he is nervous 
he gets excited; he cannot hear anything that 
may be said to him by advisers. The swirl and 
tug and gyrations of my captive so far en¬ 
grossed me that I was deaf to such injunctions 
as “1 eel him in”; “give him more line.” These 
conflicting exhortations came from the shore 
audience which now includes fellow sportsmen, 
all of whom you mentally consign to Jericho. 
A thought of what Henry Van Dyke would say 
flitted through my mind. The automatic reel 
then demonstrated that it was essentially a suc¬ 
cess. My rod from describing some circles like 
an umbrella frame was pointed at right angles 
to the taut enamelled line tip. lured inch by inch 
into the automatic shortness of tether. Pres¬ 
ently the ouananiche wabbles. You can see his 
white sides; the tail above the water; you think 
you have him, but you haven’t. To describe 
what a ouananiche then does would be to at¬ 
tempt to describe what an india rubber maniac 
on a spree does; what a leaping kangaroo of the 
water does; what an air and water cleaver does; 
the fish becomes an arc projector, an invitation 
to bewilderment, an aerial contortionist, a 
Cecelia Loftus high kicker, a horizon skimmer, 
a meteoric flasher, the personification of devil¬ 
try, the epitome of vitalized vigor, a water an¬ 
archist, a clipper built dingey, a chute au diable. 
• Col. Philip Reade. 
Striped Bass in November. 
Asbury Park, N. J., Nov. 25. — Editor Forest 
and Stream: It is doubtful if there was a prouder 
or happier man in Asbury Park last Monday, 
the 19th inst., than our genial Mayor, Charles 
A. Atkins, when contrary to all precedent, he 
hied himself to Shark River Inlet with rod 
and reel and a liberal supply of blood-worm bait 
and in a very short time landed seven striped 
bass. While they were not large in size, weigh¬ 
ing 2 pounds to 4 pounds each, still the season 
for their capture is considered long past, ex¬ 
cept when taken in nets. I speak now of ocean 
fishing, of course; in the large bays and other 
tideways they are frequently taken at this sea¬ 
son. We never before have known them to be 
taken on bait this late. Charley (he is Charley 
to us all) has long contended that bass fishing 
is usually discontinued entirely too early and 
his success surely demonstrates his theory is 
tenable. More success to his rod; his broad¬ 
mindedness and open heart entitle him to the 
best of fin and feather. Leonard PIulit. 
ANGLING BOOKS. 
American Fishes, Goode. 3.00 
Men I Have Fished With, Mather. 2.00 
My Angling Friends, Mather. 2.00 
Book of the Black Bass, Henshall. 3.00 
Modern Fishculture in Fresh and Salt 
Water, Mather . 2.00 
With Fly Rod and Camera, Samuels. 5.00 
Favorite Flies and Their Histories, Mar- 
bury . 5.00 
Fish and Fishing on the East Coast of 
Florida . 4.00 
These books are more fully described in the 
Forest and Stream illustrated book catalogue, 
which will be sent free to any applicant. 
Maskinonge and Pickerel. 
Buffalo, N. Y., Dec. 3.— Editor Forest and 
Stream: I have just finished reading Mr. Jaques’ 
fish and game notes in Forest and Stream of 
Dec. 1, and was surprised at the questions quoted 
from the Duluth News-Tribune, and the com¬ 
ments of Mr. Jaques on same. Fhe questions 
are: “Is there any difference between a pickerel 
and muskelonge?” and, “Is the muskelonge an 
.overgrown pickerel?” Mr. Jaques says “It is the 
whim of whoever expounds it.” It is no whim 
among naturalists, as there is no difference of 
opinion on the subject. Aside from the mark¬ 
ings and general contour there is one constant 
specific difference, and that is in the scales on 
the cheek and gill-covers. I should have thought 
that some of the Duluth sportsmen could point 
out the difference. 
The muskallunge has only the upper part of 
the cheek and opercle scaled, while the pike 
(Eso.r Indus), the only member of the family 
which could be confounded with a large muskal¬ 
lunge, has the cheek entirely scaly, and only the 
upper half of opercle scaly, the lower part being 
bare. The rest of the pike family have both 
cheek and opercle covered with scales. I have 
caught 3-pound muskallunge, which are just as 
easy to classify as larger ones, and the idea of a 
muskallunge being an overgrown pickerel is ab¬ 
surd, although fishermen have tried to tell me the 
same thing. 
It would be just as correct to say that there 
is no difference between a mallard duck and a 
dusky duck, or between a black head duck and 
ringed-neck duck, as to say there is no difference 
between a muskallunge and pickerel. The specific 
characters are plainly indicated in each case. The 
trouble with many of the sportsmen is that with 
them a fish is a fish and a duck a duck, and that 
any name is perfectly satisfactory to them so long 
as they get the required amount of sport out of 
their capture. I would like to make a guess, and 
that is that the fish in question are pike ( Esox 
lucius ) and I base it on the way Mr. Jaques 
lands them. Dixmont. 
Hooked Fish Leaping. 
Buffalo, N. Y., Nov. 27.— Editor Forest and 
Stream: I was very much interested in reading 
Mr. H. C. Yarrow’s account of bass fishing in 
Tamagami, in your issue of Nov. 24. If there 
is one place I am fond of it is Tamagami. Mr. 
Yarrow makes one statement regarding the 
leaping powers of the black bass which was a 
surprise to me. He says that one bass “when 
struck leaped about six or eight feet in the air.” 
I never saw a bass leap more than a foot and a 
half at the outside, on a slack line, and the only 
possible way I can see how this bass could have 
gone so high in the air is that he must have 
had a very heavy pull from the rod just as he 
started to break water. Certainly no bass could 
jump so high without help. 
I had an experience with muscallonge in Bel¬ 
mont Lake, ^Canada, this fall, which was some¬ 
what similar. I' was fishing with minnows, and 
struck rather hard after giving the fish a little 
slack, and was surprised to see the ’lunge go 
into the air about four feet. Without giving 
my opinion, I asked the boatman and a gentle¬ 
man who was in the boat with me how high he 
jumped. They both said from three to four feet. 
I am convinced, though, that I struck just as he 
was going to break water and helped him along. 
He was small and would weigh about as much 
as Mr. Yarrow’s bass, 4V2 pounds. We hooked 
twenty-six muscallonge on this trip, and the 
majority of them came to the top but not high 
enough to clear the water. Dixmont. 
