68() 
FOREST AND STREAM 
Nov. 29, 1913. 
On Finnerty Lake, Massachusetts 
New York Citv, Nov. 7 .— Editor Forest and 
Stream: One day during the first week of last 
September, I was sitting on the lawn in front 
of our house in New Lenox, Mass., when 
Wheeler Shepardson (native of New Lenox 
and expert tree trimmer by profession) drove 
into our yard, hitched his horse to a tree and 
took a seat beside me. We talked about game 
conditons, and after a while Wheeler said, 
“Henry, how would you like to fish for pick¬ 
erel and bass in a lake known to but a few 
and hardly ever fished?” So I answered, 
“Nothing would suit me better,” whereupon 
he replied, “All right, be ready at 5 to-morrow 
morning and I’ll call for you, and we will 
drive to Finnerty Lake, Washington Town¬ 
ship, about nine miles from here, part of the 
way through the late W. P. Whitney’s Oc¬ 
tober Mountain fourteen-thousand acre game 
preserve—prettiest drive you ever took, and 
to the nicest little lake you ever saw. Fin¬ 
nerty Lake is known to but a few people, and 
one of those few fished there a week since 
and caught sixteen bass and over twenty pick¬ 
erel, all of good size, so you can see that we 
will have some rare sport.” To my question 
as to what bait we would use, he answered, 
“Take along whatever artificial lures you have, 
and on the way we will catch a few frogs.” 
At 5 the next morning Wheeler was at 
my house, and as I was ready and waiting for 
him, we lost no time, but got going right away. 
It was a rather chilly morning, but after the 
sun had been out a while, it became real pleas¬ 
ant. 
When driving past Benedict Cove, Hous- 
atonic Kiver, I noticed a number of curlew 
feeding, so I asked Wheeler to stop, and I 
got out of the buggy and walked around the 
bushes to better observe them. There were 
nine of them, scattered over the cove mud 
flats, and there also were a few yellow-legs, 
and further up the river I saw five blue heron 
.and three mudhens. When I got back to the 
buggy and told Wheeler what T had seen, he 
told me that curlew were quite common around 
this vicinity. After driving across Housa- 
tonic River we took to the Washingon Moun¬ 
tain road, passed the Pittsfield City dam, the 
latter a very fine piece of engineering skill and 
very picturesque, and after a three-mile drive 
we came to the Whitney estate, and while 
driving through this estate we saw two deer; 
they were about forty feet off the road, but 
outside of raising their heads and looking in 
our direction, they paid no attention to us. A 
little further on we saw a fawn by the road¬ 
side, and she let us come to within fifteen feet 
of her before she took to he bushes, only to 
reappear about fifty feet further up the road, 
and again she waited for us to come quite 
close before she again took to the woods. 
This fawn acted very frolicsome—acted just 
as though she wanted us to play with her. Of 
course, 1 had left my camera at home—worse 
luck. We also saw any number of rabbits, also 
some pheasants and partridge. 
Eventually we turned off into a sort of a 
By HENRY G. PLATE 
log road, very hard road on the horse, be¬ 
cause this road was extremely rough. Part of 
the time we had to get out and walk, not only 
because the road was rough, but also because 
the bushes overhead were very dense and low, 
and while very picturesque, was rather un¬ 
comfortable for us. After driving along this 
road (?) for two miles we came in sight of 
Finnerty Lake, and very pretty it looked in 
the sunlight, shimmering through the trees. 
There are no habitations within miles of this 
lake, although at some earlier time there has 
been a cottage on the lake shore, and also a 
boat house; but at this time there is nothing 
left of them but the foundations. 
While Wheeler was looking after his horse 
I assembled my rod, attached a small double 
spoon, walked through the bushes to the edge 
of the lake and got upon a large boulder, 
where I sat down to admire the beautiful 
picture before me. Stately trees surround 
this twenty-three-acre lake right down to the 
water’s edge; the water was of crystal trans¬ 
parency, and apparently very deep, and the 
shore all around is rocky. To my left there 
were white pond lilies in great profusion, and 
before we went home we gathered a quantity 
of them. These lilies were of an exquisite 
fragrance. 
Bethinking myself of what I had come for, 
1 stood up and made my first cast without any 
result; but on my second cast I got a good 
strike from a pickerel, and when I drove home 
the point of the hook, the pickerel turned about 
and made for the lilypads with all haste. I 
gave him the butt, and managed to divert his 
course away from the lilypads, and after a 
short struggle I beached him. Subsequently I 
found he weighed two pounds three ounces. 
Before Wheeler got through looking after his 
horse, I had caught another pickerel, slightly 
smaller than the first. Before Wheeler joined 
me he caught a half dozen small bullfrogs 
in a little spring near the lake, and then we 
looked around for something to take us on on 
the lake, and near the old, dilapidated boat 
house we discovered, partly submerged, an 
old flat-bottom boat, and after considerable 
labor, we managed to pull this relic up on 
shore, turned it over, and after the water had 
run out, we looked for leaks, but not finding 
any, we, in lieu of a paddle, ripped off a 
board from the side of the boat house, floated 
our boat, got into it, and then Wheeler pad- 
died it toward the middle of the lake. There 
being no seats in the boat, we of course had to 
stand up. We soon found that the old tub 
leaked quite some, and before long we were 
standing in water ankle deep, and as the water 
got deeper, Wheeler dumped his frogs out of 
the tin can, and began to bail, and bail he did 
nearly all the time were on the lake. I think 
lie liked his job, if one could judge by the 
flow of his language—largest vocabularly of 
slang and cuss words I ever heard; Chuck 
Connors, in his best days, never had anything 
on Wheeler in that respect. 
While the boat drifted here and there I cast. 
and in that way caught seven pickerel, making 
nine in all. it might be called fishing under 
difficulties. Although I tried all kinds of arti¬ 
ficial bait and live frogs, I never once got a 
strike from a bass, and I doubt whether there 
are bass in Finnerty Lake. 
Between catching pickerel and listening to 
Wheeler’s quaint talk I managed to enjoy my¬ 
self hugely, if I did have to stand ankle-deep 
in water, besides having to be on my guard 
for fear of going overboard, because Wheeler 
was always doing the unexpected; in fact, he 
ciid everything but rock the boat, and he would 
have done that had he not been so busy bail¬ 
ing. 
At 3 P. M. we made for shore, and while 
1 cleaned my fish, Wheeler built a fire, and 
he then started to fry some of the pickerel and 
set some water boiling for coffee. While the 
fish were frying and the water boiling, Wheeler 
went to feed his horse, but found he had 
omitted to bring the necessary wherewith to 
feed his steed; but as we had brought a gen¬ 
erous quantity of bread, the horse had to be 
satisfied with a portion of the latter. 
Well, between fried pickerel, sliced to¬ 
matoes, bread, hot coffee and apple pie, we 
managed to make a meal that hit the spot of 
two lSngry fishermen. 
And so ended a glorious day, not to for¬ 
get the drive home, the memory of which will 
linger many a day. 
For the benefit of those who like to fish for 
pickerel, I wish to state that I never struck a 
place where pickerel were so plentiful as at 
Cape Pond, a mile and a half above Ellen- 
ville, Ulster county, N. Y. Four years ago 
t spent several weeks at this place and fished 
this pond about a half dozen times, and never 
came away without a good mess of pickerel. 
L never used anything but a spoon hook, and 
the pickerel seemed to be positively wild to 
get hold of this hook. 
On this pond I used to row against the 
wind and then let the boat drift back with the 
wind while I stood up and cast. Whenever I 
caught a mess sufficient for our table I would 
liberate all I would catch after that. 
Cape Pond is a little over a mile long and 
about a quarter of a mile wide, and full of 
tree stumps, and as I have already stated, lit¬ 
erally teems with pickerel. One day I fished 
this pond in company with the late Sidney 
Decker, of Ellenville, a man then eighty years 
old, and one of the best companions it has 
ever been my luck to be with. This dear old 
gentleman could row a boat and handle a rod 
with the best of them. 
Mayville, N. D.—The residents of this part 
of North Dakota have visions of Mayville get¬ 
ting back into the big game belt. A large bull 
moose, a cow moose and two young moose, in 
the timber along the Goose River, have fre¬ 
quently been seen by farmers and do not appear 
to be very wild. The State Game Board is pro¬ 
tecting them. 
