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FOREST AND STREAM 
Published Weekly by the 
Forest and Stream Publishing Company 
Chas. A. Hazen, President Charles L. Wise, Treasurer 
W. G. Beecroft, Sec’y Russell A. Lewis, Gen. Mgr. 
22 Thames Street, New York. 
CORRESPONDENCE: — Forest and Stream is the re¬ 
cognized medium of entertainment, instruction and in¬ 
formation between American sportsmen. The editors 
invite communications on the subjects to which its pages 
are devoted, but, of course, are not responsible for the 
views of correspondents. Anonymous communications 
cannot be regarded. 
SUBSCRIPTIONS: $3 a year; $1.50 for six months; 
IO T 5 . 5 . nts 3 c °Py- Canadian, $4 a year; foreign. $4.50 a year. 
this paper may be obtained of newsdealers throughout 
the United States, Canada and Great Britain, Foreign 
Subscriptions and Sales Agents—London: Davies & Co., 
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Entered in New York Post Office as Second class matter. 
THE OBJECT OF THIS JOURNAL 
will be to studiously promote a healthful interest 
in outdoor recreation, and to cultivate a refined 
taste for natural objects. 
—Forest and Stream. Aug. 14, 1873 
LET YOUR SENATOR HEAR FROM YOU. 
It seems inconceivable that any group of Sena¬ 
tors in Congress are so shortsighted as to imagine 
that the people of the United States will stand 
for a scheme to cripple the migratory bird act by 
the withholding of appropriations necessary to 
put that measure into operation. Yet news comes 
from Washington that this very plan is being 
adopted at the behest of the game and market hog 
lobby, and also because of pressure which is being 
brought to bear by sportsmen who evidently do 
not appreciate that legislation stopping spring 
shooting or shooting during the breeding season 
is the only thing that will preserve the game of 
this country. The Audubon Society, the Ameri¬ 
can Game Protective and Propagation Associa¬ 
tion, and other like bodies are making every effort 
to counteract the sinister influences now at work. 
We believe that they will be successful. Still, 
results cannot be hoped for unless every lover of 
wild life contributes his share of the work, which 
to be most effective should be in the form of a 
personal protest or letter to Senators and Con¬ 
gressmen from the different states. If every 
reader of Forest and Stream will do this much, 
the years of hard work entailed in placing the 
Weeks-McLean bill on the statute books will not 
prove to have been wasted. Otherwise we fear 
for the worst. Do not think that the Senators 
are careless of protests from constituents, especi¬ 
ally now since elections are decided by direct vote 
of the people, and not by legislatures. 
THE REWARD OF VIRTUE. 
One of the most mysterious features of ang¬ 
ling, to one who has not the gift, is the patience 
with which a man will sit at the end of his rod, 
hour after hour, and half a day or a day at a 
time, though never a nibble nor a rise gives him 
encouragement. The uninitiated are wont to 
scoff at such perseverance; they are always ready 
with a dozen or two other things that a man 
might well better give his time to than dangling 
a bait half-line or throwing a fly. Leave such 
wiseacres to their conceit. The patient angler is 
wiser than they. He knows that after all the 
waiting there may yet come the reward. Perse¬ 
verance is his cardinal virtue. Hope springs eter¬ 
nal in the angler’s breast. And if the fish is not 
finally creeled, if the long vigil has been without 
tangible fruition, yet is he not without compensa¬ 
tion, for has he not all day long been indulging 
in the pleasures of hope? To-morrow, perhaps, 
he will prove again not only the joys of antici¬ 
pation, but the satisfaction of basketing a fish as 
well; and so to-morrow you will find him once 
more at his post. 
A friend of ours went out the other day to try 
his luck for brook trout in Rockland County. He 
began fishing at 7 o’clock; 11 came and he had 
no sign that there was a fish in the pond. The 
sun climbed to the meridian; 1 o’clock, 2, 3, went 
by, and still no fish. Finally at half past 3 there 
was a rise, a strike, and a 2V2 pound trout in his 
basket. He had been fishing 8 hours. The catch 
averaged just a little over % pound to the hour. 
He felt amply rewarded for the day’s work. 
There are all varieties of tastes and shades of 
sentiment among anglers; and it might be univer¬ 
sally conceded that this was very good fishing. 
Some anglers might contend that they would pre¬ 
fer their 2% pounds of trout in instalments at 
more frequent intervals, while there are others 
who would choose the luck of our friend. In 
their scale of merit, one 2% pound trout tips 
down the beam against a bushel of fingerlings. 
SALT WATER FISHING. 
The question has often been asked us why we 
have paid so little attention to salt-water fishing, 
and we have invariably answered that there are 
few of the thousands who indulge in the sport 
who write about it, and but a few more who care 
to read of it. If we devote more space to salmon, 
trout and black bass than to sea fishes it is not 
because we are indifferent to the charms of blue¬ 
fishing, weakfishing, etc., but because our readers 
do not seem to be interested in sea-fishing. 
There is a wide difference between the salt¬ 
water and the fresh-water angler. The former is 
content to enjoy himself in his own way, and says 
no more about it. The trout and black bass 
angler, on the contrary, considers the fishing as 
merely part of his pleasure; the trip, the scenery, 
the grand old woods, all inspire him to fight his 
battles o’er again. There is nothing of this in the 
salt-water angler, be he a member of a swell bass 
club or an humble brother of the hand-line com¬ 
mittee who takes the Staten Island ferry boat in 
the morning and, with the patience of Job, goes to 
the rocks and oyster beds for weakfish and with 
crab bait awaits a “tide-runner,” as the big weak- 
fish are called in his vocabulary. This sitting on a 
hard seat all alone waiting for something, which 
may or may not come, develops a reticence that 
the fresh-water angler seldom acquires. There is 
no doubt that the surroundings influence the ang¬ 
ler to a greater degree than has been suspected, 
and the depressing effect of the ocean is notice¬ 
able on those who angle in it. 
New York City has more good fishing near it 
than any city that we know of, such as it is. By 
this we mean waters where a man can go and 
catch enough fish to constitute what may be sum¬ 
med up in that vulgar term “a mess.” If this is 
the end of angling then surely the salt-water 
angler should be satisfied, for when the neap tides 
are on then the “school fish” will repay in num¬ 
bers what the tide-runners make up in avoir¬ 
dupois. 
We have yet to see the salt-water angler who 
possessed the fire and enthusiasm of the fresh¬ 
water fishers. It is possible that there may be 
men who love salt water as the trout anglers love 
mountain streams. If so we do not know them. 
We do know, however, that angling for trout 
among the hills with the ever-changing scenery 
of a mountain trout brook brings out all the latent 
poetry in a man, which, if it does not break out 
in verse, leads him to tell his unknown fellow of 
the pleasures he has had, and of the means he has 
used to capture his fish, which he usually regards 
as a mere incident of the trip. 
The salt-water angler is seldom inspired by the 
beauties of nature because there are no such beau¬ 
ties in the surroundings to be inspired by, and no 
matter how many poems may have been written 
on life on the ocean wave, every man who has 
been out of sight of land knows that they were 
penned more to create a taste for the monotonous 
sea than because the writers really liked it. There¬ 
fore the salt-water angler is a silent man. He 
likes to catch his fish, but the bald, flat, unpoetic 
surroundings have never inspired him to write 
about them. 
Take a list of angling works and see what they 
treat of. Look over the indices of Forest and 
Stream and see who writes of his fishing and 
what his fishing is ! Salmon, grayling, trout, black 
bass; these are the themes of American writers, 
while our cousins across the water add other 
fresh-water fishes. Where is the salt-water 
Walton? Except Young, who wrote “Sea Fishing 
as a Sport,” he has not existed and never will; 
because, while there are salt-water anglers innu¬ 
merable, the inspiration is lacking in the element 
in which they fish. With the salt-water angler the 
capture of his fish is the only charm; there is no 
scenery to inspire him, therefore he is not in¬ 
spired, and while he is often above fishing for the 
pot or for count, his spirit is depressed by what 
it works in. 
Whether this result is brought about by the 
monotonous sea, the use of heavy bluefish troll¬ 
ing lines or oily chum, or the companionship of 
the silent clam, which does alternate duty as bait 
or lunch, we know not, but the fact remains that 
of all anglers who not only love their art but seek 
to improve their tackle and teach others to appre¬ 
ciate it, the fly-fisher for trout and grayling stands 
at the head. Perhaps there is some other reason 
which we have not named, which will account for 
the fact that fly-fishers love to write and to read 
of their sport more than the salt-water angler 
seems to, for with the latter the angler for maska- 
longe seems to vie in the matter of reticence. Can 
it be that it is the catching of heavy fish that thus 
affects the captors, or is it possible that baits and 
trolling spoons are the real cause? 
WANTED OPEN SEASON THANKSGIVING 
Several attempts were made at a recent meet¬ 
ing of the Worcester Co. (Mass.) Fish and 
Game Association to secure a vote in favor of 
an open season on game birds Thanksgiving day, 
but the suggestion was opposed, and the associa¬ 
tion voted strongly against it. 
