July 20, 1912 
FOREST AND STREAM 
77 
On the Beaverkill and Rondout. 
Ripogenus Lake, Maine, July 2.— Editor 
Forest and Stream: In the interest of a little 
accuracy permit me to untangle a little state¬ 
ment made by “One Who Went,” appearing under 
the title, “Fishing at the Beaverkill,” on page 
790 of your issue dated June 22, 1912. He must 
have “went” a rugged, not to say jagged, route. 
As you know, but as some well meaning reader 
may not know, De Bruce is on the Wil- 
lowemoc River, not ‘ at the Beaverkill” at 
all; the Hearthstone Inn is run by Mrs. (not 
Miss) Elizabeth Royce, and “The Homestead” 
by her sister, Miss (not Mrs.) Ada Cooper, and 
there is corking good fly-fishing there, particu¬ 
larly in the stretch of water between the “Anvil 
Rock” and the junction pool of the Mongaup 
Brook (not river; the river has a story all its 
own further south in Sullivan count) with the 
Willowemoc. Jay Davidson’s place is at Beaver¬ 
kill P. 0 ., on the Beaverkill River. Here, 
however, I have not had such good fishing as 
further up the river, nearer to Lew Beach (not 
Besch), particularly just back of Archie Dick¬ 
son’s farm—famous pools, eddies and rips once 
you learn the water—and just below Voorhis’s 
place, where a fishing club now has its head¬ 
quarters. Otherwise he who went is all right. 
It is a beautiful country, all easily accessible 
from Livingston Manor on the Ontario & West¬ 
ern railway, and mighty good cover for the 
ruffed grouse if the farmers’ boys would 
turn their attention a little more toward keep¬ 
ing down the numbers of three kinds of hawks 
—the crows, owls, skunks and other vermin 
which, added to what men do to him, make life 
some exciting for said Mr. Grouse. 
A word, too, if I may, with Mr. “Whirling- 
Dun” who in the same issue writes of “The 
Dry-Fly on the Roundout.” Don’t worry, Mr. 
Dun, if you begin to suspect that Dr. Breck is 
not after all in all things always infallible. You 
have some others with you and Dr. Breck is 
himself too good a sportsman to believe or to 
wish others to believe that he believes he “knows 
it all” in connection with all of out of doors. He 
does know a lot, but like other wise men, he 
has apparently changed his mind about one or 
two things in the last twenty years, so let’s hope 
he will live at least twenty years more. To 
which I suppose he may inquire, “Why limit 
me?” But as many of his ideas are sound, I 
haven't time to go into that now. 
That yellow-winged floater you write of in¬ 
terests me. Or, rather, I have gone at it back¬ 
ward, for it is not the yellow-winged floater 
that interests me at all, but rather the natural 
yellow-winged fly that caused you to use it. 
If, when wading some of those Catskill streams 
about the middle of May or earlier, you look 
carefully, you will notice clinging to the stones, 
rather nearer the banks than mid-stream, what 
appear to be small bits of twigs., I first noticed 
the thing in the waters of Western North Caro¬ 
lina, where it is locally known as “stick bait.” 
For by pressing upon these “twigs” they crack 
open and discover a white grub with a black 
head. These I believe to be the larvae of the 
yellow-winged flies which I have seen hatch by 
the thousands for a few minutes on the waters 
of the Willowemoc about De Bruce. During the 
hatch you might as well stay home and play 
with the baby, but just as it ceases, and only a 
fly here and there is left upon the water, and 
the fish have just about gorged themselves, cast 
a green drake dry over a rising fish, and if Mr. 
Saimo fario is he who rose—oh! la, la, la, la! 
I took in this manner the two finest brown 
trout of my experience one afternoon at De 
Bruce. Now, the green drake is not a good 
imitation of the hatching fly. It is not at all 
on the same shade of yellow. But the point is 
the trout—the brown trout, at least—take it, and 
I believe they will the yellow May. When I 
had my panic and had thrashed everything I 
could think of at a school of brown trout feed¬ 
ing on the hatch, the green drake was all I had 
left, and they “fell for it.” 
As you suggest, what we need in this coun¬ 
try is a fly tier or two who can exactly or 
approximately imitate the actual flies found upon 
our waters upon which trout habitually feed. 
That man may justly be termed the American 
Halford and save us from a great deal more of 
the hysterical babbling that is the present mode 
about the dry-fly in America—“practical” or 
otherwise. Mr. La Branche, a most gracefully 
fashioned person, gyrates horribly upon the tour¬ 
nament platform; the corpulent Mr. Gill writes 
most gracefully; and Mr. Camp is a wonderful 
“south paw” artist, but are they improving 
American angling conditions in the least? 
Ralph Bisbee. 
All the fish lams of the United States and 
Canada, revised to date and now in force, are 
given in the Game Laws in Brief. See adv. 
Fishing in California. 
The distribution of trout fry is going for¬ 
ward steadily, and it is anticipated that by the 
end of the season almost 18,000,000 fry will have 
been liberated in California streams, the largest 
number on record. Many streams that have 
never been stocked before have been given atten¬ 
tion this season, especially in sections of the 
■Sierras, recently opened to railroad travel. With 
the growth of the fish planting work of the Fish 
and Game Commission, it is becoming the opin¬ 
ion of members of this body that more satisfac¬ 
tory results could be obtained by the establishing 
of a number of new hatcheries, rather than by 
enlarging the facilities of existing ones. This 
year about 10.000,000 fry were hatched at one 
station and distributed from here to streams all 
over the State. With smaller hatcheries located at 
important distributing points, the expense for 
transportation would be greatly reduced, and 
there would be much less loss of fry through 
impaired vitality caused by long journeys. W. 
H. Shebley, A. E. Doney and Mr. Gilmore have 
been making a survey of California streams with 
the idea of locating all dams and obstructions 
which might interfere with the free passage of 
fish to natural spawning places. A map is being 
prepared, showing all streams and dams, and 
steps will be taken at once to see that fishways 
are installed wherever needed. Nevada sports¬ 
men are interesting themselves in similar con¬ 
ditions on the Truckee, and it is believed that 
this stream will soon be freed from all obstruc¬ 
tions. Congressman Raker, of California, has in¬ 
troduced a bill appropriating $10,000 for build¬ 
ing a fishway at the Derby dam, the old one 
being useless. 
Visitors to the Yosemite Valley since the 
first of July have been enjoying splendid sport 
in the Merced River and its tributaries, these 
streams having been thrown open to fishing on 
that date after a three years’ closed season. 
Heavy plantings of trout have been made there 
during the past few years, and the fish are now 
more plentiful than ever before. Dr. F. B. 
Alden, of San Francisco, made the trip there 
recently with his family and succeeded in land¬ 
ing many fine trout, some of these weighing four 
pounds each. 
Fishing has been unusually good this season 
in the streams along the Ocean Shore railroad 
between San Francisco and Santa Cruz, and will 
be kept at the present high standard if this can 
be accomplished by planting. In one day re¬ 
cently there were planted about 350000 fish in 
ten of these coast streams, which should insure 
some splendid sport for several seasons to 
come. 
The best sport of the season is now being 
experienced along the Feather River, notably on 
the lower stretches where the early sport was 
rather indifferent. At Belden limit catches can 
be easily made and some large fish are being 
taken. At Spring Garden the sport continues 
to be of high order, and a six-pound trout was 
recently landed there. The fish taken in that 
vicinity are averaging about five to the pound. 
On the Middle Fork good fishing is to be en¬ 
joyed in the vicinity of Cromberg, but most of 
the anglers now visiting this section are spend¬ 
ing most of their time at the lakes in the vicinity 
of Johnsville where fishing is just commencing. 
In the vicinity of Oroville a variety of sport is 
