Dec. 21, 1912 
FOREST AND STREAM 
787 
ing was published by the Senate Committee. 
The McLean bill in amended form (S. 6497) 
and the Weeks bill .(H. R. 36) were both favor¬ 
ably reported and are now on the respective 
calendars of the Senate and House. Ihe game 
refuge bill (S. 6109) provides for the estab¬ 
lishment of game refuges on available public 
lands and for the acceptance of private lands 
offered for the purpose, was introduced by Sen¬ 
ator Perkins and was favorably reported by the 
Senate Committee on Forest Reservations; the 
corresponding bill (H. R. 23839) introduced in 
the House by Mr. Kent, is still in the Commit¬ 
tee on Agriculture. Another measure (S. 6942) 
providing for a game preserve in the Pecos Na¬ 
tional Forest in New Mexico, introduced by 
Senator Catron, passed the Senate and is now 
in the Plouse Committee on Public Lands. 
MEASURES WHICH PASSED. 
The only bills which became law were those 
which were incorporated in the regular appro¬ 
priation bills and the fur seal bill. The bill 
introduced by Mr. Martin, of South Dakota, 
providing for a game preserve on the Wind 
Cave National Park, was included as a para¬ 
graph in the Agricultural appropriation bill and 
is now a law. This paragraph appropriated 
$26,000 for the acquisition of lands adjoining 
the park, necessary to provide an adequate water 
supply, and authorized the construction of a 
suitable inclosure for a herd of buffalo to be 
presented by the American Bison Society. The 
Agricultural bill also carried an appropriation 
of $45,000 for the purchase of a winter refuge 
for elk in Jackson Hole, Wyoming; an increase 
of $2,500 for the maintenance of reservations 
for mammals and birds, and a decrease of about 
$5,500 for the maintenance of the Wichita Game 
Preserve in Oklahoma. The Sundry Civil bill 
included the usual items of $15,000 for game 
protection in Alaska, and $3,000 for maintenance 
of the buffalo in the Yellowstone National Park. 
The bill carrying into effect the provisions of 
the treaty entered into by the United States, 
Great Britain, Russia and Japan for the preser¬ 
vation of the fur seal herd was passed in the 
closing days of the session and included a pro¬ 
vision for a five years’ close season on the fur 
seals on the Pribilof Islands. The net result of 
game legislation at the last session was the en¬ 
actment of measures providing for two game 
preserves and for putting an end to pelagic seal¬ 
ing. Four other measures, the Pecos Game Pre¬ 
serve bill, the general game refuge bill, and two 
of the migratory bird bills made substantial pro¬ 
gress. 
MEASURES UNDER CONSIDERATION. 
The opening of the third session will find 
the calendar crowded with measures. Already 
there have been introduced 35,638 bills and reso¬ 
lutions, of which 8,049 are in the Senate and 
27.589 in the House. Of these less than one in 
a thousand relate to game. The House Com¬ 
mittee on Agriculture is said to have pending 
before it 125 bills and the House Committee on 
Public Lands about 300 bills. With the con¬ 
gested condition of the calendar and the regular 
appropriation bills requiring attention at a ses¬ 
sion including only about seventy working days, 
there will be little chance for consideration of 
measures not already reported from committee 
(Continued on page 800.) 
Another Tod Letter. 
Dear Dad : 
Kathryn's sister, Ellen, is here and she was 
just crazy to get out in the woods, so yesterday 
I met them at the station and we went down 
Pine Creek for the afternoon. They had a 
royal lunch, and we built a fire and made coffee 
and cooked frankfurters. These with grapes, 
olives and sandwiches satisfied the two girls. 
I of course had my fishing rod, and on the 
way down 1 was a bit taken aback to have sev¬ 
eral persons say, ‘ Why, you can’t catch any 
fish; Pine Creek is too high.” When I saw the 
creek I began to fear they were right. It was 
high and raging, but it was fairly clear, and in 
some places it was not too swift for a bass to 
live. 
I tried several places, but couldn't get a 
rise until we got pretty well up; in fact, to the 
first hole below where the ‘‘Pine Creek Rapids” 
begin. Here there was a flat stone sticking up 
out of the water and below it several fish were 
rising. I figured out that if I could get on that 
stone, by careful fishing I might get a fish or two. 
I went up the creek some distance above 
the rock and started wading down with the cur¬ 
rent. And I came down some, believe me. But 
I made my rock and crawled out, and after 
shaking myself began to fish. But the bass were 
further down than I could cast, so I hit on an¬ 
other plan. I would cast out in the current as 
far as I could and then pay out line until my 
flies would be below where the fish were work¬ 
ing, and then I would tighten up until my flies 
were floating right, and then with my rod 
straight up in the air I would reel in and cast 
again. I had gone through this performance 
perhaps a dozen times when there was a swirl 
and a splash, and my old rod began to creak 
and bend. I was fast to a fish, and I had some 
fun in that water, for whenever he got out of 
the eddy he took line from me. Gradually I 
worked him up and at the end of a few minutes’ 
fight, I had him on about twelve feet of line 
below me. Taking the rod in my right hand I 
knelt down, and by nearly breaking the rod slid 
my first fish out on the rock. It was a bass about 
sixteen inches long, a beauty, all black and cold 
and shiny. I killed him, put him into my basket 
and tried again. After a little time another big 
fellow threw himself out of the water, and I 
had another fight at twenty yards’ range. I 
landed this one, too, and it proved to be about 
one inch shorter than the first one. 
And now comes the part of the story you 
will find difficulty in believing. After killing 
my second fish, which like the first had been 
caught on the leader fly, a big Seth Green, T tried 
a new trailer. In place of a Ruben Wood that 
I had been using, I put on a spinner of my own 
device, a tiny disk of mother of pearl, and below 
it a royal coachman fly. And then I cast out 
into the current and let my lines float down. I 
paid out all the line I had and then tightened 
up and began to reel in. I had pulled my flies 
past the point where I had hooked the other 
two and could see my mother of pearl spinner 
glinting when an old fellow rose to my lead fly. 
I could see him come, and I saw him take the 
fly and then rise into the air shaking his head 
like a dog. It was the largest bass I have seen 
here this summer, a good three-pounder, easily 
seventeen inches long. And every ounce of him 
was fight. Three times he took line from me and 
each time I swung him safely back into the 
eddy, and then coaxed him up to my rock. I 
had him within thirty feet of me and could see 
the little spinner trailing off behind when there 
was another swirl behind my fish, and the spin¬ 
ner disappeared and immediately the load on 
my poor old rod was materially increased. 
There I stood on my little rock with the 
water rushing by me on either side with two 
fine bass fast in a little eddy below. I knew 
I couldn't hold them if they both together got 
out in that swift water, and so I played them 
for all I was worth. 
Maybe the numberless fish I have seen you 
land, and the experience I have gained that way 
helped, for I kept them where they were safe 
and gradually I worked them up to the rock, 
and then carefully and slowly I knelt and slid 
first one and then the other out. The first one 
was the big one, and next came a bass about a 
foot long, both fine fat black fellows. I stood 
with one in either hand and rested for a minute 
and looked at them, and if the smile on my face 
was not angelic, surely it was a contented one. 
I caught two more then, one about a foot 
and one about fourteen inches, and then I was 
so cold I had to quit. So I trusted myself to 
the current, and after getting soaked above my 
belt, finally reached shore. 
Here I built a fire and the girls cooked 
supper while I cleaned the fish, and then after 
supper we went back into the woods and looked 
for pheasants until dark and then went to the 
train and came home. Tod. 
The Rapacity of the Pike. 
(Esox lucius .) 
As the lion, by common consent, is regarded 
as the “king of the forest,” so it may be said 
that the pike is king of the lake. Both derive 
their warrant “not from the divine right of 
kings,” however, but from sheer brute force— 
the principle that “might is right.” Both of 
these monarchs sway their subjects by fear and 
not by love. It is true that they have no active 
enemies, but this may be explained in a similar 
way to that of the Spanish brigand who told his 
father-confessor, when about to die, that he had 
not an enemy in the world, as he shot the last 
of them a week ago! 
Queen Mary of England does not permit 
the use of aigrettes in her millinery, according 
to a statement contained in a letter published 
in the London Times by the Duchess of Port¬ 
land, in which this ardent bird protectionist 
appeals to women to refrain from buying or 
wearing osprey plumes, as aigrettes are called 
in England. 
