Forest and Stream 
Terms, $3 a Year, 10 Cts. a Copy, 
Six Months, |1.50. 
NEW YORK, SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 17 , 1912 . ] No. 137 Franklin St., New York. 
Trout Fishing in the Wutach 
N a very amusing article published a year or 
more ago Emerson Hough told of his ex¬ 
periences on a German trout stream. He 
drew a graphic picture of fishing armed with a 
many-sealed license, attended by a uniformed 
guide, while a lusty peasant trundled a wheel¬ 
barrow along the bank, on which was a barrel 
of water to keep alive the trout caught. Every¬ 
thing he wanted to do 
was “verboten,” except 
the payment of many 
tips. 
My own experience 
was decidedly the re¬ 
verse. I did not have 
any gallery watching my 
movements, and the tip¬ 
ping was absolutely nil. 
I had been staying at 
Baden, where the Oos 
flows through the town. 
There were a number of 
trout which profit by the 
rule prohibiting fishing 
within certain confines. 
From my seat at the 
hotel restaurant I could 
watch them rising with¬ 
in fifty feet of me. 
The trout seemed to 
be of three varieties; 
the ordinary brown 
trout of Europe, and 
two others, lighter in 
color. One of these, 
called colloquially the 
stone trout, was so light 
in color that I mistook 
them for grayling. These 
fish were of good size, 
some of them weighing 
a pound. It was interesting to feed them. 
Sometimes they would rise to pieces Of bread, 
but would reject the crust, only eating the softer 
pieces. 
The white or stone trout would eat ravenously 
pieces of meat thrown to them, while the brown 
trout did not seem to care much for such diet. 
I made a practice of feeding them, and soon 
noted that each trout seemed to have his own 
particular place, and we would almost invari¬ 
ably find them within a narrow radius. 
A week, of this developed the fishing fever to 
its utmost. I had been deprived of a trip to 
Nova Scotia, so well described by Dr. Miller 
in Forest and Stream recently, by leaving for 
By LEONARD FINLETTER 
Europe early in May, so that there was some 
excuse for me. 
I had brought some of my fishing outfit with 
me, but lacked waders. Finally after much 
search I secured in Berlin a pair of high rubber 
boots of American make. Germany does not 
seem to go in for fishing very much, so it was 
rather difficult to secure equipment. 
DRY-FLY WATER IN NOVA SCOTIA. 
From a photograph by J. Gurney Taylor. 
I had been recommended to try the river 
Wutach at Tiengen, four hours’ run from Baden. 
My train was equipped with the usual “Speise 
Wagen” with the inevitable table d’hote luncheon. 
To anyone' not familiar with the horrors of 
this peculiar institution, I would misquote Long¬ 
fellow, “Beware the awful table d’hote.” Such 
a mass of poor food badly served can hardly 
be imagined. It is not possible to escape by 
ordering such parts of the bill as seem least 
revolting. Once you have submitted to the 
tender mercies of the waiter, you have to take 
your place arid have each successive nauseous 
mess thrust in front of you to stay there until 
the last person in the car has consumed the 
whole of his portion. Any other method would 
be “lese majeste” and probably upset the Ger¬ 
man Empire, or render the violator liable to 
fine and imprisonment. The card says that 
food may be obtained a la carte. I tried that 
once and had to wait until every last one of 
two sections of table d’hotes had been served 
and take what was left from their meal. 
Reaching Tiengen, 
mine host Fritz of the 
Goldene Ochsen had my 
license ready for me, 
which, with characteris¬ 
tic German thorough¬ 
ness, told me a few 
things I could do and 
many things I could not. 
Its effect was rather 
wasted on me, as it was 
mostly in German manu¬ 
script, and that is utter¬ 
ly beyond me. The only 
German word with 
which I am thoroughly 
at home is “verboten.” 
One learns that the first 
day in Germany. The 
only things which are 
not verboten are “streng 
verboten,” which is 
worse. 'When a thing 
is verboten in Germany 
it means something. 
Never in my life have 
I seen such law-abiding 
persons as the Ger¬ 
mans. There is none 
of that spirit of de¬ 
fiance which prompts an 
American to do a thing, 
shnply because it is 
forbidden. When we Americans see a sign, 
“No trespassing,” we exercise all our ingenuity 
to gain access to the forbidden territory. 
Doubtless it is the same spirit which moves the 
trusts to employ great lawyers to determine 
how far they may evade the letter of the law 
and escape imprisonment in the common goal. 
The old English spelling of that word seems to 
carry terror more effectively than our Ameri¬ 
can jail. 
But in all countries in which trout are pro¬ 
tected the usual method adopted is regulating 
the size of the fish to be retained. I was told 
by my host that twenty centimetres was the 
legal limit. By an extraordinary mental calcu- 
