200 
FOREST AND STREAM 
On the Peribonca River, one of the feeders of Lake St. John, in the Ouananiche Country. 
we are persistently told that the ouananiche is 
peculiar to Lake St. John and its tributary 
waters—that it is a landlocked salmon and a dis¬ 
tinct variety from Salmo salar. On the other 
hand it has been perfectly well established for 
a score of years past that its habitat is co-ex- 
tensive with the great Labrador peninsula, ex¬ 
cepting only the latter’s western slope. In 1804 
and 1895, Mr. A. P. Low, already mentioned, 
found the ouananiche in the Koksoak river for 
a distance of nearly 200 miles below Lake Cani- 
apscow and in the lake and river stretches of 
the upper part of the George river, which also 
empties into Ungava Bay. On the eastern 
watershed, the party frequently caught the same 
fish on both branches of the Hamilton river 
above the Grand Falls, and also in great Lake 
Michikamow at the head of the North West 
River. That it is not a landlocked salmon is 
patent to the most ordinary observer. In the 
Lake St. John waters, where it is best known to 
the majority of writers upon the subject, it has 
unobstructed access to the sea by way of the 
Saguenay river and the Lower St. Lawrence. The 
familiar story of the Lake St. John ouananiche 
shut out from the sea by some extraordinary up¬ 
heaval of nature in the bed of the Saguenay is 
of course entirely apocryphal, for as I wrote in 
one of my books twenty years ago, “waters 
never yet flowed that smolt could not descend, 
and it has still to be established that the Sagu¬ 
enay was ever dry.’’ 
But a few years ago, the angling for ouanan¬ 
iche was written of as a conflict between man 
and a dragonlike adversary which fought its 
captor more in air than in water, and with so 
much vigor and success that the strongest tackle 
manufactured was essential to its capture and 
that a good proportion of the rods brought to 
bear upon the fight were smashed by the angler’s 
valiant combatant as if they were so many 
match splints. Sportsmen who set out a couple 
of decades ago to fish for ouananiche armed 
themselves for the fray as though they were 
bound for an attack upon the Salmo salar of 
coastal streams, and were frequently to be met, 
as occasional English or Canadian fishermen 
have been in later days, on the Grande Decharge 
or in the pools of the Metabetchouan River, 
casting with sixteen-foot, two-handed salmon or 
grilse rods, just as they do when fishing for 
thirty-pound salmon in the Moisie or the Ris- 
tigouche. Like that Hadendowah Arab the 
Fuzzy-Wuzzy of the Soudan, the Canadian ouan¬ 
aniche has been described somewhere by Col. An¬ 
drew Haggard as “An India-rubber idiot on the 
spree.” 
Much nonsense has been published from time 
to time about this really splendid game fish of 
the north, and anglers who have successfully 
held the vaulting tarpon and the leaping salmon 
with rod and line, have more than once been 
disgusted beyond measure at the evident mis¬ 
representation of those who have pictured the 
little salmon of Lake St. John as an inveterate 
smasher of fishing tackle. It is true that very 
little was known of the ouananiche until quite 
modern times, but recent investigation has 
brought to light many facts concerning the fish 
that were formerly veiled in obscurity. 
The most accessible ouananiche waters are in 
the Grand Descharge of Lake St. John, but they 
do not contain the biggest fish. Many visit them 
annually to experience the sensation of shoot¬ 
ing the rapids in the Indian canoes of birch bark. 
The sensation as the frail craft glides down a 
steep incline of smooth water, or dips into the 
hollow of a great sea, is thrilling in the ex¬ 
treme. Now it seems that the crest of a huge 
wave is about to break over the side of the 
canoe; the next instant the birch-bark is lifted 
sideways out of the hollow. Then again the bow 
is apparently upon the point of being submerged 
when the canoeman in front cuts ofif the head 
of the approaching breaker with his paddle. 
These experiences, amid the resistless impetuosity 
of the stream, are of a nature to quicken the 
pulsation of the heart and to hasten the cours¬ 
ing of the blood through the veins. Here and 
there are oily looking pools where the waters 
