1238 
FOREST AND STREAM 
The Average Man Must Seek His Sport Within a Reasonable Distance of Home. 
ticket the price is relatively lower. It is often 
five dollars for the season, where the fishing is 
good, and their season runs to October ist. 
The number of trout to be killed in one day 
by a fisherman is usually eight where the trout 
are large, and the size limit runs from 8 to 12 
inches, 10 to 11 inches is the common limit. 
It is considered that an n-inch trout will weigh 
half a pound. 
Baskets are all inspected and recorded by the 
guardian. Watchers are on deck to see that 
no rules are broken. Where fishermen know 
what these regulations are there is no disposi¬ 
tion to break them. 
In the United States we have many reservoirs 
that are well adapted to our good friends the 
two black bass, but have we anything now near 
our big cities that would carry a large stock of 
trout? Into the mind of every fisherman will 
flash the thought, “Very soon we will have just 
what is required, in liberal measure.” 
There is that magnificent work, the Ashokan 
dam, which is calculated to create a lake 40 
miles in circumference, and other dams may 
be built if the necessities of New York’s water 
supply demand them. The new lake is on one 
of our best trout streams, celebrated for its 
large fish. I have had great sport with rainbow 
and brown trout, from the present dam near 
Olive City (reached from Brown’s Station on 
the Ulster & Delaware R. R.), right up to what 
will be the junction of lake and stream. 
The lake will be stocked automatically from . 
the Esopus, but time could be saved by stocking 
liberally. A closed period of three years would 
be required to allow these small fish to grow 
into lusty trout of from one to two pounds. They 
would rapidly increase in size. There is always 
an immense food supply in water over newly 
flooded land and this often continues indefin¬ 
itely. 
The Esopus is a good stream for flies and 
larva and there are quantities of small fish. I 
took a 3-pounder on fly that at once disgorged 
16 large silvery minnows, evidently just swal¬ 
lowed. This was in what will be the lower ena 
of the lake. In a few years immense trout may 
be killed, and to keep these down minnow fish¬ 
ing should be allowed, at least in summer. 
There is every probability that New York’s 
great reservoir would discount Blagdon in its 
fishing, and afford sport to many honest ang¬ 
lers. A man could run up there for one day or 
two, and any time that business permitted he 
could snatch up his rod and reel, and be on his 
way. To me the country round about is as 
beautiful as any in all the Catskills, and in a 
short time the water will present all the charac¬ 
teristics of a lake made by the hand of nature. 
The air is bracing and spring begins quite 
early, as compared with some portions of the 
mountains. 
My great fear has been that some thought¬ 
less persons may stock the lake with bass or 
pickerel, thus killing the opportunity to create 
the greatest trout lake in all the Eastern States. 
The whole matter has been threshed out, pro 
and con, and the fact that the trout benefit the 
water, and that fishing for them under proper 
regulations does absolutely no harm. 
People are carried, in two or three hours from 
the city into the high mountain country, where 
bracing air fills their lungs. They have a strong 
objective, one of the most important things in 
exercise to tune up the whole system, without 
exhausting fatigue. 
We must do all that we can to maintain free 
trout fishing in our streams, but this new lake 
affords an extraordinary opportunity to bless 
the every day hard-working man. The small- 
salaried man and the workman can take a day 
off now and then, and the value of the fish 
taken will, by supplying his family with a per¬ 
fect food fish, defray the cost of his railway 
and fishing tickets. 
The great aqueduct may be followed through 
Ulster and Orange counties, and for a man who 
is fond of tramping through an interesting and 
beautiful country, such a trip might prove en¬ 
joyable. One could start just below the High¬ 
lands, and march all the way to the dam. Then 
he would have the option of returning by train, 
if he wished. 
What do you think of it, brothers? I may be 
enthusiastic, but it looks good to me. 
Unless some action is taken and all good fish¬ 
ermen co-operate in using their influence, this 
beautiful lake may be closed to the public, and 
the absolutely unique opportunity to create one 
of the finest trout waters in the United States 
may be lost. Bass and pickerel should be kept 
out, at all hazards. 
I have had my share of sport, probably far 
more than I was justly entitled to, and I can not 
avoid thinking of the young anglers and others 
who so long for a little good trout fishing. 
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| .. . .... 
|| “No Hunting Allowed” 
THE FARMER HAS A WARM 
|| SPOT IN HIS HEART —IF — 
By Rodney Random. 
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T HE influence of environment has everything 
to do with the change in habits of the quail. 
New farms and new modes of cultivation 
are responsible for this. Sportsmen hold up 
their hands at the lack of game law enforcement, 
especially that pertaining to our little brown 
birds, but you seldom see one give the slightest 
assistance in feeding the birds when they need 
it the most. 
Game leagues have done some good, though 
too many of them wrangle over an election of 
officers, when they could have spent the time 
more advantageously in the home of the birds. 
They are, while shooting in the field, imbued with 
the usual foresightedness of the average sports¬ 
men, but when home shortsightedness actuates 
them into oblivion though the birds are suf¬ 
fering the privations of winter. 
If we are to retain this king of game birds 
constantly, we must feel disposed to lend some 
physical assistance to their welfare. Would it 
not be just as sportsmanlike to feed birds dur¬ 
ing inclement spells of wintry weather as to 
shoot them in fall under favorable circumstances. 
One should exact the other. 
It is only after a person has lived long in the 
habitat of birds that he begins to conceive the 
true source of neglect from both viewpoints. To 
bring the hunter from the city and the farmer 
together is almost beyond possibility. 
The former regards the farmer as a stupid 
personage, and is highly incensed when forbidden 
the liberties of the quail fields, and he shows it. 
The farmer reverses his opinion to a degree 
that his ideas are restricted by an ineradicable 
sentiment that the sportsman has no interest in 
him, but in only the birds on his place. And he 
does not miss the mark far! Both are unin¬ 
tentionally sinners. 
My shooting grounds have not been curtailed 
a single year. Living in a farming country gave 
me an open sesame to the quail fields, except 
when a newcomer from another state moved 
here and decorated his fences and trees with 
“keep out” signs. Of course, his wishes were 
respected in a way. But, if we did not get 
his permission we found ample work for a green 
dog to perform in our behalf. Were he a wide- 
casting fellow, so much the better. One requis¬ 
ite was important—the dog had to be unsteady 
on birds. He could not be too wild to suit our 
sport. The fences only include the cultivated 
areas, for the timber beyond is unfenced as the 
range is free to all. All birds on being flushed 
hit it up for the timber. You can see that at 
this juncture our single bird shooting began. 
Seldom, however, were we obliged to resort 
to this after the first winter. As soon as a new¬ 
comer viewed us feeding birds when the snow 
was on the ground, he responded with the in¬ 
vitation to shoot as we pleased. Where they 
formerly resided they had been so pestered by 
town loafers and pot-hunters, they classed every 
sportsman in their new home likewise. 
For a long time a certain farmer was perverse, 
we called it, in his determination to keep us out 
of his fields. He swore by all the mules and 
bulls on his place—and there were none—he 
would permit no one to kill “patridges” on his 
