340 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
[March 2, 1907. 
Little Talks About Fly-Fishing. 
Sullivan County, N. Y., Feb. 28 .—Editor 
Forest and Stream: In regard to horsehair for 
leaders and flies, the hair from an entire horse 
(stallion) is usually the strongest and best. 
The reason why mare’s hair is apt to be weak 
fs patent to any one who considers the matter. 
Sorrel hair is preferred by some people, but I 
have made a leader from black hair that seems 
quite good. It was intended for use with 
small-eyed flies, and has a loop at one end 
only. It will not do to test hair up to the 
breaking strain, as if stretched in that way, the 
strength is lost. It has been said that any 
good angler should be able to kill trout of one 
pound with a single hair, and much larger fish 
have been landed with it. I think that it was 
Francis Francis who killed a barbel of six 
pounds with hair, when fishing from a punt 
anchored in the. Thames. 
For comparison with the hair leader, I in¬ 
close a strand of so-called cobweb gut. This 
is finer than horsehair and was considerably 
stronger when fresh. It is a remnant from a 
large quantity bought some years ago. 
It is not necessary or advisable to use drawn 
gut early in the season, when the water is 
high and the trout are not educated. As the 
water in the streams lowers and the fish be¬ 
come shy, we use finer tackle and reduce the 
size of our flies. It is astonishing to note the 
size of flies used by some anglers in spring 
fishing. Trout will rise at 'almost any fly 
sometimes. I remember seeing a large dragon 
fly taken from the surface of a large still pool 
by a fish of not over nine inches in length. It 
was swallowed also, as it did not appear again. 
I witnessed a pretty sight at the lower end 
of that same pool one day in summer. Four 
young cranes (great blue heron) were fish¬ 
ing and loafing about, and by careful stalking 
I was able to ensconce myself in a comfortable 
position within thirty yards of them. One 
of the cranes was actually lying on the warm 
sand with one of its long legs stuck out, just 
as we have seen chickens do. Another stood 
near it on one leg, while a third was fishing 
in the clear water. At that time there was a 
regular nesting resort of these big birds in the 
forest not far from the river, and a few are 
still found there every year. I had not been 
to the roost, but have been informed that 
the odor of decaying fish is far from pleasant 
and can be smelled some distance away from 
the nests. There are no ponds or lakes within 
miles of this place, yet yellow perch, bullheads 
and small pickerel are among the remains. 
My informant stated that he saw no trout, 
but had no doubt that small ones were caught. 
The young would have no difficulty in swal¬ 
lowing these. There is no doubt that birds of 
this order travel long distances in search of 
food. Evening after evening we have heard 
the quawks (night herons) following the same 
route, high up in the air. 
For years I have feared that small-mouth 
black bass would establish themselves in the 
large pools of the Upper Beaverkill. There 
are plenty of them lower down the river, and a 
lake some distance above Sea Beach is well 
stocked with bass. The outlet is only about a 
mile long, and small bass could easily enter 
the Beaverkill when the water is high. I 
think they have done so, as I saw four little 
bass in a big pool near Beaverkill post-office 
eight years ago, and others have been ob¬ 
served since then. A young man played quite 
a decent bass almost to the net last summer, 
and years ago I caught a half-pound bass with 
a trout fly near the hatchery above Rockland. 
I fancy that large bass would make things 
very uncomfortable for the trout. They are 
large fellows, and wish to be boss of any water 
they inhabit. Even a pretty large pool would 
not be big enough for a three-pound bass and 
trout of good size. 
Do all the trout which are found in the 
lower portions of our large streams in the 
spring pass on upward as the season advances 
and the water becomes warmer? They are 
not there in summer, apparently, except a few 
here and there, where a cold spring enters the 
river. There is good fishing in the Neversink 
and Beaverkill in May, where no one would 
think of casting a fly or bait in July. I know 
that they do go up stream to some extent, yet 
there is not the great increase in the number 
of trout in the upper waters that one would 
naturally expect. These are alive with trout 
at the beginning of the season, and if large 
numbers arrive later from below, might be 
overstocked, too many fish for the food supply, 
particularly the preserves, which are not hard 
fished. 
I have heard the theory advanced that many 
of the large trout remain in the depths of the 
largest pools during the hot weather. I know 
that they can hide themselves in a wonderful 
way when they wish to do so. Late in June 
I have seen frogs and water-snakes in the 
Esopus, where there had been many trout a 
few weeks earlier. When the rainbow trout 
were very numerous, there used to be a heavy 
run into the tributary streams in August. The 
Bushkill would be alive with them after a rise 
in the water. I remember that a tributary of 
the Neversink, which had been so much ob¬ 
structed for two years that no fish could enter 
it, filled up in one night after a cloud burst, 
which cleared the mouth of the brook and 
changed the channel of the main stream. It 
was hard to believe that such enormous quan¬ 
tities of rock and stones had been brought 
down out of one little brook. Large numbers 
of trout were taken from what had been prac¬ 
tically barren water for two years. 
One summer on the Esopus we enjoyed 
nearly a week of unusually cool weather, the 
nights were positively cold. Just by way of 
experiment, I went down stream, where the 
fishing had been miserably poor since the be¬ 
ginning of warm weather. The result was 
that nine or ten fine large trout were taken in 
a short afternoon. One of them quite a buster, 
and another as large was lost after a good 
fight. The air and water became warmer the 
next day and the fishing deteriorated again, so 
that it was not worth while to cover the same 
water. We had to go up where it was cooler. 
It is pleasant to wade without waterproofs in 
summer, and when I enter the stream I like 
to feel a little shock of cold. Then I can fish 
with some confidence in the result, but if the 
water is tepid, almost the same temperature 
as the air, I prepare myself for a day of dis¬ 
appointment. We are apt to feel languid in 
hot weather, and the trout are doubtless af¬ 
fected in much the same way by warm water. 
A trout stream should always be cold. It 
appears bright and sparkling as long as the 
temperature is fairly low; dull and uninterest¬ 
ing when overheated by a long journey under 
a blazing sun. 
How we detest a saw-mill on one of our 
favorite streams! The sappy, heavy saw-dust 
not only floats on the surface, but sinks to the 
bottom and permeates the entire river. The 
trout will not rise; in fact, I do not believe 
that natural flies would be noticed, even if 
they would come up through the trash, and 
hatch out on the surface. Those saw-mills 
are responsible for many muttered bad words, 
and for several melancholy days. There have 
been times when one had to wait until after 6 
o’clock before he could hope to basket a trout. 
Country saw-mills usually quit at 6. I wish 
they would quit at 6 A. M. and never start up 
again. What a lot of trees would be saved to 
glorify the forests. Wood has advanced so 
much in price that every little piece of pine 
or hemlock in the country is hunted out and 
doomed to swift destruction. Why not hold 
these remnants for a further advance? They 
cannot be replaced in a hundred years. We 
can. only hope that deciduous trees will spring 
up in their place. 
Every day I see the head of the largest trout 
T ever hooked, but did not land. His big 
mouth, filled with teeth, gapes ferociously at 
me and his glassy eyes glare savagely. He 
seems to say, “Why didn’t you land me in good 
sporting style, instead of leaving me to be 
done to death in a net? If you had not struck 
so hard my teeth would not have cut the gut 
above the fly, and we might have fought it out 
to a finish.” I can reply, “Why did you hide 
under that rock and then sneak after the fly 
in such a poky way? You know that I had to 
draw the line through the rings with my left 
hand, and that you were barely fifteen feet 
away when you pounced on the fly. Of course 
the strike was hard. You were too heavy to 
give the least little bit. Why didn’t you rise 
in a sensible way?” Six pounds eleven ounces. 
Theodore Gordon. 
Cascades Fishing with Salmon Roe. 
Editor Forest and Stream: . 
Salmon roe for bait in early spring trout fish¬ 
ing in the Cascades Mountains of Northern 
California, Oregon and Washington, although 
the most killing known in that country will 
hardly become popular to the extent of deplet¬ 
ing the streams, although it might easily become 
so if systematically practiced. The reason that 
it is safe to say this bait will never be used to 
an alarming extent is its messiness, to say noth¬ 
ing of the strong fish smell that clings to the 
fisherman who uses it, his clothes, hair and even 
his skin for days afterward. 
Salmon roe as a lure for brook trout was 
first used by the Indians. The method is simple 
arid consists in the fisherman standing at the 
head of a riffle and holding a handful of roe 
which he squeezes into the water until all of 
the rich oil is washed from his hands. This 
oil floats down across the riffle and into the 
pool beyond, and by the time it reaches the 
lower end every trout in the vicinity, from small 
fry, fingerling to old-timer, is up and doing, 
until the water fairly froths with the efforts of 
the fish to get up into the shallow water of the 
riffle, where, they imagine, the salmon have 
come again to spawn, for the spawning time is 
where the trout get even with the salmon by 
feeding on the roe. 
About this time the fisherman drops a naked 
hook down stream which is at once taken by 
the excited fish who first gets a chance. He 
is landed with a jerk, and the sport (?) goes on 
until all the sizeable fish and many of the 
smaller ones have been caught. It is almost as 
effective as if a stick of giant powder had been 
exploded in the pool. 
The only time that the trout fisherman of the 
Pacific Coast of to-day uses salmon roe is in 
the early spring when the waters are so high 
and muddy that a fly cannot be used, and he 
usually is after the salmon or sea trout. By that 
I mean the speckled trout that live in salt 
water and only run up into the fresh-water 
streams early in the season and not the sea 
trout known along the Atlantic Coast and in 
the Gulf of Mexico. These fish vary little in 
size, running from a.pound and three-quarters 
to two and a quarter. The flesh is pink and of 
good flavor, although not as fine as the fresh¬ 
water trout of the mountain streams. 
As it is not always easy to secure fresh sal¬ 
mon roe, the custom of preserving the roe 
packed in salt or sugar is practiced by the pro¬ 
prietors of stores dealing in fishing tackle. The 
preserving process, while it retains most of the 
oil in the roe, bleaches it until it loses all of 
the rich salmon color that the roe originally 
has. The smell, however, is all there and it is 
there to stay. The hat, coat, trousers and boots 
worn by a fisherman using salmon roe one 
spring will smell just as strong the following 
year, and no one has ever discovered a disin¬ 
fectant that is powerful enough to eradicate it 
Some one has said that the way to eat a 
mango is to get into a bath tub and turn the 
water on, but all the water in the Columbia 
River could not wash away the smell of salmon 
roe. Bailey Avery. 
Feb. 4. —Editor Forest and Stream: Your valuable 
paper has been read by me since 1880 with great satis¬ 
faction and profit, and its tone has always been my 
ideal of what true sportsmanship should be. The 
change in size and style has been a great improvement in 
many ways. With my best wishes for a long and pros¬ 
perous future, I remain yours fraternally, 
Wendell F. Foster. 
