May. 
A shower of apple blossoms, fragrant, white, 
Scft greens among the dark pines in the wood, 
Blood root in snowy spots beside the road, 
A radiant world—laughing in ecstasy, 
Delight! ’Tis May! 
Cannibal Trout. 
Topeka, Kan., May i.- — Editor Forest and 
Stream: In my account of bee hunting, in Forest 
and Stream of April 27., 1 mentioned the moun¬ 
tain settlement where I spent my vacations, and 
of the trout brooks, but did not state the size 
of the settlement on the mountain, which in fact 
consisted of nine families living along a road 
extending lengthwise of the mountain top for 
many miles parallel to Pine Creek, and save for 
this small settlement, extending through an un¬ 
broken forest a distance of forty miles to lumber 
, camps adjacent to Pine Creek, engaged in cut¬ 
ting the pine trees and delivering the logs to- the 
creek which carried them to the West Branch 
River, which delivered them in the basin at 
Williamsport. 
Such brooks or runs as had valleys of their 
own were dammed in their upper course by what 
were termed splash-dams, constructed at some 
point where large pine trees on each bank could 
be felled across the creek side by side, with butts 
and tops resting against trees or stumps on the 
lower side, which formed the top of the dam, 
and supported poles and small trees set slanting 
from top of the dam to the bottom of the run, 
and upon which, from the bottom was built up 
1 the main body of the dam of brush, leaves and 
(clay, several feet in thickness, forming a water¬ 
tight dam or reservoir from which no water could 
I escape except over the top of the dam, the two 
for more pine trees felled across the ravine. These 
crude dams often were twenty or thirty feet in 
j depth and formed reservoirs of water a mile in 
: length more or less. Along the banks of these 
I dams the pine logs would be skidded, from all 
the adjacent lands that could be reached in a 
season’s cut, and in the spring-, after the ice 
covering the dam had become rotten, the logs 
forming the winter’s cut would be broken out 
if the skid piles on the mountain sides above 
he dam and rolled down upon its surface. When 
ill the skid piles had been turned loose the logs 
orming the top of the dam were cut and the 
vater, logs and dam materials would go in one 
vild riot down into the body of the larger stream 
o wend their way boomward and where the 
reek sides and bottom would permit sweeping 
verything clean to the bed rock. This descrip- 
| >on of lumbering is not a part of trout fishing, 
put is necessary for the understanding of the 
I isfting part of this sketch. , 
The. furthest house of this mountain settlement 
| vas situated near the headwaters of a run that 
I lad been lumbered in the manner described, and 
> t was also three miles from the nearest neigh- 
»°r. The eldest son of the family had met with 
1 ne many times at the other neighbors’ and had 
j Iways insisted that I should come to their place 
>n my next mountain trin and he would “show 
ne genuine trout fishing.” and when at last he 
'rged me to set a date for him to come the thirty- 
! ive miles to town after me, and take me out 
or a week or two, I named the day. and while 
i looked forward with anticipations of the pleas- 
; ire of the trip I could not think it could be 
1 luc h different from the other trout fishing the 
j tountain streams had given me, with trout from 
f ufi'half to three-quarters of a pound in weight, 
| nd very rarely one that we would guess would 
1/weigh close to a pound if it does not quite” in 
he mountain terms. 
| 0° 'he appointed day my friend came after 
ic, and his directions to “git every kind of rig 
you’ve got that a trout’ll bite, for I’ve got a 
lot of ‘lunkers’ for you none of us can ketch” 
did not even give me an idea of what I was 
to meet with, and his description of his fishing 
trips from boyhood as we rode front town to 
his home would always wind up with some refer¬ 
ence to the trout of Upper Pine Bottom Run. 
The following morning we followed the stream 
that crossed the road a mile from the house 
down through a forest from which all the large 
white pine trees had been cut, and whenever I 
would wish to cast a fly upon a likely pool I 
would be told, “Come on, there’s nothing there 
worth ketchin’; wait till you git where there’s 
something.” A walk of three or four miles 
brought us to the main Pine Creek bottom, and 
the mouth of Pine Bottom Run, in a forest wild¬ 
erness five miles from the nearest house and 
thirty-five miles from the nearest village. Nine 
or ten years before the Pine Bottom Run had 
been dammed, and the passing out of the logs 
tournament weights. 
From left to right: New quarter-ounce, old quarter- 
ounce; new half-ounce, and old half-ounce weights. 
and water had cut a channel to the bed rock, 
and about fifty feet wide, which extended from 
the junction with Pine Creek up the run nearly 
an eighth of a mile to a small fall, and in this 
channel the water was nearly three feet in depth. 
In the center of the stream a rod or so below 
the fall was a school of fifty or seventy-five 
large trout, with heads up stream, and motion¬ 
less, except for the slight waving of the fins 
necessary to keep the place of each trout in the 
ranks. 
After feasting the eyes I made a cast of my 
hitherto most successful flies above the school, 
but it was seemingly unnoticed, nor could I 
awake any interest with any fly that I possessed 
or even imagine that it aroused the least bit of 
curiosity in any member of the school. Find¬ 
ing the flies useless we hunted bugs and crickets 
and butterflies, but could find nothing that a 
single trout would even notice and had to re¬ 
turn home defeated. How we worked that after¬ 
noon digging angle worms out of the ground, 
and sawyers out of decaying logs, sure tint the 
next day would bring us success, but it also 
proved a failure as well as the day after it, and 
although we waded down the stream to discolor 
the water, not a bite could we get. In our des¬ 
peration, after the water had cleared, we stood 
out openly on the bank of the stream, but no 
attention was paid to us, and then I did not 
much blame my friend for saying. “If I had a 
wire snare and could ketch even one with it I'd 
do it even if it is against the law.” 
On the fourth morning my friend said he was 
ready to quit, for he had tried for three years 
to get one of those big trout and had never 
caught one and was going to give it up, so I 
went alone and when I was near the bottom 
began fishing in the small pools of the stream 
as I passed them, with good success, catching 
trout from seven to ten inches in length. In 
the last pool above the fall I caught a small 
trout not quite five inches long, and for an ex¬ 
periment took off my end fly and put on a No. 
2 hook, and hooking the small trout below the 
back fin, walked out in plain sight upon the 
bank until opposite the school of trout, when 
I made a cast, dropping the hook with trout 
bait just at the upper end of the school. As 
the small trout struck the water it seemed as 
if every trout made a charge for it, and one was 
hooked, and with * a swing of the light hickory 
pole that I had substituted for my jointed bam¬ 
boo rod, I landed him safely upon the bank and 
returned the bait, catching another with it, and 
then with bait from my creel of small trout con¬ 
tinued until I had eight, one apiece for each 
member of the family and self, and then I ceased 
work and closely examined my catch, as fine a 
string of trout from 18 to 21 inches long as ever 
man saw. 
Going above the fall I emptied my creel of 
small trout into the stream, the live ones ascend¬ 
ing it, and the dead ones carried by the current 
down to the cannibals, who quickly buried the 
dead, and then I packed my “lunkers” in birch 
leaves, dampened, and hurried homeward, where 
I placed my eight prizes in the pine trough fed 
by the spring, before I called my friends tO' see 
the catch and to astonish them. 
The following morning my friend and I went 
fishing again along the stream near its springs 
and caught several small trout which we carried 
alive in a pail to the bottom to meet with the 
same success that had befallen me the day be¬ 
fore. Limiting the number caught to- eight per 
day we never seemed to lessen the numbers of 
the school, as he expressed it, “Whenever we take 
out a mess another one comes up out of the deep 
waters of Pine Creek,” and so it proved all that 
season of my last year in Pennsylvania. 
Why those large trout gathered in that run’s 
waters and would take no bait but smaller fish 
of their own kind, and why they paid no atten¬ 
tion to our presence upon the banks of the stream 
are mysteries that I have never been able to 
fathom, and so I give the incidents of those can¬ 
nibal trout to my brothers of Forest and Stream. 
A Roving Sportsman. 
Standard Tournament Weights. 
The quarter- and half-ounce weights 
adopted by the National Association of Scien¬ 
tific Angling Clubs have been issued to the 
affiliated clubs, and are now being used by 
them in practice and club casting. The illus¬ 
tration given herewith shows the new weights 
and the old ones, so that they may be com¬ 
pared by anglers who have not as yet seen the 
new ones. 
The material from which the new bait-cast¬ 
ing weights are made is aluminum. They were 
cast in one piece, the slight roughness re¬ 
moved by filing and the eye reamed out 
smooth. The makers guaranteed them not to 
vary more than five grains over or under 
weight, and those we have tested balance the 
scales nicely at a quarter and a half ounce 
respectively. We have also tried them for dis- 
1 
