30 
FOREST AND STREAM 
Let Us Tan Your Hide 
Or mount any game head 
you may have. 
Or sell you an elegant 
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better. 
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tioning what you are interested in. 
THE CROSBY FRISIAN FUR CO. 
Rochester, N. Y. 
Our Expert Casting Line 
Hard Braided, of the Highest Grade of Silk. 
The Strongest Line of its size in the World. 
Used by Mr. Decker in contest with Mr. 
Jamison. Nuf sed. Every Line Warranted. 
SO Yard Spools $1.25. 
Trout Flies 
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doz. 
.24c. 
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,.84c. 
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..96c. 
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$3.50 
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if . -ttt - n—? Steel Fishing Rods 
FLY RODS, 8 or 9)4 feet.$1-00 
BAIT RODS. 5J4, 6J4 or 8 feet. 1.25 
CASTING RODS, 4J4, 5 or 6 feet. 1.50 
BAIT RODS, with Agate Guide and Tip. 2.00 
CASTING RODS, with Agate Guide and 
Tip . 2.50 
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ORIGINAL and GENUINE 
OLDTOWN CANOES 
Introduced and made famous by us 
16 to 19 ft. 
The H. H. KIFFE CO., 523 N B J° ad 0 ™y 
Illustrated Catalogue free on application 
BUILD Sw'n STEEL BOAT 
From Patterns and printed ^ 
instructions. Save 3-8 Cost. 
Work Easy. Material fur- £ 
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F. H. DARROW STEEL BOAT CO., 611 Perry St., Albion, JWich. 
MAKE YOUR OWN LEADERS 
IF YOU CAN GET HOLD OF A GOOD 
SILK WORM THE REST IS EASY 
* 
By Edwin T. Whiffen. 
A S you stood whipping your favorite 
trout brook, was it not provoking to 
have a rise to your cast, only to find 
that a knot in your leader had been the 
lure which tempted the rout? Or did 
you indulge in “cussedness” when the knots 
therein tangled themselves into a more 
than Gordian twine? Did you not, then 
and there, wish for a leader entirely the 
product of a single “wum,” and not the 
aggregation from several, with different 
qualities and shades at every foot? Well, 
here it is at last, fine and strong, any one 
of several tints, and just the thing to use 
on a stream where “everybody knows 
there are trout, but nobody can get any”; 
for the concealment of the connection be¬ 
tween the fly and the line is a most essen¬ 
tial requirement for “a good day.” You 
will need one or more specimens of our 
larger silk worms, cecropia or polyphemus 
(cecropia preferably, as it gives a longer 
and somewhat stronger length of gut), a 
pinch of salt, a few tablespoons of vinegar, 
and as much water. Sometimes you may 
be able, with a little hunting, in late 
August or September, to “catch your 
beast,” but the better plan is to collect a 
fair number of cocoons and raise the 
“animals” yourself. 
They feed on the leaves of various 
trees, maple, plum, wild cherry, etc., and 
attain maturity in about six or eight weeks. 
When they are about ready to spin, watch 
them closely. At this time they are rest¬ 
less and wander about, looking for a suit¬ 
able place to spin. If you look carefully 
you will observe a filament of silk hang¬ 
ing from the mouth. Or, if you are in 
doubt, wait till the spinning actually begins. 
Then prepare your “dope.” Take a third 
of a glass of water and add to it enough 
salt so that when stirred a short time 
some salt remains at the bottom, undis¬ 
solved, a “saturate” solution. Now add 
as much water as you have vinegar, a 
“’fifty-fifty” per cent. A little difference 
one way or the other will do no harm 
but too strong a solution makes the gut 
draw out lumpy and brittle. 
Take your “worm” and tear it across a 
quarter or a third back from the head, 
but not in two. Place the whole “carcass” 
in the pickle and leave it there half or 
three-quarters of an hour. Then take out 
the “remains” and find one end of one of 
the silk sacs; they are translucent, or 
perhaps whitish by this time, and about 
the diameter of grandmother’s steel knit¬ 
ting needle. Pull it out and examine it 
critically. If it draws out elastic and 
firm it is about right; otherwise more dope 
if too soft. 
Now get four pins. Stick one into a 
clapboard of the house on the shady side 
and fasten to it one end of the sac which 
you have carefully pulled out of the worm. 
Tie the other end of the sac to another 
pin and carefully stretch out the sac as 
far as it will go (which will usually be 
from six to nine feet) and stick the pin 
into the side of the house to hold the 
length of gut fairly tight. If the leader 
is too slack some parts will not draw out 
well and, while larger, will be weaker than 
the rest. Treat the other sac similarly 
and let dry three or four days. You will 
generally have a fine, even gut, lusterless 
and “knotless.” 
Some of these leaders will be weak and 
worthless; others will be better than the 
best drawn gut you ever saw; and occa¬ 
sionally you will get a jewel, six feet long 
or more, and strong enough to hold the 
gamy bass. Those, with a light springy 
rod, will be a revelation to you in fly 
casting as, generally speaking, they taper 
nicely and permit the fly to strike before 
any part of the leader touches the water. 
They are of much more durable material 
than the Spanish gut, which soon becomes 
brittle and cracks. Ten years ago I drew 
some cecropia leaders. They tested to 
four pounds without breaking. Two of 
them are still in use and caught trout last 
summer. 
It would require too much space to tell 
how all the various tints may be produced. 
But if you want a color that will suggest 
a stringy root of some water weed the 
pickle itself will generally give that. If 
you wish a hue slightly brown, such as is 
invisible in a roily current, soak your gut 
before it is many days old in strong tea. 
With a leader of this sort in my equip¬ 
ment I once caught in August my ten- 
pound creel full of trout in a brook that 
the local fishermen had given up weeks 
before. 
HOOKS IS HOOKS. 
HEN all is said and done how much 
does the average fisherman know 
about hooks? When I say fisher¬ 
man, I don’t mean the regular dyed-in- 
the-wool fish bug, who can tell the name 
of any hook that was ever made by the 
feel of it, but the average summer vaca¬ 
tion fisherman, who stocks up on fishing 
tackle catalogues a month or so before his 
vacation rolls around and then buys what 
he thinks he needs or rather what a clever 
salesman thinks he needs—which generally 
means a lot of things he doesn’t think he 
ever would use. What does that kind of 
a fisherman, and he numbers in the thou¬ 
sands, know about hooks? 
I was in a tackle store the other day 
when a man strolled into the store and 
said to the salesman that came forward 
to wait on him, “I want some hooks.” 
He was asked what kind of a hook he 
wanted and for the life of him he could not 
tell what kind. He knew what kind of fish 
he wanted to catch, but as to the hook he 
needed he was entirely at sea. As far as 
he was concerned a hook was a hook and 
they evidently all looked alike to him. 
For the benefit of those that are in the 
same class with the above mentioned fisher- 
* 
n 
