FOREST AND STREAM 
21 
Taking the Whitefish Through the Ice in Central New York. 
hook and line astute Cooperstown anglers 
guarded the technical details jealously, 
so for years Cooperstown waxed import¬ 
ant in the prestige of being about the only 
place in the world where whitefishing was 
enjoyed as a sport and recreation, as well 
as being the home town of one of the 
giants of American literature. At least 
if they prefer to deny that they guarded 
their secret jealously, it is positively safe 
to assert that it never became public prop¬ 
erty, to the detriment of fishermen living 
in the United States and Canada. 
Except for one or two species found in 
the Rocky Mountain regions which rise 
to the fly and take bait during the spring 
and summer, the fish have none of the 
surging voraciousness of the recognized 
game fish, but there is an element of 
uncertainty and a dash of novelty in catch¬ 
ing them which amply compensates the 
angler, although he will never regret the 
effort when they come to the pan. 
Nearly all of the whitefish have a mouth 
of extreme tenderness devoid of teeth, 
hence they do not literally bite but take 
their food, which is chiefly composed of 
small Crustacea and shellfish of the bot¬ 
tom, together with such minnows as they 
are able to capture, and mull it over until 
swallowed. Naturally the bite of the 
fish is extremely delicate, like a barely 
perceptible nibble and so specially ar¬ 
ranged tackle is required for taking them. 
The Cooperstown whitefish rig is any¬ 
thing but a thing of beauty but it fills 
the frying pan—which is more to the point. 
It consists of an ordinary line of about 
ten pounds breaking strength. This is 
tied to a loop i% inches long, the ends 
of which are in turn fastened to a thin 
oblong sinker about one by one-half inches 
in size, through which a small hole has 
been drilled just above the bottom. The 
ends of double snell hooks, about No. io, 
are inserted in the holes on each end of 
the sinker and are securely fastened with 
wooden plugs. The snells are then wound 
with very fine copper or brass wire for 
about two-thirds of their length and so 
adjusted that the hooks remain upright. 
About two feet above the loop holding 
the sinker a rubber band one-quarter of 
an inch by six, or a small coil spring is 
used, which serves to impart the slightest 
movement of the hand and keep the bait 
in gentle motion. A small piece of fish 
or little minnow is then attached and the 
rig is ready. As soon as the least indica¬ 
tion of a bite is felt the crafty fisherman 
strikes upward, firmly, but not too hard, 
and proceeds to haul in his catch. The 
least slackening of the line will allow the 
fish to disgorge the hook, while rough 
handling will tear it from its small and 
tender mouth. There is little struggle or 
fighting but other factors give uncertainty 
enough to satisfy almost any angler. The 
tender mouth makes a landing net im¬ 
perative, and even with this precaution 
some are sure to be lost. 
A NY small boy can construct a Coop¬ 
erstown whitefish rig. It is as easy 
as falling in love with a pretty 
school teacher at the age of ten, but the 
rig alone will not produce many white- 
fish, no matter how skilfully handled, 
unless one has phenomenal luck. Unfor¬ 
tunately most of us have little more than 
a bowing acquaintance with the fickle jade 
when it comes to fishing and playing 
draw poker, so we must play the game 
according to established rules and take 
what providence has in store for us in 
the shape of good luck or bad. 
The experienced whitefish angler elimi¬ 
nates luck in so far as he can. He long 
ago discovered that without the whitefish 
rig he cannot catch them and although in 
possession of the rig he can place no de¬ 
pendence on luck, so when he wants the 
fish he resorts to a little judicious adver¬ 
tising. Why shouldn’t he? It’s the all- 
powerful force of the age. Any good 
business man will tell you that it is the 
greatest instrument ever devised by man 
for gathering shekels or catching suckers. 
The whitefish angler knows this to be true 
and ,is a firm believer in advertising. He 
recognizes its value to himself. So what 
does he do? Why, he goes to the fish 
market and buys a few pounds of heads 
and tails, or catches a few fish that are 
equally worthless as an article of diet, puts 
them through his wife’s food chopper, 
throws it into the kitchen sink for her to 
wash and hurries off to the lake with his 
minced fish. Selecting a likely locality he 
anchors a buoy to mark the place and 
forthwith proceeds to distribute generous 
free samples of what he has to offer in 
the shape of food, the same as the biscuit 
bakers and breakfast food makers. 
He knows to a certainty that once his 
advertising is discovered and sampled by 
a school of whitefish that they will hang 
around like a lot of people waiting for a 
circus parade, so he returns to the village 
and sitS on the hotel porch until bed-time 
and goes fishing in the morning. 
Nor does he select his fishing grounds 
by guess and by golly. He knows that 
whitefish live habitually in deep water, 
coming out into the shallow reaches to 
spawn, which occurs from late October 
until the middle of December, depending 
somewhat on the character of the lake and 
climatic conditions. Besides the regular 
migrations from deep water to the 
spawning grounds there appear to be other 
rather definite movements both in the 
spring and in the fall, particularly in the 
Great Lakes, which largely increase the 
area of distribution. The spring move¬ 
ment towards shallow water commences in 
the Great Lakes about the second week in 
April, the fish remaining from four to six 
weeks, when they return to deep water. 
The fall movement, which is actuated by 
the breeding instinct, leads them to begin 
to seek shallow water on a small scale in 
September, but does not become generally 
pronounced until October, when spawning 
begins. Whether these movements, except 
that of the spawning season, occur to any 
appreciable extent in the smaller lakes is 
not generally known, except possibly to gill 
netters and a few local fishermen. 
Except for a short ‘space of time when 
the lakes are undergoing certain changes, 
generally referred to as “working,” white- 
fish can be taken with bait throughout 
the year. 
One of the popular winter pastimes at 
Cooperstown is fishing through the ice for 
“Otsego Bass.” As soon as Otsego Lake 
freezes over sufficiently the fishermen 
move their shanties, which, by the way, 
resemble anything and everything from a 
good sized drygoods box to a smoke house 
equipped with windows and a base burner, 
out on the ice, where almost any day you 
can find fishermen making good catches. 
For years people who live in the vi¬ 
cinity of good whitefish fishing have sworn 
by the nine Gods of the Ancients that 
they could not be induced to bite. The 
present generation and their fathers and 
grandfathers before them have made re¬ 
peated attempts to take them with rod 
and line, but nothing has resulted but dis¬ 
appointment, which is largely responsible 
for the general belief that whitefish can¬ 
not be caught except with a gill-net, a 
stick of dynamite or a cargo of lime. 
However, wherever the Cooperstown white- 
fish rig and chumming method have been 
employed they have always proved their 
merits regardless of any difference in 
species, which seems to be more of a 
physical nature rather than any difference 
in habits. 
The whitefish family are the most widely 
distributed in America and now that a 
dollar will hardly buy much more T-bone 
steak than the cat can eat it behooves 
anglers to make the acquaintance of the 
Cooperstown whitefish rig and swat the 
high cost of living as often as they can. 
It’s dangerous to eat too much red meat 
anyway. It produces uric acid, and uric 
acid produces rheumatism, and rheuma¬ 
tism produces pain, and pain produces the 
doctor, so it is a dog-gone sight cheaper. 
