208 
FOREST AND STREAM 
THE NEWEST NATIONAL FOREST 
SPORTSMEN’S PLAYGROUND IN THE APALACHIANS WILL BE JEAL¬ 
OUSLY GUARDED TO PRESERVE ITS FISH AND OTHER ATTRACTIONS 
B x DONALD GILLIS 
R ELIGIOUSLY wardened by the late 
George W. Vanderbilt for twenty 
years, until it became a sanctuary for 
trout and game, the 85,000-acre tract of 
mountain woodland purchased from his es¬ 
tate by the national government and now 
designated as Pisgah National Forest, will 
be opened to the anglers of the country 
May 15 under the permit system. 
The United States Forest Service an¬ 
nounces that permits representing 2,000 fish¬ 
ing days will be granted for the 1917 sea¬ 
son, the experiment to determine whether a 
greater or less number of permits will be 
issued in succeeding years. Not more than 
four days’ fishing will be allowed to each 
person and the charge will be $1 per day. 
Women members of the permitees’ family 
pay but half this sum, and no charge is 
made for children under fourteen years of 
ago. One thousand five hundred of the 
fishing days will be apportioned before July, 
1,500 days being reserved from then until 
the close of the season, which will be Sep¬ 
tember 1 for brook (mountain) trout and 
October 1 for rainbow. Applications for 
permits are now being received. 
There is no trout preserve in this coun- 
Looking Glass Falls One of the Scenic Wonders of Pisgah National Forest 
try east of the Rockies open to the public 
which ranks with this superb mountain area. 
It is southwest from Asheville and ten miles 
distant, its mountain chain resembling the 
figure of a gigantic rat when viewed from 
the city. Its elevated table-land, nowhere 
less than 2,400 feet above sea level, is a 
great garden of wooded heights and grassy 
glades, “balds” and balsam clad domes, and 
rocky cliffs caverning bear and wolves, cul¬ 
minating in the peak of Pisgah, 5.757 feet 
above the sea. Altitude and southern lati¬ 
tude combine not only to effect an attrac¬ 
tive climate, but to produce vegetation char¬ 
acteristic of both North and South. Chest¬ 
nut, poplar, spruce, hemlock, hickory, maple, 
walnut, oak and pine climb to mile-high 
heights. 
Rainfall in the forest is more abundant 
than anywhere in this country except on the 
Northern Pacific Coast, and so thousands of 
springs send their cold waters from beds of 
galax and violet,^tangles of snowy flowered 
rhododendron, thickets of azalea and rose- 
petaled kalmia, dogwood flaming white in 
spring and sourwood scarlet in the fall. 
And so the streams run full and fast, and 
some run faster with a crash of white 
water over their boulder beds, flashing in 
the sun spaces, spreading a silver tapestry 
over uptilted rock tables and filling the 
narrow valleys with its uproar. It is a land 
of bright waters, this headwaters of David¬ 
son and Mills rivers. The rivers them¬ 
selves are swift, but not torrential, mostly 
rock bottomed, with some earth floors to 
darken pools for big fish. 
The rainbow trout occupy the main 
streams, the speckled natives having retired 
to the headwaters and such tributaries as 
Looking Glass, which comes with a cres¬ 
cendo of crashing waters and plunges into 
Davidson with a sixty-foot fall. There is 
a fine variety of water and, for that matter, 
a great assortment of game: bear and deer 
—of which it is estimated there are 2,500— 
wild turkey and pheasant abound. But all 
this avails the hunter nothing, because no 
hunting is allowed. It is even unlawful to 
carry a gun in the forest, and no dogs are 
permitted there. 
Big as is the forest, and despite the fact 
that the Forest Service estimates its fishing 
waters (exclusive of sources to be reserved 
for breeding) comprise seventy miles, there 
is to be no place in it for the bait fisherman. 
Nor will the makers of artificial minnows 
and metal lures earn any dividends from 
the forest. The official pronouncement 
reads that fishing is permitted “only with 
unbaited artificial fly hook.” 
Brook trout under six inches and rainbow 
less than eight inches must be restored to 
the stream. The limit is fifteen trout a day 
and angling between 8 o’clock at night and 
5 in the morning is forbidden. 
Most of the fishing will be easily acces¬ 
sible from Asheville. Mills River can be 
reached by automobile in two hours, and 
a light car can go far towards its source. 
