SEPTEMBER, 1917 
FOREST AND STREA M 
411 
THE CHINOOK SALMON AT SUNAPEE 
THE FORMS NATURE HAS ADAPTED TO A 
SPECIFIC ENVIRONMENT CANNOT BE IMPROVED 
By DR. JOHN D. QUACKENBOS 
T HE so-called good fishing for imma¬ 
ture Chinook salmon at Lake Suna- 
pee, which every tyro indulged in 
five years ago and which netted the in- 
vererate sit-stillers over deep water from 
four thousand to five thousand quinnats 
every year—has come to an end. The vac¬ 
uous hope that a dozen years in New 
Hampshire waters would change the in¬ 
stincts crystallized through a hundred mill¬ 
ennia of evolution and empower these Pa¬ 
cific salmon to cast their spawn without 
fatal consequences, has been dissipated. 
They go on dying, as they have done since 
the Devonian age. Death is the penalty of 
their nuptial acts, and even the divine Sun- 
apee has proved impotent to change this 
natural law and keep the saprolegnia ferox 
from their silvery sides at their first ac¬ 
couchement. 
In the autumn, they have been discovered 
in companies of hundreds, covered with 
fungus and moribund, as in their western 
runways. So there has been no spring 
salmon fishing this season. It is claimed 
that a Chinook is occasionally taken by 
white trout fishers, and a week ago a nine- 
pounder was brought to basket in the cove 
opposite the Granliden—but even this is a 
baby in the ranks of fish that run from 
25 to 75 pounds in their native rivers. 
Most of the onchorhynchus type caught 
here have varied in weight from three to 
five pounds, and from the viewpoint of the 
epicure are not fit to eat. They are as 
tasteless and flavorless as bob veal or ten- 
day squab. And yet there are perverted 
belly-worshippers who fish for them so 
undesistingly that seventy baby salmon a 
season have been counted to a man in a 
number of gluttonous strings.» He who 
has tasted this fish royal fresh from the 
Alaskan inlets may be pardoned for his 
inability to raise these cradle-robbers to 
the level of his gastronomic contempt. 
The bass at Sunapee have not yet com¬ 
pleted their spawning operations. 
At the present writing, protection is re¬ 
moved from bass in New Hampshire on 
July ist. On July 5th this year, I caught 
four bass, full of roe and of ropy flesh. 
I shall not try again until micropterus has 
had a chance to enjoy unmolested his con¬ 
nubial rites. For years it was legal to fly 
black bass off the spawning beds as early 
as June 9th, and this unsportsmanlike 
practice has wrought havoc in the schools 
of our most popular game-fish, there being 
hardly one small-mouthed black bass in the 
lake to-day where twenty-five years ago 
there were a hundred. If the water ever 
warms, a few bass may be expected to re¬ 
spond to deftly offered lures. 
The land-locked salmon have become as 
rare as the eggs of the great auk. In auld 
lang syne, I have stood on my sand-beach 
with the late Commissioner E. B. Hodge, 
when, in their eagerness to ascend Pike 
Brook, land-locked salmon strung so fast 
in the state nets from which they were 
taken to collect their eggs and milt for 
artificial propogation, we had to take the 
nets in for lack of accommodations for 
the rush of fish. This sounds like a fairy 
tale, but it is literally true. Colonel Hodge 
hatched land-locked salmon here by the 
ten-thousand, reared them in the brooks, 
and by the terror he inspired among poach¬ 
ers kept the growing fish from the ma¬ 
rauder’s worm. He made land-locked 
salmon fishing here phenomenally remuner¬ 
ative, and lived to see these exponents of 
his industry attain a weight not unfre- 
quently of ten and twelve pounds, and in 
one instance of nineteen pounds. Adieu 
those halcyon days. 
It is interesting to note that all the ex- 
periments that have been made at Sunapee 
with foreign Salmonidae during the last 
thirty-five years have ultimately come to 
naught. In the fall of 1883, I leased land 
for a hatchery building to a poorly 
equipped fish commission with an anaemic 
exchequer, and operations began in an ex¬ 
ceedingly humble way for the conserva¬ 
tion of the large brook trout that were 
known to exist in the lake. The presence 
of the aureolus or Alpine charr was un¬ 
suspected. Now, whereas attempts to in¬ 
troduce into our waters the most popular 
representatives of the salmon family have 
failed, all efforts to increase the number 
of these two native forms, which were 
practically extinct in 1883, have met with 
signal success. 
A MONG the varieties of alien fish 
that have been faithfully tried at 
Sunapee, the land-locked salmon 
(ouananiche ) stands facile princeps, and 
for ten years had a big run. It was ac¬ 
climated in my stream where tens of thou¬ 
sands of fry were planted, and where, 
when the lake was high enough, adult fish 
found their way in the spawning season. I 
remember corralling one morning, fully a 
quarter mile from the lake, a pair weigh¬ 
ing eight pounds each, which I sent to the 
late Dr. Farleton Bean for exhibition in 
the New York Aquarium where they sur¬ 
vived until the following summer. With¬ 
out explanation or apology, this noble fish 
has gradually retired. 
Substantial plants of rainbow trout have 
never been heard from. The same holds 
true of the white fish ( coregonus clypeci- 
formis), hundreds of thousands of which 
were distributed in these waters—of the 
brown trout which I planted under protest 
in Chandler Brook, only one specimen of 
which has ever been taken in the lake—of 
the Loch Leven trout, the gamest of them 
all, which I personally studied in Scotland 
in 1886, and of which I brought 30,000 
eyed ova to Holderness, New Hampshire, 
hatched them there, through the politeness 
of Colonel Hodge, and succeeded in liber¬ 
ating 20,000 of them as fry in my tribu¬ 
tary stream. Only one Loch Leven trout 
is known to have been caught. 
The lesson of all this is significant 
enough. It is impossible to improve upon 
the forms nature has adapted to a specific 
environment. There is no fish form su¬ 
perior to our brook trout. There is no 
game bird a-wing that flies closer to our 
heart than the ruffed grouse of our north¬ 
ern thickets. With such a peerless bird 
drumming at our very kitchen doors, un¬ 
paragoned in its artifices to evade the dex¬ 
terous aim, unmatched in the erethism of 
joy with which its downpitch in the forest 
aisle thrills the fortunate marksman, the 
darling of the hunter’s chivalry and song— 
is it judicious to lavish on exotic feath¬ 
ered game the love and interest and care 
that we owe to this nonpareil alone among 
the beau ideals of our avifauna? 
The lesson I read in a lifetime of ob¬ 
servation is: Adhere to the native fish and 
game forms. Make laws consistent with 
their breeding habits. Study their disease, 
destroy their enemies, improve and extend 
their normal habitats, and restrain by for¬ 
midable penalties selfish and improvident 
man, the prime disturber of natural con¬ 
ditions. 
I am a stickler for the conservation of 
our incomparable native game birds and 
fish fauna; and I believe that the abund¬ 
ance of these creatures encountered by 
early explorers and colonists may be 
measurably restored. 
PAIRED FLIES SHOULD 
“TAPER” LIKE THE LINE 
Editor Forest and Stream: 
I desire to call the attention of all 
thoughtful anglers to one particularly 
among the many useful and valuable hints 
contained in Mr. Holden’s charming series 
of trout articles, just ended. 
He says: “The cast alight better with 
the smaller fly for point, when using more 
than one fly.” 
It is possible many readers might over¬ 
look such a valuable suggestion, and those 
who use wet flies (two or more) should 
always have the smallest and most easily 
seen fly at the end of the cast. This is 
sound reason; because a big end fly (espe¬ 
cially on a finely tapered leader) wabbles 
the two upper and smaller flies to prevent 
a feathery cast. ’Tis true, end flies are 
most often taken by fish, and we are prone 
to attach favorite flies at the end irrespec¬ 
tive of size and color. 
I fish wet a good deal, because my best 
pools (which contain bigger trout) are all 
rushing rough water, only possible to be 
fished with the flow down stream; and 
when the flies are properly graded as to 
size they swim in the water with much 
more natural effect and smoothness. Also 
they go through the air better in casting. 
Wet fishing requires just as much nicety 
of adjustment as dry fishing. The tapered 
line, fitting into a leader that is tapered, 
to be properly complete should have tapered 
—or graded—flies. Louis Rhead. 
