382 
[March 7, 1908. 
There is a good deal of complaint of viola¬ 
tion of the fish laws, especially in regard to the 
spearing of steelhead in the spawning beds near 
the headwaters of Paper Mill Creek and other 
streams in the vicinity. More large fish are 
probably taken by one man in a single night in 
this manner than were caught with hook and 
line during the entire season. 
Some of the anglers are putting in a little 
time in search of striped bass, which are not 
protected in California, and are consequently 
becoming very scarce. A few years ago one 
might be sure of a fair catch of striped bass in 
some of the San Francisco Bay waters, and 
many counted them equal to salmon or trout 
as game fish. Now, however, the bass are not 
here. The net fishers have got in their deadly 
work and the catching of bass in the breeding 
season by the professionals during the past 
five or six years has almost entirely eliminated 
them as a factor in the angler’s sport. One 
local sportsman says, “If a bass is taken nowa¬ 
days by an angler, the news is heralded all over 
town where anglers are wont to congregate, 
and a rush is made for the waters by astonished 
rod wielders. Six years hence, provided a stop 
is not put to the killing of breeding fish in the 
very near future, bass will have gone the way of 
the sturgeon, which were so plentiful years ago 
as to be considered a nuisance. There is at 
present a law which prevents the taking of stur¬ 
geon at any time of the year, and I do not hesi¬ 
tate to predict that within the next six years a 
similar law will be placed on striped bass, which 
fish are fast disappearing from our waters.” 
The San Francisco Fly-casting Club is com¬ 
pleting its arrangements for a series of fly-cast¬ 
ing events at Stow Lake this summer. Special 
inducements will be offered this year to gather 
in a large force during special contests. The club 
expects to have its first meeting at the lake early 
in March. 
Owing to the rapid decrease of water in Lake 
Tahoe it is thought that the Truckee River will, 
■in consequence, be exceedingly low this summer 
and that the fishing will be better than ever. Dur¬ 
ing November the lake level dropped six feet. 
Sportsmen of Reno, Nev., have started a sub¬ 
scription to raise a sum sufficient to place a fish 
ladder at Rerby, in the Truckee River. 
Edwin L. Hedderly. 
Salmon in Fresh Water. 
Philadelphia, Feb. 28. —Editor Forest and 
Stream: It is not with the view of stirring up 
the thread-bare subject of “Do salmon (Atlantic) 
feed in fresh water?” that this paper has been 
written, but simply as confirmatory evidence of 
work already done, from the sportsman’s point 
of view; that is, individual instances where sal¬ 
mon have been seen to take flies, where flies, 
minnows, worms, etc., have been found in the 
stomachs of fish caught in rivers. No effort has 
been made to obtain dataalmost any salmon 
fisher of experience can recall one or two such 
instances, and the books on angling and fishing 
literature in general shows many such cases. 
From the same viewpoint it will be remem¬ 
bered the numerous methods of fishing for sal¬ 
mon that are in vogue throughout England, Ire¬ 
land, Scotland, Norway, Iceland and Lapland. In 
the majority of these countries the prawn is 
considered the most deadly of all baits, and this 
view is confirmed by such an authority as Major 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
Treherne, worms, minnows and even the spoon 
are all well recognized baits. 
The salmon in this country differ in no respect 
from the fish of the British Isles. I know of one 
instance where about forty out of a total catch 
of sixty fish were credited to the prawn in a 
Newfoundland river, showing that the fish will 
take this bait as freely on this as on the other 
side of the Atlantic. It was with the view of ap¬ 
proaching this subject from another aspect that 
the following work was done. 
Physiology and common sense teach us that if 
an organ is not used it tends more or less to 
undergo retrograde changes and atrophy. It 
occurred to me that a microscopic study of the 
intestinal tract, especially the stomach and of 
the gall bladder, which in the normal state is a 
receptacle for the bile before it is mixed with the 
contents of the intestines to aid the digestive 
processes, might go far to settle this much dis¬ 
cussed subject. For this purpose I took with me 
on my fishing trip a bottle of formalin to be 
used as a preservative or as pathologists call it, 
a fixing solution, and thirty specimens were pre¬ 
served. These were divided into three groups. 
Group one consisted of ten fish, all fresh run, 
with bright silvery scales, sharp teeth and often 
showing sea lice; I judge that none of these fish 
had been in the river more than a week. Group 
two, ten fish which were darker in color and 
which had probably been in the river from one 
to two weeks; and group three, which consisted 
of dark fish which were more or less closely ap¬ 
proaching the spawning period, and which 
showed the spawn and milt much further ad¬ 
vanced than in either of the other groups. 
The fish constituting these three groups were 
very carefully selected, my thought being that 
if atrophy did occur it would be but slightly or 
not at all present in group one, slightly advanced 
in group two, and well marked in group three 
A careful histological study of these specimens 
was made and the above suppositions entirely 
confirmed. 
Since having done this work, I find, as is often 
the case With work which one hopes will be 
original, that the work is little more than con¬ 
firmatory of the work done by W. Noel Paton 
and others, published by the Fishery Board for 
Scotland (Report of Investigations on the Life 
History of the Salmon, 1898) and of the writ¬ 
ings of W. K. Barton. I may add that some 
years ago I saw a paper, the reference to which 
I have mislaid, in which the author claimed that 
salmon in fresh water suffered from a desqua¬ 
mative form of intestinal catarrh, an intestinal 
disease, which was the cause for their lack of 
feeding in fresh water. In none of my speci¬ 
mens was there the slightest trace of disease. 
The only changes apparent were evidently 
physiological. Silver Mitchel. 
Fishing in Connecticut. 
Deep River, Conn,, Feb. 22. — Editor Forest 
and Stream: Ice fishing has taken a particu¬ 
larly strong hold upon fishermen of this section, 
and a number have been trying their luck. 
Rogers’ Pond is an especially favorable water 
for pickerel, having a sandy bottom thickly 
weeded with lily, volvox and similar acquatic 
plants which are so necessary for the happy life 
of the pickerel and yellow perch. Bait is very 
plentiful this year and shiners or minnows are 
easily caught with no more trouble than is re¬ 
quired to chop a foot hole in fifteen inches of 
ice. Although several fine strings have been 
lately taken through the ice at Rogers’ Pond, 
the largest was a catch of thirty-nine perch 
weighing twenty-eight pounds. A pickerel 
weighing three and three-quarter pounds has 
also been caught in Rogers, and so far as I 
know this fish is the largest caught in local 
ponds. 
Up to date little, if any, fishing has been done 
in the Connecticut River which, owing to the 
mild weather, has only been solid for a few 
days at a time. If the present cold snap lasts, 
local fishermen will no doubt be anxious to drop 
a line in the favorite pickerel haunts of'Seldens 
and Hamburg coves. 
Fishing at Lake Pocotopaug has not been as 
good as usual this year, and as this water is a 
favorite with many, much disappointment is felt 
among the angling brotherhood. The excep¬ 
tionally heavy rainfall of the season is no doubt 
the direct cause of the poor fishing, the lake 
being high, and live bait abundant. Messrs. 
Buckland and Day brought in a good string of 
fifteen pickerel last week, but no large fish were 
taken. Up to date the largest pickerel of the 
year was caught by Dr. Carpenter, who in com¬ 
pany with two angling friends, caught a string 
of nineteen. The prize fish weighed four pounds, 
which is a heavy fish for a pond pickerel. 
The unprecedented low tides, which followed 
in the wake of the recent zero weather, de¬ 
stroyed many thousands of eels as they lay dor¬ 
mant in the mud of the flats which were bared 
by the tide along the sound. The attention of 
two fishermen-was first attracted by a large flock 
of gulls which hovered over the shoal water of 
the flats, and at intervals the birds would swoop 
down and pick up something, which upon inves¬ 
tigation proved to be dead eels. 
The yearly decrease in the catch of smelts in 
the Saugatuck River has attracted considerable 
attention. For many years Westport smelt have 
enjoyed a reputation of being the most tooth¬ 
some of any fish caught in Connecticut, and "the 
decrease in the catch has caused real alarm, 
and the prospect that in a few years the famous 
Westport smelt will be a matter of history, has 
called attention to the necessity of adopting 
some plan for their preservation. The fact that 
the law has been violated with impunity for 
many years has now been called to the atten¬ 
tion of the authorities and in the future it will 
be necessary to obtain a permit from the Fish 
and Game Commissioners before any seining is 
done in the river. 
The commissioners report that the work of 
the trout .hatchery at Windsor Locks is likely to 
be especially successful this year. The little 
trout are numerous and the commissioners be¬ 
lieve that the natural hatch this year will be bet¬ 
ter than for several years past. The fact that the 
brooks have been well filled by the warm rains, is 
generally accepted as a good sign that the out¬ 
look for trout fishing is especially favorable for 
the fisherman. 
Quail have wintered well, and favorable re¬ 
ports throughout the State lead one to believe 
that next fall will be a good one for game. 
C. S. Taylor. 
The Forest and Stream may be obtained from 
any newsdealer on order. Ask your dealer to 
supply you regularly. 
