June ao, 1908.] 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
981 
Some Adirondack Gossip. 
Little Fau.s, N. Y., June 1.— Editor Forest 
and Stream: Fishing this spring has not been 
productive of anything more than tales of en¬ 
durance against cold and storm. The first day 
found snow in the woods and snow in the air. 
Some hardy fishermen went out, but high 
streams and inclement weather spoiled every¬ 
thing but the communing with nature, and in 
this case the communications went straight to 
the marrow, so penetrating was the message 
brought by the north winds. Fly-fishing was 
out of question on the streams, but those who 
sank their hooks to the bottoms of pools and 
at the mouths of coves along the streams 
caught an occasional fish. Messes have been 
small, and the trout have averaged but little 
over the legal limit, up the West Canada in 
northern Herkimer county. 
On most of the few “good" days, fishing has 
been spoiled by the log drivers. On the upper 
West Canada, both branches, there are flood 
dams which are opened to run the pulp logs to 
the Hinckley booms. The result is, early fishing 
is repeatedly spoiled by three or four foot rises 
of water. Perhaps nothing is quite so aggravat¬ 
ing as to find the trout jumping in the morning, 
and then have a flood come roaring down, bear¬ 
ing bark and leaf debris, thickening the rifts 
and driving the wader to the nearest bank, pell- 
mell, to save himself from an involuntary swim. 
Sometimes, however, the trout begin to jump 
on the first impulse of the coming flood. For 
half an hour the trout come up on all sides, 
leaping at one’s flies. I remember once seeing 
the trout coming that way on Hess rifts near 
Northwood. The stones on both creek banks 
and above the surface on rocks in mid stream 
were covered with pale little flies. The flood 
caught them, and they filled the water, the 
eddies of which sucked them down, and the 
tumbling disheveled their trim forms. I saw 
more trout, large and small, in the half hour 
that followed than I ever saw in a half day be¬ 
fore or since. Big fellows turned up their 
salmon sides, and little ones skipped out of the 
water in all pools. I caught a few by twitching 
my flies across the surface—a grizzly-king and 
a yellow-sallie proving the best flies. The leap¬ 
ing continued for about half an hour, and then 
it stopped as suddenly as it began. Frequently, 
the trout have these spells of jumping—I have 
seen them when not a fly would be detected on 
the water or above it. Again a flight of midges 
drifting up stream will keep the fish jumping 
while the flight passes. A most tantalizing ex¬ 
perience is to be in the midst of one of these 
flights, see the trout leaping on all sides and not 
have a fly that will attract a fish to the hooks. 
Some fishermen carry colored threads, some 
different kinds of feathers and an assortment of 
fly hooks (No. 6 to 8), and gut, in order to tie 
up a fly or two on emergency. The most suc¬ 
cessful fly I ever had was made on such an oc¬ 
casion. It was tied on a No. 7 hook, awkwardly . 
enough. The body consisted of a lemon yellow 
wool yarn and the wings of blue heron wing 
feathers. The body was almost a quarter of an 
inch in diameter, and the wings stood straight 
up stiffly. I caught more than twenty trout on 
this stream-side made fly. It was a coarse “blue 
spinner,” as the woodsmen call an early spring 
water-riding fly. If one is going into the woods 
camping, a little fly-tying kit is most valuable, 
as has been pointed out in Forest and Stream 
from time to time. The shoemaker’s wax should 
be carried in a fold of leather—a circle, folded 
over. 
Once in a while a fisherman needs midges— 
flies the size of one’s little finger nail. It re¬ 
quires most delicate manipulation to land a 
trout on a tiny hook, but it is done. 
There is a little trick on rift fishing which I 
do not remember seeing described. The habit 
of fishermen is to fish down stream as one 
wades with the current. Side casts are made, 
of course, but usually casts are made slovenly 
down the current. A market fisherman who 
was catching fish when I was not, though using 
the same flies, told me the difference. He said, 
“Don't fish down stream—it wastes time. Fish 
across stream, and let your flies drift down, 
dancing on the water. Flies never go up 
stream when they are on the water surface—the 
current carries them down stream. They don’t 
go diagonally up stream, either. They float 
down the current, or diagonally down the 
current.” 
I tried the with-the-current casting, and the 
trout came much more freely. Of course, this 
was on a well-fished stream, but it makes a 
difference on any stream, for the reason that 
trout are decidedly notional as to what flies they 
take. I think that the actions of the insects on 
the water have almost as much to do with trout 
taking them as their colors or shapes—certainly 
as much as their shapes. 
The best rift fishing is had before June 20, 
and there are only about six or eight days when 
conditions are best. These days are scattered 
from early May to middle June. Rarely, if 
ever, do two good days come in succession. 
Raymond S. Spears 
Brown Trout. 
Berlin, N. Y., June 10. —Editor Forest and 
Stream: Low water has driven the trout into 
the deep holes and the fishermen at Petersburg, 
five miles north of here, have been capturing 
some very large fish. One was taken last week 
which weighed but one ounce less than four 
pounds. On Saturday I rode up there on my 
wheel. At that point the Little Hoosac is broad 
and quite shallow, and pools of any depth are 
few and far between. At the first one I threw 
in my line below an old stump, and as the bait 
touched the water a large trout dashed out of 
the shadow and took it. The water was very 
clear and I could see him circling around. 
I have found that the easiest way to land half- 
pound trout is to “yank” them out as you would 
frost fish. I yanked; my snell parted as though 
it was a cotton thread, and I did not even turn 
the fish in the water. I sometimes talk to my¬ 
self, and the man who held the rod got a bless¬ 
ing. He was told that having caught bass in 
the Oswego River years before, he should have 
known something about large game fish. Un¬ 
less someone gets up earlier than I, however, 
that trout will come to Berlin. 
On my way home I stopped to see a friend, 
but only found his eldest son, a boy of thirteen. 
He was dragging a yearling Plymouth Rock 
rooster toward the back of the barn. Said he, 
“If want to see the feathers fly, come on.” 
There was an old box back of the barn and 
he opened a door in it, pushed the rooster in 
and then rushed around to the front. I looked 
in through the slats and saw a big hen hawk 
pull off the fowl’s head and begin his dinner, 
while the boy danced around in great glee. 
“That makes six he’s et, and Dad can’t gues; 
what’s ketching ’em.” 
I was a traitor and told Dad, and the hawk 
died. A. 
Fishing in California. 
San Francisco, Cal., June 6 .—Editor Forest 
and Stream: Reports from almost every part 
of California indicate that the new trout law 
has acted in a most beneficial manner this sea¬ 
son, and the commissioners are highly elated 
over its success. The postponement of the open¬ 
ing of the season from March 1 till April 1 has 
given the young trout another month’s growth 
in size and experience and they are both larger 
and gamier. Thus the trout fishing has become 
more sportsmanlike. From the present outlook 
this will be one of the most successful seasons 
for trout fishing which the State has seen for 
years. The work of the fish commissioners and 
the hatcheries is now beginning to bear fruit 
for the angler, and there is no reason why the 
conditions should not continue to improve. The 
commission has a new car nearing completion 
at the shops in Sacramento, and the number of 
trout to be distributed this year is double that 
of 1907. 
The season for black bass opened on June r. 
Reports from most of the bass streams say that 
bass are both plentiful and large. Around Stock- 
ton the fishing has been especially good. Bass 
on the Feather River are numerous and are 
biting readily. Live and artificial minnows are 
giving the best results in all quarters. 
The anglers on the Truckee River are having 
a new annoyance to contend with in the shape 
of the waste oil from the railroad roundhouse 
running into the river and covering the water 
for miles down the stream with an oily coat. 
When a cast is made the fisherman’s fly comes 
out a shiny black, and all of them look alike 
after the first cast. Efforts are being made to 
have the matter remedied, as the fishing is now 
practically ruined. 
The largest trout ever caught in Lake Tahoe 
was landed on May 22 by Mr. Nelson at Glen- 
brook. It weighed 31% pounds. The fish was 
hooked early in the morning and it was not until 
after 10 o’clock that Nelson had tired out and 
landed it. It will be mounted in Carson City 
for exhibition. The largest trout caught in 
Tahoe previous to this one weighed 29^4 pound; 
and was mounted and sent to President Grant 
during his first term in office. 
The Sonoma and Lake County fishermen are 
getting some good strings of trout. W. P. 
Kelley, of Healdsburg, landed a five-pound trout 
which measured twenty-five inches in Dry 
Creek. 
Deputy Fish Commissioner Moore, of Santa 
Cruz county, advises anglers to kill all water- 
snakes that they can, for they are each eating 
an average of ten young trout daily. 
There came reports from Sonoma that dead 
fish have been found in the rivers and creeks 
in that vicinity, and it is thought that some 
unscrupulous persons have been dynamiting the 
streams. A. P. B. 
