November, 1918 
FOREST AND STREAM 
661 
casting long distances. Some of them 
have even drawn my attention to fish ris- 
ing on the far side of the river, they were 
unable to reach, which I could. 
The fishing is controlled by a club that 
gave an invitation to any wounded officers 
of the overseas forces to fish if they de¬ 
sired ; but of the too officers here at the 
present time, one major and myself are 
the only ones to avail ourselves of the op¬ 
portunity. On the whole I have spent a 
very enjoyable time since I commenced 
fishing, and it has satisfied an ambition I 
have had ever since I came to England to 
have a try at their fishing before I go 
home. After one week I am doing as well 
as the best fisherman on the river. Satur¬ 
day I was top man; so I can say I am do¬ 
ing as well as any, under conditions known 
to them for a lifetime. I would like to 
see if they could come to British Columbia 
and do as well. 
Enough of fishing:—I am still waiting 
for my board, expect it some day this 
week. I shall be here for a week after 
that, and then I do not know what, or 
where, as that depends on the verdict of 
the board. I shall write home just as soon 
as I have had my board and let you know. 
My left arm I am afraid will never be 
right; but on the whole it is of very little 
inconvenience to me as it is and is not 
noticed as I go along. I can do almost 
anything with it, even to row a boat, and 
myself hardly know there is anything the 
matter. The wrist and finger movements 
ire quite perfect, the trouble is the limit 
)f the elbow movement. My arm will not 
straighten nor flex upwards much. There 
s still a certain amount of soreness in the 
Jones, and when this goes away there may 
•till be a certain amount of improvement 
n these movements. A few degrees more 
lexion would be most to be desired. My 
isual good health prevails in all other re¬ 
pels. I trust this is true of you all at 
some. 
Your loving Son. 
datlock Bath, Derby, England. 
THE FRENCHMAN’S CARP 
editor Forest and Stream: 
T. Whiffen’s article on carp in the 
'eptember issue brings to my mind a seven 
ound carp caught in Croton Lake when 
hite perch should have been biting. 
On the light rod it took all of fifteen 
dilutes to bring the fish to net, a^nd during 
lat time that carp lay to like a horse—- 
o rushes, nothing but a steady pull for 
3rtv feet when he would turn and lay to 
irty feet in the other direction, and this 
ithout in all that time, any deviation: 
imply sawed the forty-foot stretch and 
ling always strong. 
That changed my opinion of what a he- 
irp might do. They are supposed to run 
1 fifty and sixty pounds in Croton Lake, 
lough local fishermen say even a hundred 
)unds and bigger. 
In mentioning the fact of such a catch it 
as my good fortune to meet a carp fan, 
ie whose fishing grounds were the ponds 
Staten Island. Jaquereau, in his broken 
iglish, claimed there was no fish equal to 
rp for real sport, and the manner of 
tching was a revelation. If there ever 
was an acme of still fishing) his case was 
proven that carp was that kind, and then 
some. The preparation to fetch them to 
your place of fishing and how they would 
come by such methods, early in the evening, 
and the strike and fight to land a big one of 
twenty or more pounds, all this formed part 
of his very interesting story-telling. His 
style of fishing was by the use of a bamboo 
pole of good length, and one of his stories 
relates how a mighty fish by a sudden lunge 
carried the pole out of his hands. It was 
later seen bobbing up and down in the mid¬ 
dle of the pond and he tells of the battle he 
had in swimming out and fetching and ulti¬ 
mately landing a thirty pound carp. All his 
stories were related in very broken English 
interlarded with French and motions that 
only a Frenchman can produce, especially 
as he lived these battles over again when 
relating them. Jaquereau was well above 
sixty years of age and in our discussions as 
to the various fish we had both caught, he 
never would agree that any other fish came 
up to a big carp for sport. But I would 
often end our discussions by bringing up 
the fact that as a food fish there was abso¬ 
lutely nothing to a carp. But his descrip¬ 
tion of preparing a carp convinced me that 
I was a duffer in culinary preparation of 
"him” carp for “zee” table. 
It became a delight to me to wait this 
moment to land Jaquereau that carp were 
poor eating fish, and after hearing the story 
several times, I tipped off my stenographer 
that, at a given signal, she was to take 
down, verbatim, the manner of preparing 
him for the table, and it still gives me 
genuine pleasure to read that statement 
though it lacks the punctuations and gestic¬ 
ulations of the relator. No fisherman that 
I ever met put his soul into the telling as 
did Jaquereau, and no chef ever carried 
through a “success” in gastronomic prepa¬ 
ration as did Jaquereau. 
“When you catch your carp you take 
sharp knife, cut him in slices. No. sir, you 
cut like that. You put butter on the pan. 
yes, put flour and make it brown, a little 
brown. You take red wine. 
take how much you like, how manv fish you 
got. He is boil in wine. You never make 
onion soup ? Ha! you make cooking for 
fish the same. Not too much, you make 
onion soup, you put onion, parsley, carrot, 
every spree you like. You put everything 
for flavor.Yes, sir, 
you leave that one hour on the stove to 
boil. You take your parsley, carrot, every¬ 
thing you take up. Then you cook, you 
have your soup. Your parsley you take 
out. \ ou put your fish cooking in the wine 
ten to thirteen minutes. Same time when 
your fish is cooking you put on the top of 
stove pan. You get some pieces bread, put 
in, a little butter, five minutes before you 
take up your fish. You take mushrooms, 
put in salt and not more five minutes before 
you take up.You 
take up plank, saucer, something you put 
fish so he don’t fall apart. It makes no 
difference—half hour cook in wine. 
“.A carp, small like that? 
Oh! he is no carp. Small carp no good, 
these small one what you say is no carp. 
I throw him away this kind of carp. 
Oh ! No, it is soft meat, sure he is soft 
meat.” 
Even carp may become a dainty after 
such treatment and my only regret is that I 
never took a try for to catch him and eat 
him with Jaquereau. 
Harry Schxarr, Ossining, N. Y. 
ECHOES FROM “BIG BIRCH” 
1918 CAMP 
Editor Forest and Stream: 
Upon returning from my annual angling 
outing I can report the following, which 
may be of interest to the readers of your 
columns: 
We know that, as a rule, bigger flies will 
catch bigger fish, though not always; and 
very large fish are caught at night on flies 
as large as those ever used for bass or even 
salmon. With such a lure, on the night of 
August 9th, 1918, H. B. Christian caught 
at Bradley’s-rock pool, on the Neversink 
river, a brown trout measuring twenty- 
seven inches in length and weighing well 
over eight pounds. I first heard of this 
gigantic brownie—probably the largest fish 
ever killed with a fly on the Neversink, if 
not indeed the largest on record for the 
river—the following day from Christian 
himself, who sought the shelter of my “Big 
Birch” camp in a' heavy downpour, near 
midnight. And when I was leaving Liberty 
for home, one day later, the catch was con¬ 
firmed by the baggage agent at the railway 
station, who said the fish had been brought 
to Liberty to be mounted; so anglers visit¬ 
ing this neighborhood next Spring can 
doubtless have the rare opportunity of veri¬ 
fying one big-fish story. How would you 
like to read an authentic and complete au¬ 
tobiography of such a trout? 
Angling does not differ from other things 
in life in that there is always something 
more to be learned in connection therewith. 
It would seem to be an anomaly to dry-fly 
fish in the rain; yet the writer had the ex¬ 
perience, at this late season, of fishing the 
sunken fly unsuccessfully under this condi¬ 
tion, while an experienced local fisherman 
alongside of me caught trout after trout on 
the floating fly. “Pop” Yorks will doubtless 
recall the afternoon of the circumstance. 
He used a very fine and long leader, num¬ 
ber 12 flies, and threw them very high in 
the forward-cast, so that the long drop to 
the water wholly by gravity caused them to 
alight so gently that they floated, if not for 
long yet long enough to induce rises. 
Best results on this trip were had from 
the Bee fly, fished wet, and the Yellow 
Dun used'dry; and I consider these two of 
the most reliable flies for late Summer in 
the Catskill region. Over three-fourths of 
all success was due to dry-fly work. Flies 
having red bodies, as Abbey King of Water 
or Red Spinner, also had their advocates; 
and a local favorite was a pattern with 
Royal Coachman body and wood-duck 
wings. 
Geo. Parker Holden, M. D. 
C. L. M., Norwich, Conn.: 
What is the old superstition about the 
moon in regard to fish biting? 
Ans.—Fish are said to bite best between 
the new moon and the first quarter or be¬ 
tween the last quarter and the “change.” 
You will have to prove the truth of this 
saying to your own satisfaction. 
