716 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
[May 5, 1906. 

broken up by the wind and storm of last Monday 
and Tuesday. Fine catches were made over to- 
ward Indian and Fryes islands by visiting sports- 
men, Mr, H. G. Longfellow, of Rumford Falls, 
securing five large ones. 
Dr. Bishop, of Boston, H. B. Coe, of the Maine 
Central Railroad, and E. C. Jones, all of the Se- 
bago Salmon Club, were among the successful 
fishermen, Mr. Jones taking one that weighed 9% 
pounds. The nine-year-old son of Mr. Coe, un- 
able to restrain his youthful enthusiasm, put out 
in a boat alone and without a landing net suc- 
ceeded in capturing one weighing 3% pounds. 
This lad commenced his record as an angler two 
years ago at Mooselookmeguntic Lake, when he 
rigged a line on a stick and pulled out a 2y4- 
pound trout from the float in front of the Barker. 
Dr. E. W. Branigan, the librarian of the State 
Association, has gone for a short trip to Sebago. 
One of the most enthusiastic of the recently- 
elected members of the Association is Mr, T. F. 
Harrigan, of the Brighton district, who has re- 
cently returned from Sebago, bringing several 
salmon. 
Col. E. B. Parker left Boston to-day for a trip 
to his trout preserve and farm in northern Ver- 
mont, where the season opens May I. 
Ex-President J. R. Reed took several trout this 
week from the brooks of the Tihonet Club, Ware- 
ham, the largest weighing 134 pounds. 
Other members who have met with good. suc- 
cess are Messrs. Andrew Gray Weeks, H. V. 
Long and H. A. Pitman. H. H. KimBatt. 
The Pound Netters’ Waste. 
Editor Forest and Stream: 
The recent action of Secretary Taft in decid- 
ing that fish pounds on certain waters should 
be regulated, or prohibited, should open the 
whole question of commercial netting along the 
Atlantic coast, for there can be no doubt that 
vast quantities. of fish are being wastefully 
killed by the pound netters. I have just re- 
turned from a trip to Chesapeake Bay, and since 
April 10 I have seen the most wasteful effects 
of unbalanced and unrestricted fishing. 
There are countless pounds in Chesapeake 
waters. They bring profit chiefly from the shad 
fishing, and other fish mere side issues, save 
on the western shore, where fertilizer factories 
use the menhaden. The point that I would 
emphasize is the fact that hundreds of tons of 
herring are killed and thrown to waste because 
there is no market for them. Commission 
merchants will pay the freight only. A few 
thousand are salted down by the baymen, but 
for the most part the fish are dipped out with 
the shad, and are allowed to die, which they 
do “in two flops.” Some of the fish are taken 
to the wharves, and sold as fertilizer. Last 
week I saw 5,000 herring sold for $3.60, which a 
junk dealer was willing to pay. He sold a few 
at 10 cents a hundred, and put the rest into the 
ground “to make watermelons.” « But. only a 
small proportion of the herring killed are used 
even for fertilizer. I saw hundreds of gulls in 
the Honga River swooping down on the few 
hundred floating fish from a pound. Where the 
fish were thrown overboard, the bottom was 
covered with them. Around the steamboat 
wharves, the silvery bellies of the sunk herring 
could be seen by the square rod. 
On the wharves the fishermen drooned, “Any- 
body want any fresh herring—fresh fish; 25 
cents a hundred—15 cents a hundred!” Find- 
ing no sale, they simply dumped the fish over, 
but not until they were dead. 
It would seem that this vast waste of fish in 
the Chesapeake Bay should be stopped. Sun- 
dry fish commissions are busying themselves 
with propagating food fishes for the fishermen 
and for the public. The herring is a food fish, 
and there is no reason why tons of them should 
be absolutely thrown away. The baymen are 
incapable of looking after their own best in- 
terests, and they certainly will not look after 
those of the public until they are compelled to 
do so. It would seem that national regulation 
of salt-water fisheries would bring some kind 
of system into the present hit-and-miss fishery 
business, by which a kind of fish searched for by 
whole fleets in one locality are mere dross and 
useless in another not so very far away. It is 
perfectly certain that live business methods, 
fast carriers of fish and preserving facilities on 
the eastern shore of the Chesapeake would prove 
valuable to everybody, especially to those who 
will one day discover the curious and remark- 
able pleasures to be had in the bay waters. 
RAYMOND S. SPEARS. 
Fish and Fishing. 
Inquiries as to Spring Fishing. 
JupGinG by the increased number of inquiries 
which I have recently received concerning the 
opening ‘of the spring trout and ouananiche 
fishing in northern Quebec, it certainly does not 
appear as if many of our American angling 
friends can be following the advice of Mr. 
R. White to stay away from the fishing grounds 
of this province in order to spite the Govern- 
ment of the province in general and the Minister 
of Fisheries in particular. The officers of the 
fisheries department here and the information 
bureau of the Quebec and Lake St. John Rail- 
way report the same increase in the number of 
letters of inquiry and applications for fishing 
licenses. On the other hand, it is reported that 
there may be a decrease in the number of sports- 
men from Ontario, Mr. White’s own province, 
who will visit Quebec this year, for it is these 
gentlemen from whom the loudest complaints 
are heard, and that notwithstanding the fact 
that the best of the trout waters in that province, 
namely, those of the Nepigon, can be fished 
by nobody without the payment of a special 
license fee. 
The Roberval Hatchery. 
The Roberval hatchery has just successfully 
hatched out several hundred thousand young 
salmon (Salmo salar), all of which are to be 
planted in Lake St. John waters., No ouananiche 
eggs were placed in the hatchery last season, 
for a variety of reasons. The stoppage of all 
netting in the «ouananiche waters, by Mr. 
Prevost, is likely to do away with the necessity 
for aiding nature by the artificial hatching of 
ouananiche fry, for all of these fish that can 
be destroyed by the legitimate fishing of anglers 
will make an appreciable diminution in the 
supply of the fish. The effect, too, of the large 
supply of young ouananiche liberated from the 
hatchery in recent years was seen in the in- 
creased supply of fish in the Grand Discharge 
last summer, and upon the spawning beds last 
October. By substituting salmon for ouanan- 
iche, in the operations of the hatchery for a few 
years, it is hoped that the king of fresh-water 
fishes will gradually become plentiful in many 
of the large cold rivers which empty into Lake 
St. John. Whatever the progeny, pure or 
mixed, of the present plants of salmon in these 
waters may prove to be, it has already been 
demonstrated by the few recent catches of ten 
to sixteen pound fish in the mouth of the Peri- 
bonca and elsewhere in the neighborhood, that 
the fish so planted do not wander out of the 
Lake St. John waters without—in many cases 
at least—returning to them. For some years 
to come, therefore, or at least so long as the 
planting of salmon is continued, good salmon 
fishing ought to increase in the rivers tributary 
to Lake» St.. John. I do not see at all why the 
failure of the efforts to restock the Hudson with 
salmon should be considered—as some people 
seem to ‘think it should—a reason for antici- 
pating the failure of similar efforts in Lake St. 
John waters, for there is very much less sewer- 
age and mill refuse to fear in our far northern 
country, and the difference in the temperature 
of the water is in itself a most important con- 
sideration. 

Tying Flies at 84. 
Some of the most beautiful artificial flies 
which I have seen for a long time past came to 
me some short time ago inclosed in a letter 
from The Old Angler, with the intimation that 
he had amused himself tying a number of them 
during the past winter. He explains that he 
cannot now handle the materials as he once 
could, and surely this will not be considered sur- 
prising when it is recalled that our good friend 
is now 84 years old. As he well says, “Not 
many of my years could, I fancy, do much 
better.” I don’t suppose that some of these 
flies, which include beautiful specimens of the 
Abbey, bee, March-brown, Montreal, Jenny-Lind, 
and silver- doctor or silver- -gray, could be better 
tied by one in the prime of life, and I hope soon 
to try their killing qualities. 
Mr. Walter Brackett told me years ago of the 
excellence of the flies tied by The Old Angler, 
whose early articles on the fishing of New 
Brunswick rivers I recently had the pleasure of 
reading in a rare copy of the defunct Stewart’s 
Quarterly. E. T. D. CHAMBERS. 
Galveston Fishing. 
GALVESTON, Tex., April 24.—Editor Forest and 
Stream: The pompano is not generally ranked 
as a game fish, not but that he is a fighter when 
hooked, but he is hook- shy and does not often 
give the fisherman a chance. Yesterday, however, 
seven fishermen caught thirty-one pompano in 
four hours, from the end of the South Jetty of 
Galveston Harbor. 
Some of these were large for pompano, say 
over 2 pounds.. There were ten men in the party 
but only seven caught pompano. I was among 
those who did not catch a single one, my 
excuse being that my hook was too large. I will 
have pompano, however, for dinner, as I traded 
off a 10-pound redfish for two. 
The catch of the party was 153 Spanish mack- 
eral, 31 pompano and six redfish; all but one of 
the redfish were from 6 to 12 pounds each. 
We caught a number of sheepshead, but the 
catch of gamier fish was so fine we did not count 
the sheepshead, although they are not to be de- 
spised for sport or table. 
The end of the Jetty is six miles out in the 
Gulf and is capped with granite blocks, many of 
them six feet square, and smooth enough to make 
good fishing from them with rod and reel, and 
much better than fishing from a boat. We fished 
shallow for mackerel, and it is unusual to catch 
redfish with bait only three feet below surface; 
the water is twenty feet deep, so there must 
have been a lot of redfish thereabouts. One of 
the redfish raced about as fast and as long as a 
kingfish would have done. 
Speaking of kingfish, I see Mr. Waddell, of 
Kansas City, has given you, in a late number of 
ForEST AND STREAM, his experience last summer 
at Aransas Pass. Tarpon fishing having been in- 
terfered with by muddy water and high winds, 
he wired me to know if conditions were better 
at Galveston, and I had to reluctantly answer 
they were not. I have fished with him on paper, 
but he has never been to Galveston in the fishing 
season. Mr, Waddell’s catch of kingfish, trolling 
off shore in the Gulf, was so fine we will try it 
here jater in the summer. We catch a kingfish 
once in a while, but he is a stray. I landed an 
18-pounder once from the Jetty, and has as much 
sport with him as one would get with several 
caught from a boat. The first spurt of 200 feet 
or so of a kingfish breaks all fish records for 
speed. There is all the difference in the world 
in handling a big fish from a rock and from a 
boat that gives with his pull. 
Mr. Waddell has a record, year in and year 
out for many years, on tarpon on the Mexico, 
Texas and Florida coasts, that probably leads, but 
he has never had a chance to work a tarpon down 
from a rock in our jetties. I think it safe to say 
that no one can land one tarpon in ten that he 
hooks from the jetties. 
I have not had occasion to write you since 
change in form of Forest AND STREAM. Now that 
your readers are used to it we appreciate that it 
is an improvement in shape and size; reading 
matter did not admit of improvement. 
Mr. Charles F. Holder, author of “Big Game 
Fish of America,” writes: 
“Mr. Aflalo, the English authority on salt- 
water fishing, is trying fishing in Florida, and we 
have written him. We hope he will try tarpon 
at Aransas Pass, Tex., and jetty fishing at Gal- 
veston before he returns to his salmon and his 
‘mutton.’ ” E. MANN. 
