
Auc. 3, 1907.] 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
179 

ing takes place in the spring and the young, 
from one-fourth to an inch in length, are very 
abundant at the surface along the coasts of 
Connecticut and Massachusetts in July and 
August. The average length of thirty-nine 
females measured by Dr. Fulton was 15.8 inches, 
and their average weight 6 pounds 6 ounces. 
His largest fish measured 1834 inches and 
weighed 10 pounds 734 ounces. The males are 
smaller, Dr. Fulton’s largest being but 15 inches 
long and weighing 4 pounds 6 ounces. The 
thirty males in his possession averaged but 11 
inches in length and 1 pound 14 ounces in 
weight. ; 
The lump-sucker is eaten in Greenland, the 
flesh being either cooked ‘or dried, the large roe 
boiled to a pulp, but the flesh is oily and hard 
to digest. The males, which are red in the 
spring, at or as the time for spawning ap- 
proaches, are usually eaten. Along the coasts 
of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia the fish is 
used for food; in Scotland, though sometimes 
eaten by the epicures of Edinburgh, it is seldom 
used by the fishermen except boiled with vege- 
tables, wher® it is fed to the pigs for fattening 
purposes. ; 
Dr. Theodore N. Gill has prepared an excel- 
lent paper upon the-lump-sucker, published in 
the Quarterly, Miscellaneous _ Collections, 
Smithsonian Institution, and to it I would reier 
all those seeking information concerning the 
habits, etc., of one of the most grotesque and 
highly interesting fishes of the coasts of North- 
eastern America and Northern Europe. The 
purpose of this short paper is to put on record 
the undoubted occurrence of the species in 
Chesapeake Bay. Barton A. BEAN. 
Little Talks About Fly-Fishing. 
SuLLtivaAN County, N. Y., July 20—Editor 
Forest and Stream: Some of the white moths 
found at this season have flesh colored or light 
buff legs, not white. These moths formerly en- 
joyed a great reputation for late evening fishing, 
but one does not hear so much of them nowadays. 
Very large trout have been taken with them and 
a good many are about on summer evenings. 
Fishing after dark is not the best of sport,. as 
one cannot see the fly or the place where it falls 
“upon the water. Yet it is very exciting to hook 
a big fish at dusk or later. Something tells you 
to strike and the next instant there is a grand 
rush upon the surface. Your quarry rushes here 
and there and you stumble blindly along with 
only a hazy idea as to the position of the trout. 
Success in such a fight is due quite as much to 
luck as to good management. In summer the 
larger fish lie close during the hours of daylight 
-and they will rarely. move any distance for the 
fly. They have an exasperating way of getting 
into positions where it is difficult to put a fly 
to them in a natural manner. 
The other day I was about to leave a pool 
which I imagined I had fished thoroughly when 
a fine trout leaped from the water well under 
the branches that hung over the tail of the pool 
on the far side. I cast over the place many 
times without result. Theré was a stone close 
in shore which the fly had passed by a few inches 
again and again. At last it dropped just above, 
and floating down just grazed the’ rock, when it 
was taken at once. This trout must have seen 
the fly, but he was not inclined to accept it until 
it floated over his nose. The puzzle is, why did 


he leap unless at something flying above the 
water? This leap showed the muséular strength 
of the fish as the water was only a few inches 
deep at that point. I should say that it cleared 
the surface by at. least eighteen inches. I have 
occasionally seen large brown trout jump when 
the ‘water was muddy during a freshet, but never 
did any good fishing for them at such 
Possibly they might have been taken with bait, 
but I fancied they were leaping in sport or just 
for a breath of pure air and to clear their gills 
of the impurities in the discolored water. 
At least one-third of the good people who 
come to Sullivan county take an interest in the 
fishing and’ it is one of the staple subjects of 
conversation. Many are not anglers of great ex- 
perience, but they enjoy a day on the streams 
occasionally and the trout are the bait that lured 
times.. 

COMMON LUMPFISH OR LUMPSUCKER (Cyclopterus lumpus). 
them to this part of the country. The scare 
caused by a large number of anglers wading a 
smail stream and casting a swarm of flies of all 
sorts and sizes with varying degrees of skill, no 
doubt protects the trout, except possibly the most 
youthful. They are chased off the shallows and 
seek the seclusion of their cherished haunts and 
hiding places. 
However, I know men who think the fish can 
be badgered into taking the fly. They go to a 
good pool and pound away until, as they say, a 
trout gets so angry that he takes the fly to get 
it out of the way or kill it. This is a modifica- 
tion of the theory of some salmon anglers. They 
say that the salmon feeds little or+not at all in 
fresh water, and that it takes the fly in anger. 
It is tantalized or exasperated into trying to 
smash it. This idea was illustrated in a poem 
called the “Durham Ranger,” published in Forest 
AND STREAM last year. 
There is no doubt that a good part of the 
pleasure of the sport is found in talking and 
thinking about it. When we were young we 
usually enjoyed a wakeful night before the trout 
season opened or when we arrived on a good 
stream too late to fish the same day. We re- 
call sadly disappointing days when, after much 
imaginary catching of big trout during the 
night, we have tramped and fished for miles with 
little or no reward. In May we were told that 
the trout in that particular creek (which we had 
traveled 300 miles to reach) never rose to the 
fly until July. We did kill one fish with, the 
attificial fly, but the stream flowed through virgin 
hemlock forest and there were many splash dams 
upon it which were used for sluicing logs, Hav- 
ing collected a quantity of these in the dam, and 
a good head of water having backed up behind 
it, the big gates would be thrown open and a 
perfect avalanche of logs and water would go 
rushing down stream, carrying everything with 
it. It seemed surprising that the trout were 
not either killed or scared to death by this per- 
formance. It is not surprising that they did not 
rise well until July. Doubtless all the timber 
in that region was cut out long ago and if the 
waters have been stocked by the State there is 
probably god fishing to-day. This was Young 
Woman’s Creek, in Pennsylvania, a tributary of 
the Sinnemahoning, if I remember correctly. 
THEODORE GORDON. 
Anglers’ Club Fly-Casting. 
Tue fourth fly-casting contest in the cup series 
of the Anglers’ Club of New York was held on 
the Pool, in Central Park, July 24. The work 
of the members was good considering the ad- 
verse conditions. While the afternoon was 
pleasant and fairly cool, the north wind, de- 
flected by the trees on one side of the little lake, 
and broken up into erratic currents on the other, 
cut down the scores materially; in fact, if a 
contestant happened to be ready tg cast during 
a lull between catspaws, he got ouf a creditable 
length of line, but otherwise the fly generally 
alighted thirty feet away from the marking line 
or was picked up and carried into the bushes or 
trees alongshore. Mr. T. W. Brotherton, who 
casts from the right side, and whose line there- 
fore passed nearer the trees on the right hand 
of the club platform than the other contestants’ 
lines, was caught several times by gusts of wind 
which threw his leader into the bushes. 
In these fly-casting events for club cups: the 
intention of the tournament committee was to 

handicap the more expert casters, who had pre- 
viously won prizes, and give the novices an op- 
portunity to win, to encourage them. It was 
agreed; therefore, to place beginners in the 75- 
foot class, and handicap the experts on the basis 
of their highest previous scores. This plan has 
worked fairly well, but when Mr. Brotherton 
put in an appearance, last Wednesday, and ac- 
knowledged that his record for unlimited fly- 
casting was 137 feet at San Francisco, and 120 
feet at Chicago, the committee was puzzled, but 
all members agreed that 137 feet, made in a 
Pacific trade wind, could hardly be equalled here, 
while the Chicago record was fair to base a 
handicap on, and Mr. Brotherton was therefore 
placed at scratch. W. J. Elrich won first cup 
and George LaBranche second. The scores of 
the first event, for heavy fly rods, best cast in 
five minutes flat, with no time for lost flies, etc., 
follow : 
Best Cast, 
Feet. Allowance. Total. 
William J. Ehrich..........essseees 90 22 112 
GEL: ‘Toa Beanches ci. 5. 89 22 111 
Shite poparks tie ANC her ern OMB OONan IG 96 3 109 
Ne Rie Grim WOOG voridse cies sicielnceecs 3 22 105 
ae toh stecbhtelgn Sacede er AOC ACen 86 18 104 
Perry D.. Brazer...cccecceesie- ces 84 20 104 
Bdwarnd JB. URICe riick secs ses p'c na 82 19 101 
James D. Smith..........-+.+++- 76 24 100 
R, iN AU GLCG Rae oeroineieclaias) dhartarcesree 76 21 97 
TV, BLOLMETUO Tare ca civic tle ve. tieln 75 0 75 
If the wind interfered with casting in this 
event, it can easily be understood that in the 
second one, in which rods were limited to five 
ounces-and leaders to a length exceeding length 
of rod by not more than two feet, it was difficult 
to cast at all, and only those who used heavier 
double-tapered lines than is usual on light rods, 
could keep their leaders out of the bushes in the 
eusts of wind that swept across from left to 
right. P 
Phere was only a trout fly leader’s length be- 
tween the highest and the lowest casts, and only 
five feet between them in the totals. Perry 
Frazer won the first prize cup and George La- 
Branche second. The scores, highest cast in 



five minutes flat to count: 
Best Cast, 
Feet. Allowance. Total. 
Perry: D. Frazer... cece. secs eeese 76 6 82 
(GaMe nl bla Branchevegnceaane 78 2 80 
Re A RIGGS Saeahap ennoreapoacns 75 4 79 
INAS Po ITILUEL. arse Sect ete alate cts igriore sve 76 1 77 
Willtam J. Ehrich... ...c...cseeee 6714 9 76% 
Nau eri OG Cine sieaheie axel nieearaie 76 0 76 
King Smith ...ceccscsesesccocene 70 6 76 
The judges were E. H. Myers, A. Opper and 
C. G. Levison. 
The next contest will be held at the same place, 
Aug. 14. It will be bait-casting, one event for 
half-ounce and one for quarter-ounce, distance. 

Angler Digs up fseoen Bait. 
A certain M. Léon Devour was recently fish- 
ing near Choisy, says the Fishing Gazette. The 
fish were biting so freely that his stock of worms 
soon became exhausted, ‘and the friable earth of 
a neighboring railway embankment seemed a 
likely spot in which to seek a further supply. 
Armed with a tin box and a knife he climbed 
the railings and set to work. A few strokes of 
the knife unearthed—not worms—but a_ silver 
spoon and fork, bearing the initials “S. G.” A 
further search revealed sixteen others of the 
same pattern, which had evidently been buried 
by some’ enterprising burglar until he had leisure 
to come and fetch them. The Choisy police are 
now endeavoring to find an owner for these stolen 
goods. 

