


AuG, 10, 1907.] FOREST AND STREAM. 221 
The Old Guard. twentieth time—one ‘of Nessmuk’s, Tarpon’s, trout fishing in any other stream in the State. 
: Antler’s, Orin Belknap’s, Stillhunter’s, King- The bill was introduced by Representative Jack- 
Lirtte Fatzs, N. Y., Aug. 3.—Editor Forest 
and Stream: ‘The recruits enjoy hearing about 
the Old Guard. It was from them that we 
learned to see so much of thé beautiful in nature 
at a time when our hearts were set mostly on 
making bags and getting baskets full. When 
was there. anything better written than those old- 
time stories of shooting gray squirrels, with a 
.22 express—was it Nimrod or: Von: W., who 
used to give us such good times telling of try- 
ing out ‘sights, loads ‘and rifles on crows that 
stole corn? I doubt if anything better was ever 
written than the stories of hunting grays and 
blacks with the .22. Then the grouse hunters— 
the men who dropped swift birds as they came 
down the mountain side among the evergreens. 
Those stories meant more to the recruits who 
were far from sportsmen than any number of 
tales of hunting elephants in India. They taught 
us how to make the most of our own wood-lot 
game. And this brings me to the first sports- 
man [ ever knew. 
He is one of the Old Guard*Mr. Hoskins, 
of Owego. He has a copy of every issue of the 
ForEsT AND STREAM, and nearly every volume is 
bound. He is a fisherman. His specialty is 
trout, and my first sight of him was at The 
Islands on the West Canada. An old cherry 
tree had fallen into the water at a little riffle 
on the Robert’s flat. It still grew leaves, but 
the lower branches dragged in the water, and 
there the trout lay, waiting for the insects to 
be rolied under by the twigs. Mr. Hoskins was 
fishing at that old cherry tree. Till I saw him 
casting, flickering, striking, playing and landing, 
I had never seen “sport.” I had caught fish, I 
had seen fishing, I had hunted and killed things, 
but here was a man who was different. I did 
not know it then, but after a few years I re- 
called the fact that there was something different 
in his cast, something handsomer, something 
more than mere life-like flickering of yellow 
sallies and grizzly kings. His mid-stream grace 
was a revelation even to a woods boy who used 
angle worms because the fish took hold of them 
better. Afterward Mr. Hoskins’ fishing style 
became an example for at least one youth who 
needed just such a figure for imitation. To 
this day I should be glad if I could send my 
cast through the air to a taut line, and then drop 
the flies like the petals of a flower upon the 
water with just that pretty little twitch and 
“scatter” which Mr. Hoskins used. 
A year or so after I first saw him I was sit- 
ting by the creek just above the Slipbanks when 
Mr. Hoskins came along and sat down beside 
me to watch “Djid” and Horace Thomas fish 
the cold bed opposite. He beamed on me and 
my “smoked” bamboo “cane pole.” Did I fish 
much? Did I like it when I didn’t catch any? 
Did I wade? How old was I? And how big 
was my biggest fish? Where did I get ’im? 
And how? Somehow I described what had hap- 
pened, and then “I jerked my pole’”—— 
“Eh? ‘pole’? Nobody ever fishes for trout 
with a ‘pole. You used a ‘rod,’ now, didn’t 
you? Telegraph poles, flag poles—but fish rods!” 
Every spring when I have been at Northwood 
I have watched Mr. Hoskins fishing in the creek. 
Sometimes he came very early, when it was so 
cold that he couldn’t wade; sometimes he came 
after the fish got on the cold beds; always he 
preserved that same delightful independence of 
weather—high water, cold, driving logs, good luck 
and bad luck—which marks the man who gets 
next to nature out of sheer love for green out- 
doors. 
Two or three weeks a year he gives to his rod 
and the West Canada. Now and then he brings 
home a two-pounder, but his eyes never show 
greater pleasure than when he opens his basket 
to display a neat and orderly array of trout from 
ten to thirteen inches long. It seems as though 
too big a fellow might mar the serenity of a 
day’s sport—spoil the proportions of the average! 
Having’ had his season’s fishing he settles 
down to his Forest AND Streams. “I read 
everything to the Kennel,” he told me once. To 
this day he goes over his bound volumes, pick- 
ing up any one of them, sure that on some page 
he will find some tale that will bear reading the 
fisher’s or others’ story of life very close to 
nature. Mr. Hoskins is one of the Old Guard, 
though I-doubt if he ever penned his experi- 
ences; yet, like the rest of the Old Guard, he 
has helped many a recruit over the unblazed trail 
to broad, decent comprehension of real nature. 
RAYMOND S. SPEARS. 
American Fisheries Society. 
Tue thirty-sixth annual meeting of the Ameri- 
can Fisheries Society was held in Erie, Pa., July 
23, 24 and 25. Those in attendance inc luded the 
following: Hon. George M. Bowers, chief of 
the United Bos Bureau of Fisheries, Wash- 
ington; Dr, H. M. Smith, United. States Bureau 
of Fisheries, Washington; Prof. Alais A. Birge, 
Dean of the University ‘of Wisconsin; W. E. 
Meehan, Commissioner of Fisheries of Pennsyl- 
vania; Prof. A, D. Mead, of Brown University ; 
John W. Titcomb, Chief of Fish Culture Diepart- 
ment, United States Bureau of Fisheries, Wash- 
ington; Dr. Tarleton H. Bean, State Fish Cul- 
turist of New York; Dwight Lydell, one of 
Michigan’s fish culturists, and many other super- 
intendents of hatcheries and well known fish 
culturists. 
A. Kelly Evans, of Toronto, secretary of the 
Ontario Fish and Game Protective Association, 
in an address in which he reviewed the fisheries 
situation along the international boundary line, 
appealed to the members to pass a resolution 
which he had introduced, and which had been 
recommended by the committee on resolutions, in 
which he proposed that the society should use 
its influence in the direction of calling an in- 
formal conference or convention of representa- 
tives from each of the States bordering on the 
Great Lakes and from the Province of Ontario 
and the Dominion Government, as well as rep- 
resentatives from the Federal authorities at 
Washington, with a view to drawing up uniform 
regulations as to the size limit of fish, nets, Sea 
sons, etc., and thus preventing the menaced c 
struction of an important food for’ the masses of 
the people. 
The resolution was carried unanimously and 
the details of the work left in the hands of the 
executive committee. 
The Situation in Oregon. 
PortLAnp, Ore., July 31—Editor Forest and 
Stream: Iam sending you a clipping from the 
Oregon Journal of recent date, as the matter 
should interest anglers: 
“There is no longer a closed season for trout 
fishing in the State of Oregon except in the 
Umpqua River and its tributaries, and anglers 
may fish for trout at any time of the year in any 
river or creek in the State except in the Umpqua 
River and its tributaries. 
“This condition of affairs was brought about 
by the last Legislature by an act which amended 
the old law. Its effect was not discovered until 
this morning, when Robert Shaw, Judgé Web- 
ster’s private secretary, discovered the effect of 
the amendment while noting in the judge’s code 
the changes in the laws made by the Legislature. 
“The closed season for trout was formerly 
November, December, January, February and 
March, and was prescribed in Section 2034 of 
the code. By an act of the last Legislature this 
section was amended, so that now the only 
statute providing a closed season for trout reads 
as follows: 
“Tt shall be unlawful for any person to take, 
catch, kill or have in possession any trout except 
salmon trout, during the months of December, 
January and February of any year taken from 
the waters of the Umpqua River or its tribu- 
taries, or at any time to take, catch, kill, or have 
in possession any trout, char or salmon less than 
five inches in length, or to ‘take, catch or kill 
the same by any means whatever except with 
hook and line, commonly ¢alled angling.’ 
“Tt is held that the closed season provision of 
this amendment of the old law applies only to 
the Umpqua River and its tributaries, leaving 
no law whatever providing a closed season for 
son, Of Roseburg, and was passed without change. 
The amendment is found on page 54 of the 1907 
session laws. 
“The old section, which was superseded by 
Jackson’s bill and is no longer in force, was: 
“*Section 2034.—It shall be unlawful for any 
person to take, catch, kill or have in possession 
any trout, except salmon trout, during the 
months of November, December, January, Febru- 
ary and March of any year, and it shall be un- 
lawful for any person to take, catch, kill, or 
have in possession at any time any trout, char 
or salmon, less than five inches in length, and 
it shall be unlawful for any person to take, catch 
or kill at any time in the waters of this State 
any trout by any means whatever except with 
hook and line, and any person fishing with hook 
and line, who, upon lifting the same, shall find 
any trout, char, or salmon, less than five inches 
in length caught or entangled thereon, shall im- 
mediately, with care, and the least possible in- 
jury to the fish, disentangle and let loose the 
same, and transmit the fish to the water with- 
out violence.’ 
“Tt is generally believed that it was the inten- 
tion merely to shorten the closed season on’ the 
Umpqua from five months to three months, and 
leave all the other streams in the State with a 
five months’ closed season, but the effect was 
to give the Umpqua a three months’ closed sea- 
son, and other streams no closed season at all. 
“The law cannot be remedied until the next 
Legislature convenes in 1909, and many believe 
that by the time an amendment could be made 
effective trout in Oregon streams would be 
nearly all fished out.” FrepD BEAL, JR., 
Deputy Game Warden. 
A Brook: Trout Query. 
EncLewoop, N. J., July 29.—Editor Forest and 
Stream: About the first of the past June my 
brother and a friend were trout fishing in Sulli- 
van county, New York, and found a peculiar 
characteristic in the fish taken. The skin in the 
roof of the mouth was entirely black, while in 
all other respects the fish were, I believe, normal 
specimens of fontinalts, perfectly healthy and of 
good flavor. The stream heads in a large swamp 
which was originally covered with a heavy 
growth of hemlock, though the lwmbermen have 
left but small fragments of it. It may be that 
the water coming from this swamp was origi- 
nally affected by the acid from the hemlocks and 
thus caused the peculiar coloration observed, 
which must have become more or less hereditary, 
for the water now is without apparent taint of 
any such substance. No new trout have been 
planted there at all, I believe, so the’ fish there 
now must be descendants of the native ones 
which were there before the lumber was cut. 
Has any reader of ForEST AND STREAM had a 
similar experience or think of any other ex- 
planation? Ropert S. LEMMON. 
Trumpets Barred. 
FisHERY laws are too often passed and enforced 
by persons who know little or nothing about 
angling. An amusing instance of this is recorded 
by the Bulletin Suisse. If appears that in the 
Bernese Jura anglers are forbidden by law to 
trumpets or other similar in- 
[The explanation of this prohibition 
fish with clarions, 
struments ! 
is curious. The French word “clarion” has sev- 
al meanings. It is used not only to denote 
a clarion or bugle, but also the torch used by 
poachers to attract fish. The draftsmen employed 
to remodel the ancient fishery law in the time 
of Louise Philippe was apparently ignorant of 
this second and rarer meaning, and finding that 
the law forbade fishing with a bugle, evidently 
thought it only fair that trumpets and other 
similar wind instruments should also be barred 
Hence, poachers in the Bernese Jura, though 
free to lure fish with a torch or lantern, must 
on no account employ a trombone or cornet a 
piston for the purpose. As the great’ Mr. Bumble 
once remarked, “The law is a hass.”—Fishing 
Gazette. 

