The American Fly Fisher - American Museum of Fly Fishing · The Sportsman Tourist Florida Fishing -...

The American Fly Fisher

An Open Letter to the Membership Our progress o v a the past seven years has been remarkable in the receipt of hundreds

of items donated by fly fishers from all over the country. These welcome gifts, for the most part have been related to fishing tackle. Their value is unquestioned. I wish to point out, however, that quite often the favorite fly rod of a famous fly fisher cannot be given the Museum or any of his other well loved items of tackle. The circumstance often ends on this note and there is a very good chance that other memorabilia which is equally precious and desirable will eventually be lost because they have not been considered.

It should be emphasized, when talking with a potential donor, we are not only interested in fly fishing tackle, books and prints, art works and things related but we also have a place for the personal memento.

These help round out the personality and humanness of our celebrated fly fishers and are of extreme interest to the general public. Joe Brooks' fishing hat may not have the greatest of monetary values but visitors identify as much with his hat as with his fly rod. The same applies to Arnold Gingrich's fishing vest which is now on display. Too often, the personal item is forgotten, in the end to eventually disappear.

The following article by Grover Cleveland is of historical interest. It also highlights the fact that one of Daniel Webster's personal possessions of much more than passing interest has been either mislaid or has disappeared with but little chance of recovery. We do have the book, from which his extract is taken in our Presidential showcase.

Mr. Webster9s Remarks to a Fish by Grover Cleveland

Daniel Webster, too, was a fisherman - always in good and regular standing. In marshaling the proof which his great life furnishes of the benefits of the fishing propensity, I approach the task with a feeling of awe quite natural to one who has slept in the room occupied by the great expounder during his fishing campaigns on Cape Cod and along the shores of Mashpee Pond and its adjacent streams. This distinguished member of our fra- ternity was an industrious and attentive fisherman. He was besides a wonderful orator - and largely so because he was a fiiher- man. He himself confessed to the aid he received from a fishing environment in the preparation of his best oratorical efforts; and other irrefutable testimony to the same effect is at hand.

It is not deemed necessary to cite in proof of such aid more than a single incident. Perhaps none of Mr. Webster's orations was more notable, or added more to his lasting fame, than that delivered at the laying of the cornerstone of the Bunker Hill Monument. Beginning with the words "Venerable men," this thrilling oratorical flight was composed and elaborated by Mr. Webster while wading waist deep and casting his fly in Mashpee waters. He himself afterward often referred to this circumstance; and one who was his companion on this particular occasion has recorded the fact noticing laxity in fishing action on Mr. Web- ster's part, he approached him and in the exact words of this witness "he seemed to be gazing at the overhanging trees, and presently advancing one foot forward and extending his right hand, he commenced to speak, 'Venerable men'."

Though this should be enough to support conclusively the contention that incidents of Mr. Webster's great achievements prove the close relationship between fishing and the loftiest at- tainments of mankind, this branch of our subject ought not to be dismissed without reference to a comversation I once had with old John Attaquin, then a patriarch among the few sur- vivors of the Mashpee Indians. He had often been Mr. Webster's guide and companion on his fishing trips and remembered clearly many of their happenings. It was with a glow of love and ad- miration amounting almost to worship that he related how this

great fisherman, after landing a great trout on the banks of the stream, "talked mighty fine and strong to that fish and told him what a mistake he had made, and what a fool he was to take that fly, and that he would have been all right if he had let it alone . . ." Who can doubt that patient search would disclose, somewhere in Mr. Websta's speeches and writings the elabora- tion and high intent, of that"'mighty strong and fine" talk ad- dressed to the fish at Mashpee?

The impressive story of this simple, truthful old Indian was delightfully continued when with the enthusiasm of an untutor- ed mind remembering pleasant sensations, the narrator had told how the great fisherman and orator having concluded his "strong, fine talk," would frequently suit the action to the word, when he turned to his guide and proposed a fitting libation in recognition of his catch. This part of the story is not here re- peated on account of its superior value as an addition to the evidence, but I am thus given the opportunity to speak of the emo- tion which fascinated me as the story proceeded, and as I recalled how precisely a certain souvenir called "the Webster flask," carefully hoarded among my valued possessions, was fitted to the situation described.

Several years past, the Museum contacted Mr. James Cleve- land, son of the President, relative to the possibility of obtaining one of the President's fishing rods. Regretably, all had been donated to the Smithsonian. Later I made a personal effort in regard to the flask but that appeared hopelessly lost. Several years of "patient search" have been without results although I did dis- cover at the Boston Public Library an astonishing Silver Cup, at least two feet in height, lavishly scrolled, engraved and once be- longing to Daniel Webster, presented by the citizens of Boston.

The collection for the Museum of rare and desirable memorabilia is always a now proposition for the members.

A. S. Hogan, Curator

The American Fly Fisher Published by The Muscum of American Fly Fishing

for the pleasure o f the mcnibership.

SPRING 1977 Vol. 4 No. 2

ADVISORY BOARD

Dr. Alvin Grove Statc Collcgc, Pa.

Baird Hall Hyde Park, Vt.

Dr. David R. Ledlie Middlebury, Vt.

John T. Orrelle Sherwood, Oregon

Leigh H. Perkins Manchester, Vt.

Steve Raymond Seattlc, Washington

Mrs. Anne Secor Arlington, Vt.

Donald Zahner Dorset, Vt.

Austin S. Hogan Cambridge, Mass. Research & Liaison

TABLE O F CONTENTS

An Open Letter t o t h e Membership Mr. Webster's Remarks by Grover Cleveland IFC

Rudyard Kipling and American Fly Fishing b y Paul Schullery 3

Ceylon Rivers by Philip K. Crowe 6 Annual Meeting 10 Fishing in New Hampshire 12 The Golden Trout of Sunapee - Color Plate 13 The Sportsman Tourist

Grayling Fishing in Alaska 14 Trout Flies - Color Plate 16 Bass Flies - Color Plate 17 Ledge Fishing for Ouinaniche 19 Gibbs' Striper - Color Plate 2 0 An Adirondack Excursion 2 1 Dyeing Fishing Lines 2 3 The Fun of Angling Literature b y Joseph S. Beck 2 4 Western Americana

Rainbow Trout of the McCIoud 26 Concerning t h e Dolly Varden 2 8 George Dawson 2 9 The Sportsman Tourist

Florida Fishing - The Angler in Nicaragua - Sport in the Far West 30 Museum Information 3 2 Sawdust in Trout Streams IBC

THE AMERICAN FLY FISHER, the magazine of THE MUSEUM O F AMERICAN FLY FIStIING, is published quarterly by the MUSEUM a t Manchester, Vermont 05254 . Subscription is free with payment o f membership dues. All correspondence, letters, manuscripts, photographs and materials should be forwarded care of the Curator. The MUSEUM and MAGAZINE are not responsible for unsolicited manuscripts, drawings, photographs, materials o r memorabilia. The Museum cannot accept responsibility for statements and interpretations which are wholly the author's. Unsolicited manuscripts cannot be returned unless postage is provided. Contributions t o THE AMERICAN FLY FISHER are t o be considered gratuitous and become the property of the Museum unless otherwise requested b y the contributor. Publication dates arc January, April, July and October. Entered as Second Class matter a t the U. S. Post Office, Manchestcr, Vermont.

@ Copyright 1976, THE AMERICAN FLY FISHER, Manchester, Vermont 05254 . Original material ap- pearing may not be reprinted without prior permission.

CREDITS: Museum photos by David B. Ledlie. Drawings by Austin S. Hogan, Curator. Printing by Thompson, Inc., Manchestcr Center, Vermont

Lower Falls of the Yellowstone River as it appeared in Kipling's day. About a mile above the falls "a two pound trout came up also and we slew him among the rocks, nearly tumbling into that wild river."

Courtesy of Yellowstone Park Files Photo by the famed William Henry Jackson - 1880's

Rudyard Kipling and

American Fly Fishing by Paul Schullery

"I live very largely alone and m y wants are limited to a new fly rod and some flies."

Rudyard Kipling to his editor, 1890

Rudyard Kipling's most enduring contribution to angling literature was his immensely entertaining "On Dry-Cow Fishing as a Fine Art." It appeared in The Fishing Gazet te in December of 1890 and told of his snagging a cow with his backcast while fishing a small English stream. Though his tackle was not orthodox fly-fishing gear, his familiarity with the niceties of fly-angling was obvious. He was evidently using a fly rod, for his lure was a "quill minnow . . . the tacklemaker said that it could be thrown as a fly." After explaining how his "peculiar, and hitherto un- published, methods of fly throwing" resulted in minor personal injuries, he concluded that "fly fishing is a very gory amusement."l

As we shall see, Kipling rarely wrote about fishing. The Dry- Cow story was an exception and is discussed here only to prepare the way for an examination of his American angling adventures.

Rudyard Kipling first visited America in 1889. He was in his early twenties and was traveling west to east, from India to Eng- land, where his career as a writer would soon flourish. His account of the American tour was published serially in an Indian newspaper and later gathered into a book, From Sea t o Sea: Letters of TraveL2

He landed in San Francisco and after a short stay in that city he headed north by rail. His angling enthusiams quickly sur- faced :

A nameless ruffian backed me into a corner and began telling me about the resources of the country, and what it would eventually become. All I remember of his lecture was that you could catch trout in the Sacramento River -- the stream that we followed so faithfullv.

Then rose a tough and wiry old man with grizzled hair and made inquiries about the trout. To him was added the secretary of a life-insurance company. I fancy he was travel- ling to rake in the dead that the train killed. But he, too, was a fisherman, and the two turned to meward . . . The old man was on a holiday in search of fish. When he discovered a brother-loafer he proposed a confederation of rods. Quoth the insurance-agent, "I'm not staying any time in Portland, but I will introduce you to a man there who'll tell you about f i~h ing . "~

Rudyard Kipling, "On Dry-Cow Fishing as a Fine Art," in Fisher- man's Bounty, ed. Nick Lyons (New York: Crown Publishers, Inc., 1970), pp. 357-361. Rudyard Kipling, From Sea t o Sea: Letters of Travel (New York: Doubleday & McClure Company, 1899). Many biographies of Rud- yard Kipling are available. The general biographical information in this paper was gathered from three: Philip Mason, Kipling, The Gloss, The Shadoui and The Fire (London: Johathan Cape, 1975); C. E. Car- rington, The Life of Rudyard Kipling (Garden City: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1956); Howard C. Rice, Rudyard Kipling in New England (Brattleboro, Vermont: The Book Cellar, 1951).

Rudyard Kipling, From Sea t o Sea: Letters of Travel (New York: Doubleday & McClure Company, 1899), pp. 21 ,22 .

In Kipling's narrative his two companions, the old man and the Portlander, became simply "California" and "Portland." As they proceeded up the Columbia River by steamer, Kipling learned more of his quarry:

"You'll see the salmon-wheels 'fore long," said a man who lived "way back on the Washoogle," and whose hat was spangled with trout flies. "Those Chinook salmon never rise to the fly. The canneries take them by the wheeLW4 ~ i ~ l i n ~ saw enough of the canner; operations to be appalled

bv their crude wastefulness. He also saw enough of the salmon - t o excite him about fishing for them. Eventually his little group arrived on the banks of the Clackamas River, a tributary of the Williamette in northwestern Oregon. Here he provided us with his most detailed account of ~ m e r i c a n angling.

I was getting my rod together when I heard the joyous shriek of the reel and the yells of California, and three feet of living silver leaped into the air far across the water. The forces were engaged. The salmon tore up the stream, the tense line cutting the water like a tide-rip behind him, and the light bamboo bowed to breaking.5

As California landed an 11 l /z pounder, Kipling took his turn: I went into that icy-cold river and made my cast just

above a weir, and all but foul-hooked a blue and black water- snake with a coral mouth who coiled herself on a stone and hissed maledictions. The next cast - ah, the pride of it, the regal splendour of it! the thrill that ran down from finger-tip to toe! The water boiled. He broke for the fly and got it! There remained enough sense in me to give him all he wanted when he jumped not once but twenty times before the upstream flight that ran my line out to the last half-dozen turns and I saw the nickled reel-bar glitter under the thinning green coils. My thumb was burned deep when I strove to stopper the Line, but I did not feel it till later, for my soul was out in the dancing water praying for him to turn ere he took my tackle away. The prayer was heard. As I bowed back, the butt of the rod on my left hipbone and the top joint dipping like unto a weeping willow, he turned, and I accepted each

' Ibid., p 28. The reluctance of the Pacific salmons to take the fly was a great disappointment t o many anglers, but by Kipling's time it was known that fly fishing for them could be quite rewarding. See, for ex- ample, Charles Hallock, The Sportsman's Gazetteer and General Guide (New York: Forest and Stream Publishing Company, 1887), pp 364-365, and C. H. Townsend and H. M. Smith, "The Pacific Salm- ons,'' in Dean Sage et. al., Salmon and Trout (New Yo&: The Mac- Millan Company, 1904), p. 178. Both references give specifics of those occasions when salmon may be taken o n the fly. Though the fishing is far from reliable, efforts to find a consistent method for catching Pacific Salmon on a fly have continued to the present, with just enough success t o disprove the blanket contention that it is impossible. Weighted flies and lead-core lines have challenged traditional definitions of the sport, but two modern accounts of fly fishing for chinooks are Roderick Haig-Brown, Fisherman's Fall (New York: Crown Publishers, 1975), pp. 70-75, and Russell Chatham, The Angler's Coast (Garden City: Doubleday & Company, 1976). Kipling, From Sea t o Sea, p. 38.

Page 3

inch of slack that I could b y any means get in as a favor from on High. There be several sorts of success in this world that taste well in the moment of enjoyment, b u t I question whether the stealthy theft of line from an able-bodied salmon who knows exactly what you are doing and why you are doing it is not sweeter than any other victory within human scope. Like California's fish, he ran a t me head o n and leaped against the line, but the Lord gave me two hundred and fifty pairs of fingers in that hour. The banks and the pine trees danced dizzily round me, bu t I continued t o give him the butt while he sulked in a pool. California was farther up t h e reach, and with the corner of my eye I could see him casting with long casts and much skill. Then he struck, and my fish broke for the weir in t h e same instant, and down the reach we came, California and 1; reel answering reel even as the morning stars sung together.

The first wild enthusiasm of capture had died away. We were both at work now in deadly earnest t o prevent the lines fouling, to stall off a downstream rush for deep water just a- bove the weir, and a t the same time t o get the fish into the shallow bay downstream that gave the best practicable landing. Portland bade us both be of good heart, and volunteered t o take the rod from my hands. I would rather have died among the pebbles than surrender my right t o plan and land my first salmon, weight unknown, o n a n eight-ounce rod. I heard California, a t m y ear it seemed, gasping: "He's a fight- er from Fightersville sure!" as his fish made a fresh break across the stream. I saw Portland fall off a log fence, break the overhanging bank, and clatter down t o the pebbles, all sand and landing-net, and I dropped o n a log t o rest for a moment. As I drew breath t h e weary hands slackened their hold, and I forgot t o give him the butt. A wild scutter in the water, a plunge and a break for the headwaters of t h e Clackamas was my reward, and the hot toil of reeling-in with one eye under the water and the other on the top joint of t h e rod, was renewed. Worst of all, I was blocking California's path t o the little landing-bay aforesaid, and he had t o halt and tire his prize where he was. "The Father of all Salmon!" he shouted. "For the love of Heaven, get your t rout to bank, Johnny Bull." But I could n o more. Even the insult failed t o move me. The rest of the game was with the salmon. He suf-

.3

fered himself t o be drawn, skipping with pretended delight a t getting t o the haven where I would fain have him. Yet n o sooner did he feel shoal water under his ponderous belly than he backed like a torpedo-boat, and the snarl of the reel told me that my labour was in vain. A dozen times a t least this happened ere the line hinted he had given up the battle and would be towed in. He was towed. The landing-net was use- less for one of his size, and I would not have him gaffed. I stepped into the shallows and heaved him o u t with a re- spectful hand under the gill, fo r which kindness he battered me about the legs with his tail, and I felt the strength of him and was proud. California had taken my place in the shallows his fish hard held. I was up the bank lying full length on the sweet-scented grass, and gasping in company with my first salmon caught, played and landed o n a n eight-ounce rod. My hands were cut and bleeding. I was dripping with sweat, spangled like harlequin with scales, wet from the waist down, nose-peeled by the sun, bu t utterly, supremely, and consum- mately happy. He, the beauty, the darling, the daisy, my Sal- mon Bahadur, weighed twelve pounds, and I had been seven and thirty minutes bringing him t o bank! He had been lightly hooked on the angle of the right jaw, and the hook had not wearied him. ~ h a i hour I sat among princes and crowned heads -- greater than them a1L6 Kipling and his companion caught several other fish but of

course the first was his favorite. The most tantalizing element in this account is the mention of his "fly." That he was a confirmed fly fisher will become clear later, but if he did indeed take the salmon on a fly it was a notable event for those times. We

Ibid., pp. 38-41.

cannot be certain he did so, for later in the same day's fishing he mentioned losing a spoon. We must also question exactly what it was he was catching. Considering the general ignorance of the local populace concerning the various anadromous fishes, and taking into account the size (all the fish were between six and fifteen pounds) and behavior of the fish described, there is the distinct possibility Kipling was actually catching coho salmon o r ~ t e e l h e a d . ~

After his salmon experience, Kipling continued north to Victoria, where he reported "70 brook trout, lying in a creel, fresh drawn from Harrison Hot S ~ r i n g s . " ~

His wanderings then led him back t o the states, to the in- fant recreational mecca, Yellgwstone National Park. In Mon- tana, a few miles north of the Park, he encountered a legendary local figure, "Yankee Jim," "a picturesque old man with a tal- en t for yarns that Ananias might have envied."

In one point did he speak t h e t ruth -- as regarded the merits of that particular reach of the Yellowstone. He said it was alive with t rout . It was. I fished it from noon till twilight, and the fish bit a t the brown hook as though never a fat trout-fly had fallen o n t h e water. From pebbly reaches, quivering in the heat-haze where the foot caught o n stumps cut four-square b y the chisel-tooth of t h e beaver; past the fringe of the watersnakes; over the drifted timber to the grateful shadow of big trees that darkened t h e holes where the fattest fish lay, I worked for seven hours. The mountain flanks o n either side of the valley gave back the heat as the desert gives it, and the dry sand b y t h e railway tract, where I found a rattlesnake, was hot-iron t o t h e touch. But the trout did not care for the heat. They breasted t h e boiling river for my fly and they got it. I simply dare no t give my bag. At the fortieth t rout I gave up counting, and I had reached the fortieth in less than two hours. They were small fish, - not one over two pounds, - but they fought like small tigers, and I lost three flies before I could understand their methods of escape. Ye gods! That was fishing, though it peeled the skin from m y nose in s t r ips9 Unfortunately, Kipling mentioned the fish in t h e Park only

briefly. His description of the Firehole as a "warm and deadly river wherein no fish breed" will bring a smile t o anyone who has fished that stream. Major stocking of Park waters was not yet underway in 1889 -- many streams now famous for quality angling were barren at that time. He fished t h e Yellowstone in its magnificent canyon, where "the round moon came up and turned the cliffs and pines t o silver: a two pound trout came up also and we slew him among the rocks, nearly tumbling into that wild river."1°

From Yellowstone he found his way t o western Colorado, where after a harrowing train ride through t h e Black Canyon of the Gunnison, he saw tha t river "split itself into a dozen silver threads on a breezy upland," and become a n "innocent trout beck."'

He again had the fortune t o meet a like-minded native, and they "foregathered o n t h e question of flies."

He talked politics and trout-flies all one sultry day as we wandered u p and down the shallows of t h e stream aforesaid. Little fish are sweet. I spent two hours whipping a ripple for In the late nineteenth century the process of defining salmon species was still going on -- many more than the five we now recognize were then described, and the jumble of terminology we now struggle with was probably even worse. Even today terms like "jack salmon" or "spring salmon" are frequently misused. As to the fish's behavior, Chinook salmon are commonly known for their powerful fight rather than for the acrobatics which make coho and steelhead so well-loved. Kipling, From Sea t o Sea, p. 51. Though the technology existed for a transcontinental transplant of the fish we now call the brook trout (Sal~~el inus Fontinalis) in 1889 from the east to British Columbia, it is morp likely Kipling was catching some native trout -another case of word usage -- one of the more common subspecific forms of Pacific coast native trouts recognized at that time was Salmo iridrus masoni, popularly known as "the brook trout of western Oregon." Kipling, t'rom Sea t o Sea, p. 65. Ibid., pp. 84, 104.

l1 Ibid. p. 131.

a fish that I knew was there, and in the pasture-scented dusk and, later in the same work: caught a three-pounder on a ragged old brown hackle and landed him after ten minutes excited argument. He was a beauty. If ever any man works the Western trout-streams, he would d o well t o bring o u t with him the dingiest flies he pos- sesses. The natives laugh a t the tiny English hooks, but they hold, and duns and drabs and sober greys seem t o tickle the aesthetic tastes of the trout. For salmon (but don't say that I told you) use the spoon -- gold on one side, silver o n the other. It is as killing as is a similar article with fish of another calibre. The natives seem t o use much too coarse tack1e.l At last, Kipling provided some specifics of his sport, even re-

vealing t h e sensitivity that there is, in certain circles, shame in using spoons rather than flies for salmon. The first readers of Fronl Sea t o Sea who expected more discussions of American trout-fishing were t o be disappointed, though, for Kipling said nothing else o n the subject. We can only wonder what streams he fished while in the east.

Three years after his first visit Kipling returned t o America. He took a n American wife in 1892 and spent most of the following four years in Brattleboro, Vermont. During this time, he produced some of his most famous works, including the J~ ing le Hooks and Captains Courageous, but left little o r n o record of fishing.

We know for certain that his interest in fishing did not wane: Captains Courageous involved him in extensive research about fishing and fishing fleets. Evidence of his own angling is frustrat- ingly slim. He traveled, perhaps more than once, to Gaspe, where he fished for salmon. It may not be t o o presumptuous t o imagine he used a fly. At least t h e Canadian experience bore literary fruit, as it was there he wrote the following lines in "The Feet of t h e Young Men." Now the Four-way Lodge is opened, now the Hunting Winds are loose --

Now the Smokes of Spring go u p t o clear the brain; Now the Young Men's hearts are troubled for the whisper of the Trues,

Now t h e Red Gods make their medicine again! Who hath seen the beaver busied? Who hath watched the blacktail mating?

Who hath lain alone t o hear the wildgoose cry? Who hath worked the chosen water where the ouananiche is waiting,

Or the sea-trout's jumping crazy for t h e fly?

Do you know the blackened timber - d o you know that racing stream

With the raw, right-angled log-jam a t the end; And the bar of sun-warnled shingle where a man may bask and dream

To the click of shod canoe-poles round t h e bend? It is there that we arc going with our rods and reels and traces,

To a silent, smoky Indian that we know - T o a couch of new-pulled hemlock, with the starlight o n our faces,

For the Red Gods call us o u t and we must go!' On these rare occasions when Kipling mentioned fishing, he

exhibited such enthusiasm that we can only wonder he did not write more. Even while in England, where he fished both fresh and salt water, he was rarely moved to discuss the sport. His reluctance was surely our loss, fo r his few accounts of fly fishing in this country were both animated and instructive. Besides the passages quoted so far there are also brief references in his writings to tarpon-fishing in Florida and sturgeon-fishing o n the Columbia River (though neither hints that he personally parti- cipated). In his autobiography he described a "select fishing club" in England, of which he was a member. He remarked,

rather regretfully, that the rest of the membership were mostly "keen on roach, dace and such."14 The evidence from both his British and his American books is great enough for us to assume he was a devoted angler. It is hoped that perhaps other material has been overlooked in this study -- the angling literature of both countries will certainly be the richer for his contributions.

l2 Ibid., p. 132-133. l3 Rudyard Kipling, The Five Notions (New York: Doubleday, Page &

Company, 1903), pp. 3840. Ouananiche, also known as ouininnish and winninish in the nineteenth century, were landlocked salmon.

l4 Rudyard Kipling, Something of Myself (Garden City: Doubleday, Doran& Company, Inc., 1937), p. 155.

Below: The F i e h o l e River in t h e 1870's . . . described b y Kipliig as a "warm and deadly river wherein n o fish breed."

Courtesy Yellowstone Park Files Photo b y William Henry Jackson

Ceylon Rivers (Trout and Mahseer in Ceylon)

by Philip I<. Crowe

The late Ambassador Philip K. Crowe was born in New York City in 1908. His varied career included an education at the University of Virginia, a reporter for the "New York Evening Post" and 0. S. S. during World War 11. He entered the diplomatic service in 1948 and became Ambassador to Ceylon, 1953 and Ambassador to the Union o f South Africa in 1959. He was an ardent fisher and hunter and wrote several books relating to his adventures with the rod and gun. He became a Museum Trustee just prior to his death in 1975.

Rudyard Kipling would be quite a t home in the Hill Club at Nuwara Eliya in the tea-covered mountains of Ceylon. He would gaze appreciatively at the antlered heads in the billiard room, and sip his port before an open fire in the library. He would also be at home with many of the members. In the club secretary, Colonel Newton-King, late of His Majesty's Bombay Grenadiers, he would find a kindred soul with whom he could discuss by- gone race meets and old friends. They might be joined by Colonel R. C. Wall, former commander of the 8 th Ghurkas, and the talk would swing north to skirmishes on the Frontier and stone forts guarding remote passes under the snows of the Him- alayas.

Perhaps because I was brought up on Kipling, the Club had infinite appeal for me. I liked to talk to old Perera, the chief butler who has been with the Club thirty-three years and remembered hearing his father tell of the legendary planter, A. W. Plate, who, in the year of grace, 1903, took from Lake Gregory a ten-pound-nine-ounce record trout and then beat himself by landing a fourteen-pound-four-ounce leviathan a few weeks later. Perera once led me to the dim recesses of the billiard room where he proudly showed me a faded photograph of both history-making fish.

Then there is the Complaint Book, a yellowed volume in which members have been voicing their just anger for the past eighty years. On September 20, 1891, Mr. Bagot, the sporting planter, M. F. H., and father of my friend, Charles Bagot, wrote "nothing to eat for early tea. ~ s k e d for herring and was told none. Asked for bacon and sausages and was told chief clerk had gone out with key to store room. Breakfast and dinner also inferior - even pepper and toothpicks musty." Proper dress was also the subject of a tart item in the Complaint Book: "It looks very bad," said an irate member in 1900, "to see members dining in golfing kit without collars." On the express request of the secretary, I will omit certain references t o fleas in the billiard room. Suffice it to say, they were evidently not so numerous as t o impede the balls.

Kipling would not feel out of place in the dining rooms either. There is the men's dining room where ancient planters and I used to eat alone much in the manner of crusty lions. The waiters, or keepers, from long experience know better than to talk t o us. They put the food in front of us, stood silently at attention until it was consumed, and then removed the plates at the exact moment the last morsel of food vanished from the plate. Book rests, supporting worn issues of Blackwoods Maga- zine or The Field, adorn every table and, except for the occasional turning of a page or the grinding of teeth, nothing breaks the pristine peace of the men's dining room.

The mixed dining room presents a far gayer picture. Planters and their wives, in from the outstations for the weekend, do

their very best to enjoy themselves and with the help of liquid refreshment, often succeed. Another volume of Plain Tales From the Hills could be drawn from life in this hill station. Similarity with the Indian hill station of Simla, which is also about 6,000 feet high, is quite marked and sometimes I forgot I was on an island only eight degrees north of the equator and instinctively glanced upward to where the snow peaks should be.

Aside from golf and bridge, which I don't play, there are ad- vantages in both resorts. Simla has miles of bridle paths and some good hill shooting, while Nuwara Eliya has fishing. Back at the turn of the century, Scots tea planters a t great cost and greater effort, imported rainbow trout over from California and today the Ceylon Fishing Club stocks some fifty miles of streams and lakes. The fish are wild and the going is often tough but the sport is first class.

I remember particularly a day on the Bula Ella in 1957 with Abdul, the old Malay watcher who has been with the Fishing Club 44 years and knows more about trout than many trout do about themselves. He met me at the path down from his house in the clear cold dawn and we drove along the Kandapola road till we turned right on the private road of Pedro Estate. Tamil girls were gathering for the early muster and we smelled the sweet smell of fermenting tea as we passed the factory. Then by a series of hairpin turns we dropped a thousand feet to the "Rest and Be Thankful" patnas, the grass meadows of the Cey- lonese uplands, and at the foot of the patnas arrived at the dark line of the jungle and the headwaters of the Bula Ella.

Abdul selected a small Alexander from my fly case and tied it carefully t o a 3X leader, remarking while he worked that pea- fowl made the best Alexanders and that I must send him the tailfeathers of the next one I shot. He also appropriated my reel and net and led me down a jungle path to one of the most difficult stretches of water it has ever been my pleasure and trouble t o fish. The Bula Ella is not a big stream, but it runs through the dense matted jungle whose prickly creepers seem to reach out to snag one's fly. It can be waded in places, but the bottom is mainly mud and a cloud of dirty water is apt to result. Fishing from the banks is equally difficult for they are almost all rot- ten and the fisherman is either precipitated into the drink or bogged to his thighs.

There is some fast water where the stream drops over boulders but most of the fish lie in long glassy pools where they can survey the landscape with ease and smile at one's efforts to drop a fly near them. I am a pretty good fly fisherman in America, Canada, England, Kasmir and Alaska, but the rainbows of Cey- lon put me in my place. The same cast that would tempt a mon- ster on the Test or the Liddar, only amuses the denizens of the Bula Ella. Abdul finally came to my rescue and explained that

Author with tiger fish caught in Zalnbesi River in Caprivi Strip, South Africa.

only a rapidly worked fly had any chance of success. He asked me t o cast straight across the long pools, let the fly sink and then retrieve it b y quick jerks. Such a flogging of the water, which would pu t down trout in the more sophisticated streams of the west, proved immediately effective. I caught three nice ten-inch t rout and lost a good two-pounder.

On the bank of the Elbow Pool we rested and Abdul told me something of his life. He went to work for the Fishing Club in 1914 when R. H. Festing was the Government Agent of the Central Province. Those were the days of horses and Abdul remembered planters riding o u t t o the streams with their rods carried like lances. He told of the great fishermen of those heroic days; o f t h e six-pounder caught in a Nuwara Eliya stream in 1907 b y a hero whose name even Abdul had forgotten; and many other great fishing planters who have passed on.

1 saw the droppings of otter, and Abdul showed me the bones of fish and crabs in them. He said the ot ter kill many trout and he traps them. Poaching, the bane of the Fishing Club's fifty-odd miles of water, is not a factor on the Bula Ella. The Boy Scouts, who have a camp on the stream, undoubtedly catch a few tiddlers with worms but no one would deny them this pleasure, and there is always the chance that they will grow into fly fishermen.

My favorite stream is the Ambewella, a cold, clear brook which meanders through the high patnas at above the 6,000- foot level and provides almost every kind of fishing from the easy stretches near the watcher's shack t o the jungle reaches where the going is almost as tough as the Bula Ella. But the

stream provides many pleasures besides the fish. Rounding a clump of blossoming rhododendron, I saw a leopardess and her two cubs not fifty feet away. The wind was away from them t o me and the murmur of the stream must have muffled t h e sounds of my approach for I watched them for several minutes before the young lady and her children finished their drink and melted into the jungle.

Farther down the stream where it enters the jungle, a family of wanderoo monkeys swung through the upper terraces of the trees. Handsome gray-bearded simians, these big hill monkeys look like sedate old clubmen. They form the main diet of the hill leopards and are always on the alert for the spotted maraud- ers. Sambhur deer also frequent t h e patnas and I have often seen their slot marks in the sand of the banks. A hundred years ago, Sir Samuel Baker used t o hunt sambhur with hounds on these grasslands, bu t today the hill sambhur are protected and there are some fine stags in the area.

The weather is usually perfect. Brilliant sunshine, high white clouds, and cool winds,-b"t it can be as cold and dou'as Scot- land. There was the evening when t h e southwest monsoon with its rainy burden from the Bay of Bengal rolled like a damp blanket over the mountains and clothed the serried rows of tea bushes with a mantle of mist. It was not a good evening for fishing and when I left the open fire of my snug room in the Hill Club t o t ry and tempt the big t rout of Portswood, I was full of misgivings. These became magnified on the chill drive to Court Lodge Estate some six miles away on the Kandapola road. Ports- wood Dam, a set of three small ponds totaling only a few acres in extent, lies in a bowl of the hills high on the estate, and by the time I had driven up t o it, the rain was falling so hard that I could barely see where the line of the tea melted into the gray - . blackness of the heavens.

Despite the inclement weather, a small group of Tamils were gathered in the lee of the fishing shed and told my servant that one of their number had drowned himself in one of the ponds and the body, after lying submerged for about a week, had been retrieved only that afternoon. Carefully avoiding that particular pond, I tied o n a coachman and began whipping the wind-lashed water. No fish were rising and I was beginning t o shiver and think longingly of my waiting bath and whiskey and soda when there was a heavy surge behind my fly and I felt the sucking strike of a big trout. Tightening my line, I put pressure on the fish and was just about t o begin t o feel him o u t when he rose from the water, turned over like a sinking gunboat and threw my fly. It was twilight but I saw the fish clearly and estimated its weight a t least five pounds. Soon afterwards, complete darkness came and I left the unlucky ponds for t h e warm cheeriness of the Hill Club bar where t h e size of the fish I had lost grew many pounds in the telling.

The Hill Club, the trout, and Nuwara Eliya itself all illustrate t h e ability of the British to fashion a little bit of England on alien soil, but nowhere is their stamp more apparent than in the Golf Club. This venerable institution, which was begun by the officers of t h e Gordon Highlands in the late years of the last century, is still the favorite of the ancient regime.

Take H. J . G. Marley, a spry gentleman of eighty who plays his eighteen holes, smokes his pipe and drinks the excellent produce of Scotland. Born in Somerset, where he used t o hunt with t h e Devon and Somerset Stag Hounds, Mr. Marley came t o Cey- lon as a tea planter sixty years ago and went t o the Boer War with the first contingent of the Ceylon volunteers. And despite the changes of more than half a century, he surveys the brave new world with appreciation and humor. It is, in fact, this abil- i ty t o cope with the times that stands the British in good stead in every country of their erstwhile empire. Men like the Colonels a t the Hill Club and the Planters a t the Golf Club did a good deal for the East, and, in their way, are still doing it.

The t rout streams of the high tea country d o not furnish all the sporting possibilities in Ceylon. There are also the low country rivers where the mahseer, the "salmon of the East," lurks in the deep pools. Although of the lowly carp family, the mahseer has nothing in common with goldfish. Endowed with more fin and tail areas in proportion to his body than most

game fish, the mahseer is capable of great speed and has a firm desire to remain in his river. In India, mahseer reach two hundred pounds but in Ceylon a twenty-five pounder would merit an honored stuffing. Furthermore, these handsome fish are much rarer on the Island than they are on the Sub-continent. The Ceylon rivers are smaller, are easier to poison and dynamite, with the result that, except in the remote stretches of the jungle rivers, they are almost extinct.

The Menik Ganga, the river of gems, is among the loveliest in Ceylon. Rising on the tea-girt hills of the Province of Uva, it flows for a hundred meandering miles to empty at last among the yellow sand dunes of Yala into the blue waters of the Indian Ocean. Much of its course flows through virgin jungle where its clear waters sustain the wild life. During the time of the drought one can see many species of the big and small game of the Island.

We camped on the bank of the river in the Galge district and a prettier sight would be hard to find. Great kumbukkan trees spread their branches in a cathedral arch above us; and the breeze, which running water seems to generate, cooled us; and always there was the murmur of the stream as it tumbled over the rocks. In the dawn and the evening the shama sang us his sweet song and bronze wing, green and imperial pigeons held bright discourse in the trees. We saw white-necked storks and white-breasted king-fishers and a host of other birds, while in the quick tropic evenings, graceful spotted deer stole across the sands to drink within a hundred yards of the camp. Once an old cow elephant spotted my wife sketching and padded gravely in her direction. At night, other animals called and in the shadows beyond the camp fires, we heard the staccato bell of a sambhur stag and the sawing sound of a hunting leopard.

Gems have been found in the sands of the Menik Ganga, since the days of the Sinhalese kings. Sapphires, garnets, aqua- marines, cats eyes, topazes, moonstones, tourmalines and other jewels are picked up in their pale opaque form by licensed gem- mers and a host of illegal collectors. But gems are not the only precious things to be found under the waters of the famous streams; there are also fish, and 1 wanted a mahseer, which, during my three years on the Island, I tried without success to catch. Then on my f i s t afternoon's stroll along the bank, I sighted the silver shadow of my dream fish. I hadcaught many of these battlers in India but this was the first one I had seen in Ceylon. My tackle was back at camp but Fernando had a few rusty hooks and a length of string which I hastily tied to a willow pole. Baiting with a fresh-water shrimp, I dropped the con- traption in a swirl where the water cascaded over some rocks. There was a rush, a tug and the mahseer took off with a shrimp, hook, and two feet of the string. The fish could not have weighed two pounds, but if 1 had caught it, I would have mounted it on a silver plaque.

My companions were all knowledgeable jungle men. Bill Phil- lips, author of M a m m a l s of Ceylon, the standard work, and Birds of Ceylon, a delightful set of prints and descriptive matter for the beginner, had spent forty-five years in the Island as a planter and, in my opinion, knew more about the jungles than any other European. It was the last jungle trip for us both, as Bill was retiring and going to the Maldive Islands to make stud- ies of the fauna of that little-known archipelago, and I was about to conclude my tour of duty as American Ambassador to Ceylon. There was William Abeysekera, chief engineer of the Government Factory, President of the Ceylon Hunting Club, and the man who first showed me the Island's jungles. He and his wife, Loi, had accompanied my wife, Irene, and me on many of our expeditions into the bush and the Menik Ganga trip took place on the third anniversary of our first shoot at Wilpattu in the fall of 1953. Eric Fernando, a leading taxidermist, was the fifth member of the party.

The professional staff was headed by Babun Appu, a grizzled game watcher of the Wild Life Department, who had begun life as a poacher and as a result had the finest possible experience for catching these shady gentlemen. As Babun had been kicked in the face by a wounded deer and lost virtually all his teeth, he learned to laugh tight-lipped. The camp staff was commanded

by Ponniah, my excellent cook, and my chauffeur, Ernest Kot- elawala, handled the jeep transport,

Looking over my diary of those jungle days, I find that I fished early every morning and most evenings without another strike. The pools were clear and twice more I saw the gleam of a mahseer as it vanished in the depths, yet they would not hit my plug. The same imitation chub that had hooked and landed mahseer in the great rivers of Kashmir and Mysore proved nothing. But the best part of fishing is not always the catching, and as I waded the Menik Ganga, I read in the sands the tale of the animals that had come to drink.

Tracks of leopard were everywhere and a blind had been con- structed out of driftwood at a place in the river where they were particularly evident. Bill, Fernando and I, with a brace of.track- ers, made ourselves as comfortable as we could in the sand and waited. Scarcely had we settled down when a barking deer buck stepped daintily from the forest and picked his way across the sand to the river. He was followed soon afterward by a big spotted buck and his harem of four does. I noted that these deer usually send one of their wives to reconnoiter the terrain before venturing out themselves.

The sun was setting and we were just about to start home when we heard a strange, eerie cry. Babun said "Ulama," which Bill translated as devil bird, but added that the cry was probably made by the Ceylon hawk eagle sitting near by on a dead tree; and I noted the black and white crest which, according to the Sinhalese folk tale is the comb of the distraught woman who discovered that her husband had cooked.and eaten their child.

In the morning we returned to the blind to find that a big male leopard had jumped into it and possibly used it as a hid- ing place in which to wait for deer.

- -

Abey shot a wild pig, a large sow, and noticing a pungent smell, investigated the nearby underbrush where he found the remains of a spotted deer, which a leopard had killed the previous night and which the sow had been eating. A hide had been built and in the late afternoon I sat up over the remains. Soon after I took up my vigil a tribe of wanderoos, the gray Langur monkeys, settled in the satin trees around us. The afternoon waned and, at six o'clock, a pair of sloth bears came shambling down the dry brook which separated us from the kill. The male, a fierce-looking old brute, sniffed the bait, and mounting the bank to the ledge where it was tied, started to eat. The light was fading and my gun arm cramped from long disuse: I missed and the bear with a deep grunt went tearing off into the jungle.

The sun had set and we walked back three miles to camp along the river. Twilight heightened the giant trees and threw long shadows across the pools. A herd of wild buffalo emerged with a crash from the shallows, stood sniffing the breeze, and vanished silently like great black ghosts. Even more silent was the elephant we sighted as we rounded a corner. A bull, with the sunken head of age, he failed to see us until we were quite close and only when we shouted did he amble off, driftink through the dense jungle of wait-a-bit thorns as if they were silken.

The same evening, Abey sat up on the rocks at Vihara Pud- ana and fired both barrels at a huge leopard which he failed to hit. Perhaps the beauty of the location affected his aim, for the view from the old ruined d a g b a which crowns the rocks is worth going a long way to see. To the north, blue in the distance, lies the Haputale range and on the south, the seven hills of Kataragama, while on all sides, like a green tide, stretches the jungle. The water hole at Vihara Pudana consists of a deep green pool imbedded like a pouch in the rounded flank of the fast whale-backed rock. When he first approached it, Abey found an eight-foot crocodile sunning itself beside the pool, but, before he could shoot, it vanished in the water. The croc was fat with the deer that had come to the water hole.

Galge is on the trail by which pilgrims walk to the Katara- gama temple and there are tales of old people dying in the jungle and being eaten by leopards. This may be true, as many thousands of all ages walk hundreds of miles to worship at the shrine of this ancient Hindu deity and for much of the way they

must camp in the wilds. Be this as it may, there are few authent- icated stories of leopards attacking live people in the area and the average Ceylon leopard, unless wounded, will do all in his power toascape coming to grips with man. Of course, there are exceptions. Twenty-five years ago, R. S. Agar, a planter, shot a man-eater credited with fourteen persons in the Eastern Pro- vince. Fernando mounted the beast and told me that there was no physical defect which might cause it to turn on man. A four- year-old male about six feet long and in excellent health, the leopard bit its victims in the neck, dragged them in the jungle, and ate them a t his leisure. Agar shot it over its last kill, a young postal runner. All the victims were men.

Sitting around the camp fire talking of leopards and leopard shooting, Fernando told us of a bad time he had had in 1927. He was shooting in Yala a t a time when the pilgrim trail ran through that area and several corpses of partly consumed persons had been found. Fernando heard monkeys, and immediately recognizing their cries as denoting the presence of a leopard, he set out to stalk the beast. He found it in the scrub and shot it, hitting it low on its right side with a bullet from a .375 Mann- licker. It was getting dark, and not wishing to make the follow- up in such poor light, he returned to camp. The following morning, he returned with two men to retrieve his kill. But instead of finding a dead animal, they faced one very much alive. The leopard charged Fernando who fired at him and missed. Then with the leopard a t his feet, Fernando tried to fire again, only to find his gun was empty. Springing aside, Fernando evaded the leopard who was weak from loss of blood and ran away. Fernando then reloaded and tracked the leopard but never found it.

We saw seven elephants during our five days on the Menik Ganga and heard many more. Three of the elephants were cows with calves a t heel, an encouraging sign, for the elephant is harried by the march of civilization and his breeding is said to be adverselv affected. Few calves are born of cavtive ele~hants. No one knows what the remaining elephant population of Ceylon is, but the informed guesses range from 800 to 1,000. I lean toward the latter figure for no survey has ever been taken and there is always a tendency to be pessimistic on such guesses. I had always heard that the Nilgiri wild goat was virtually extinct, but on a trip to Ootocamund was told that at least four hundred had been counted on the high ranges of the Western Ghats.

There was also ample evidence that bear and leopard are holding their own in the Kataragama jungles. At every rock, water hole, and jungle pool, we found their tracks. Both may survive a long time, as poachers have no use for the bears; they cannot sell their flesh or skins. While there is a fairly good market for leopard skins, the hunting of the big cats is uncertain and pays nothing like the dividends derived from the illicit slaughter and subsequent sale of spotted deer and sambhur meat.

The few deer we saw were thin and harried; for drought lay on the forest and there was little to eat. As John Still vividly painted it in Jungle Tide: "When the scorching wind rushes through the woods for months on end, and the papery leaves rustle harshly on wiry twigs; when every footfall in the forest is betrayed by the crunching of its parched carpet; when soil in hollows that once were ponds grows brick hard, and deep cracks chequer the baked mud where the footprints of the last beasts to seak water there remain cast as though in cement until again dissolved by the rains . . ."

This dryness made stalking, the most challenging manner of hunting, even more difficult than it usually is. We heard a leopard while waiting in a blind above the river at midday and I decided to try and find it by heeding the danger signals of the animals and the birds. There were many deer near the river and we could easily follow the leopard's path by their warning barks. When these died out, the gray langur monkeys took up the tale; when their shrill danger calls ceased, we had to rely on the tell- tale twitter of the birds.

We turned inland from the river, and, trudging up the soft white sand of a dry feeder stream, followed it for perhaps a quarter of a mile. The leopard also used it and three times we

came on the fresh pad marks of a big male. We came to a great mee tree, overturned by lightning, and found under its octopus- like roots a dark cave. It was high noon and just the placL to tempt a leopard to curl up to avoid the heat. Cautiously we approached the entrance and Babun threw a stone in while I covered the black hole with my shotgun. (A rifle is fine for long shots from a blind but a shotgun loaded with slugs is a far more effective weapon for close work.) The cave was empty and.the only moment that might have given us high drama passed quiet- 'Y.

Quite as exciting as shooting is the photographing of dangerous game at night, and one evening I sat with Abey and Fernan- do on the rocks of Vihara Gala while no less than four bears played around in the surrounding jungle; but, evidently smelling us due to the shifting winds, they refused to come and have their pictures taken. I was using a ~ i k k o n with a telephoto lens, a camera with which I had previously made some good flashlight shots of game in India. The Ceylon sloth bear has poor eyes, a fact that may cause him to charge when startled, but his nose and ears are excellent, and nothing would tempt these bears, even though they must have been very thirsty, to climb the rock pool when the scent of their arch enemy, man, hung over it. A big porcupine, making as much noise as any bear, came up rattl- ing his quills, and a brace of mongoose snarled at each other as they jockeyed for the first drink. Off in the jungle we heard the crash of branches as an elephant fed, and, nearer, the sharp bark of a spotted deer scenting the leopard. The moon rose at eleven and lit the jungle with its pale candle. Near us a bayhanded cuckoo called and faintly on the evening breeze I heard a crest- ed hawk eagle.

It was an unforgettable scene, and as the moon sailed high over the ruined dagoba from which the rock got its name, I thought of other nights in the Ceylon jungles and of how much they have meant to me. I remembered camps pitched on. the sands of Mahaweli when the elephants of the swamps trumpeted in our very ears and we built the fires high for protection. I thought of moonlight vigils in the jungles of Okanda when I waited for leopards, and a starry evening on the sand spit of Kumana when I hooked a forty-pound estuary perch and finally dragged it triumphantly to the beach. 1 remembered the still September evening in Nuwara Eliya when the big trout rose on the Bula Ella and my leader parted with a twang like a devil's harp . . . Memories of jungle and stream that money cannot buy and time cannot erase.

Sporting Journeys, 1966

IN THEIR

'6 How do you do it, sonny?" "Easy mister. I bin studyin' their 'abits fer years!"

Page 9

ANNUAL MEETING

First Annual Awards Dinner and Auction Scintillates The 1977 Annual Meeting of the Museum took place at the

Avalanche Motel, Manchester, Vermont on Saturday, May 21st. The attendance was notable for its talent and dedication. To enjoy the quiet greatness of a dedicated group is a rare privilege and if there is such a thing as an angling royalty, it is certainly manifest in our membership. Museums are not easy things to perpetuate and it was heart warming to count the number who were willing to help the cause. After the business meeting was ended and cocktails were served - if the crowns and tiaras slip- ped a bit forward on the nose or hung precariously over one ear, this was the proper place for them. We accomplished a great deal and had a wonderful time.

The business meeting was convened at 2 p.m., Vice Presi- dent, Austin S. Hogan, Chairman, presiding.

Let me emphasize that our Museum has a grand concept. We seek to change the fly fisher's world and over the years of our existence, we have done exactly this. The mundane proposals that come to fruition leave no doubt we have had more success- es than failures. Our exhibits have become more attractive, our magazine expands and the continual contributions of memorabilia become more selective and of greater value each year, all to the advantage of the fly fishing public.

Treasurer, Leigh H. Perkins opened the meeting with his financial report. We survive but our head is barely above water. His activities during the immediate past have been directed to soliciting contributions in large amounts from individuals. There is a possibility we may receive a grant of $7,000 from a private foundation.

Registrar, David Ledlie reported the purchase of a humidifier which is now in operation in our storage facility and the addition of sound to the exhibit rooms.

The Curator, instead of a formal report, discussed particular problems with the Trustees directly.

Specific action was taken in regard to increasing the membership through using the Museum magazine as a communication link and demonstration model mailed to a prospective member. Planning for this activity is in progress.

Due to increased activities and the Museum's rapid growth, it was voted to advertise for a full time Executive Director. Funds were budgeted for this purpose and the Executive Committee will take action through the Orvis News and other media. The present Curator will continue as editor of the Museum magazine.

Old Trustees reelected and new Trustees elected are as follows (includes officers):

President - Carl Navarre Vice President - Austin S. Hogan

Treasurer - Leigh H. Perkins Registrar - David B. Ledlie

Secretary and Ass't Treasurer - Laura Towslee Assistant Registrar - Ruth Upson

Trustees Robert Barrett Peter Kriendler Richard Bauer Dana S. Lamb Kay F. Brodney Ernest Schwiebert, Jr. Charles E. Brooks Ralph Wahl G. D. Finlay Richard Whitney Susie Isaksen Ed Zern Martin J. Keane

Upon the close of the meeting, there was an immediate rush to the rumpus room where appropriate beverages and good conversation initiated the festivities.

Our first Awards Dinner was a most enjoyable change from previous programs. G. Dick Finlay, that bon vivant of the

Battenkill, acted as Master of Ceremonies with flair and distinct- ion. Our first presentations were The Mary Orvis Marbury Award given to two lovely ladies, Trustee Kay F. Brodney and Anne K. Secor. Kay as a Library staff member has provided us not only with technological material but is now helping research a new literary discovery which may, in the future, be something of a bombshell. Anne, of course, is the key to the success of The American Fly Fisher. Her layouts and typography make it beautiful. The Museum's Literary Award was given to Dana S. Lamb. At 74, clear of eye and strong of purpose, he stood before us and read for our pleasure the lovely poem by Thomas Doubleday that appeared on his testimonial. The Arnold Ging- rich Memorial Award was presented to Dr. Alvin Grove, Jr. for his many contributions to the Museum and his long years as the forceful editor of Trout magazine. No one has given more to the causes of conservation or performed his tasks more ably. The Fly Fisher of the Year Award was presented to Donald Zahner, editor and publisher of the Fly Fisherman Magazine. This publication is the first of its kind in America and demonstrates his exceptional talent. His speech of acceptance was brilliant and I can think of no one who over the past half dozen years has been more witty and entertaining. So much so, we insist that he be with us next year as a principal speaker.

Limitations of space prevent a naming of the members who came from the far away places. Of the 66 people who attended, 90% travelled from as far away as Canada; Portland, Maine; Florida; Pennsylvania; Connecticut and the furthermost pre- cincts just to be with us and lend their support. If there was a tiredness from the miles of travel, it was forgotten and the whole place sparkled from dinner time (hosted by Olive and Charles Barnes) through our Second Annual Auction.

Many thanks to all the generous fly fishers who contributed. The Orvis Company donated hundreds of dollars worth of prints and fly rods; Martin Keane, not only contributed autographed copies of his books, as did Shirley Woods, but Marty donated an antique solid gold tournament casting medal to the Museum's collections. I was delighted to provide water colors and drawings and as the Trustees had authorized sales of Museum duplicates, we could offer more than a hundred fine items. Many more thanks to such as Ed Oliver and the others who hand carried their donations to Manchester.

Major Domo of the auction was the irresistible Col. Henry Siegel. The man has an amazing talent for opening pocket books. Who else but Hank could get the vast sums he did, under the circumstances of such a relatively small group of bidders. Perhaps it was his scarlet vest stretched across his ample diaphragm that focused attention. More likely, Col. Siegel's knowledge of books and antiques gave confidence to the bidders. When the voice began to crack and waver after the first hour, he was relieved by Ben Upson who also did a fine job. Up- on returning to the rostrum, Hank again unloosened the purse strings and in the end, the Museum had raised $3,000.

Special thanks are given Ruth Upson and David Ledlie for their organizational contributions. David accomplished the arduous task of selecting duplicate items from the Museum's holdings and Ruth spent many hours doing the bookkeeping before and during the auction. Without their attention to detail, an auction would have been impossible.

It was a grand affair and so successful there is the promise that our Annual Meeting next year will be even more rewarding.

With finest regards, Austin S. Hogan,

Vice President For the Trustees

Xis hin )

o , take thine angle, and with practised line, ight as the gossamer, the current sweep nd if thou failest in the calm still deep

the sunbeams shine; the shadows, where the waters creep,

ith all honor and apprecia

Fishing in New Hampshire Sunapee Trout

The natural history of the unusual trout found in Lake-Suna- pee, New Hampshire is obscure. Eventually named Aureolus, it received little publicity until about the 1880's when state fish culturists and others became involved in determining to what family of fishes it rightfully belonged, and whether or not it was aboriginal to Lake Sunapee. During the development of artificial propagation in New Hampshire, so many different species of trout had been imported from Europe that it was considered very possi'ole the Sunapee lake trout, which seemed definitely not a common lake trout or speckled brook trout, was an im- port and an Alpine saibling. Controversy flaired, died down and the specie having been discovered in other parts of North Ameri- ca is simply designated Aureolus, for its beauty and brilliant coloring. What may be the earliest record of its existence seems to have been recorded in The Spirit of the Times, April 4, 1857, through a letter to its editor.

Calling himself Artegal, a tourist described his New Hamp- shire experience. Apparently from a western state, he tells of fishing the Gunnison, named after a Lieutenant killed by In- dians in Utah. He observed that pickerel had depleted the brook trout at the junction of the Gunnison and its inlet to Sunapee Lake. Pickerel were not native there but had been transplanted by native residents to the lake where they had apparently done extensive damage to the brook trout population. The letter continues with descriptions of the area fishes: "The fishes of our ponds may be briefly named by their common names, others must supply the scientific names for I can not. There is the horn pout, which looks like the cat fish but rarely reaches three pounds. There is the perch, usually small, though in Sunapee Lake, at a rocky point where the water is deep, in March or September, when an east wind is blowing hard, some will be caught weighing from one to three pounds. There is the roach, or flat side, or sunfish, too numerous to mention which we used to catch in the sunny pot holes of the Mississippi bottoms; the pickerel, though there are a few pike here, a few in the Connect-

icut River, weighing not often as high as five pounds and a half; the sucker or barrel fish with his purse-like mouth, the pond shiner, looking much like gold fish in their sphere of glass and water and the snake-like silver eel. These constitute with scarcely an exception, the fish of our ponds, if I except the trout. In Winnepisogee Lake, there are fish not known in this section, but in Sunapee Lake, with the exception of the trout, the fish are the same in all ponds.

"The beach of this pond is very white, and formed mostly by deposits of disintegrated quartz, with hardly a trace of mica; and while it was a splendid trout lake, and the rendezvous of the Sunapee Indians from which it takes its name, now as intimated before, there are but few trout, and those seem to be a different breed from the brook trout of the state, averaging larger than they do but not by half so large as the Winnepisogee trout.

"In the brooks we have here, so far as my knowledge extends but two varieties of trout, the common yellowish, white bellied, and the red salmon-trout."

Admittedly, the mention as an identification of the Aureolus leaves much to be desired but the letter does throw some light on subsequent events and what appears to be an unaccountable population explosion that occurred a number of years later.

The Aureolus is a deep water trout. From the 1840's on Lake Sunapee was heavily netted by native residents, the common Fontinalis being salted, barreled and shipped to Portland and Boston for several decades. This accounts for the dearth of common trout mentioned byArtega1 and offers an explanation as to why a lack of competition allowed an explosion. There is the thought that the heavy netting of the common trout may have saved Aureolus from extinction. It's doubtful if the introduction of pickerel could have eliminated a trout population in a lake as large as Sunapee.

In regard to any satisfactory contribution to present day sport fishing, the Aureolus in Sunapee is of little value.

. , Scenic View on Road to Sunapee - 1874

Bridges were enclosed, old timers say, to prevent high jumping fish from scaring the horses. Page 12

Early

fish

cul

turi

sts

nam

ed t

his

beau

tifid

fish

, fir

st "d

i~co

vere

d'~ in

Sun

apee

Lak

e, N

ew

Ham

pshi

re,

a la

ke t

rout

, som

etim

es a

blu

e ba

cked

"O

qu~s

sa,'~

an

d Sa

luel

inus

Alp

inus

Au

reol

us,

a sa

iblin

g Fi

sher

men

cal

l it A

ureo

lus,

the

Gol

den

Trou

t of

Suna

pee.

The

top

weig

ht d

urin

g th

e 18

80's

was a

roun

d 9 p

ound

s, th

e ave

rage

, fro

m t

he d

eepe

st w

ater

abo

ut

5 po

unds

. A.

D. T

aylo

r, th

e arti

st di

d a

mag

nific

ent j

ob.

from

Mou

ntai

n, L

ake a

nd R

iver b

y ha

nk M

. Joh

nson

, 190

2

THE SPORTSMAN TOURIST

Grayling Fishing in Alaska

"The grayling is supposed by some writers to have been introduced to this country by the monks, when England was under the see of Rome; and i t has often been described as a favourite fish o f St. Ambrose. This opinion has been strengthened by the grayling being very local, and from its being found at present in most of the rivers which run near the ruins of our ancient monastic institutions."

It's a far cry and a long holler from the peaceful English rivers to the wild white water o f Alaska where Schwatka did his fishing with a little brown hackle.

The Tahkheesh Indian, who was ahcad in a canoe, t o show us when we were near the only canyon in the Yukon, would have let the raft go right on through as far as any valuable information was concerned. Long before we reached the canyon and its appended rapids, the passage of which every Indian in the country had predicted impossible for such a vessel as a raft, it was be- coming painfully evident that our Tahkheesh guide in the canoe would inform us of the canyon just in time t o be t o o late. Anti- cipating just swch a n emergency, and having ascertained that the proper camp was on the right hand o r eastern bank, we kept the Resolute into the bank as well as the current would allow, for it was now so swift that it kept shooting us from one side to the other, and we were glad t o keep from "jamming" the raft end on the gravel banks and having ourselves torn t o pieces.

Already the perpendicular walls of the canyon were in sight, and the first break of the white water entering them showed like the white teeth of a tiger as we started t o make the bank in the swift current. This current helped us for a few seconds until we had nearly reached t h e shore, when it started us ou t , and from there an almost straight line of water led t o the narrow canyon but a couple of hundred yards away. The first line that hands could be laid upon was thrown ashore, and our half-breed inter- preter, Billy, jumped into the canoe and paddled ashore, and quicker than it takes t o pen these lines one end was made fast t o the strongest tree convenient and the other t o a cross-log of the raft. There was no time for "snubbing" with so few t o manage the line, and the raft was allowed a running gait of some twenty or thirty yards ou t into the swift water before it brought up with a twang that ought t o have snapped an inch and a half

rope, let alone the little quarter-inch flag halliard that was thrown out t o do this du ty of a giant. As the raft was brought up by the thread the current came rushing over the end of the logs and even over the cross-piece, and everyone expected t o see the halliards part, but they stood the strain, singing like a taut telegraph wire in a high wind until we struck the shore, and the raft was let down a few yards into a whirling eddy and tied up until an inspection could be made of the obstacles ahead.

This revealed a canyon about three-quarters of a mile long, t o which was appended a series of rapids and cascades extending for another four miles. This canyon was not over thirty or forty yards wide and as many feet deep. Its banks were perpendicular columns of basalt, as regular as those of Fingal's Cave, and looking more like the workmanship of man than of nature. In this channel the water contracted to nearly one-tenth its average width, fairly boiled as it rushed through, and it must have been very deep t o have allowed the entire volu~nc to pass through even a t its rapid gait. Dangcrous as it looked, with its frothy waves running three and four feet high, I doubt if it was at all as perilous for a raft as the four miles of rapids that suc- ceeded it , running, in the former width of the river, over shoals and bars of boulders, and tangled and intricate lnasscs of captured driftwood, where it seemed impossible that a bulky craft like ours could escape them all as they a p p e a r d in echelon. Just a t the tail end of these rapids came a cascade, where the river again narrowed into such small proportions that all the water could not get through, and it ran up over the ascending sides and pour- ed down over these, making a perfect crescent of water. Here, too, near and just before the cascade, were pretty regular

columns of basalt, bu t in no way so high as those in the canyon four miles above.

The portage around the canyon, made by the Indians, was over quite a high ridge, and then descended abruptly with a dizzy incline into a valley, which, after continuing nearly down t o the cascades again, ascended a sandy hill very hard t o climb. The hilly part around the canyon was pretty thoroughly covered with small pines and spruce, and all along the portage trail some miners that had preceded us had cut thcsc down near the path and felled them across it , and then barked them on their upper sides, forming stationary skids along which they could drag their whip-sawed boats. Two large logs, on the dizzy declivity, well trimmed of their limbs and bark, made inclines o n which the boats could be lowered into the valley below. Here they had floated their boats b y tow-lines down t o the cascades and had dragged thcnl around this. It is not very hard t o imagine that such a chapparal of felled brush and poles across the path did not improve the walking in the least.

The day we walked over t h e trail on the eastern side of the canyon and rapids was one of the most insufferably hot ones I ever experienced, and every t ime one sat down it was only t o have a regular "Down-East fog" of mosquitoes come buzzing around, and the clawing in the air and the slapping of the face was an exercise equally as lusty as that of traveling. The only way was t o walk along brandishing a handful of evergreens from shoulder to shoulder. As one advanced they kept the same invariable distance ahead, as if they had not the reniotest idea you were coming toward them. An occasional vicious reach forward through the mass with the evergreens would have about as much deadly effect as going through the same amount of fog, for I believe they could dodge a streak of lightning. Nothing was better than a good strong wind in one's face, and as you emerged from the brush o r timber, it was simply delicious t o see them disappear. If you would look o n your back, however, you would see it spotted with them, even then crawling along and testing every thread in one's coat t o see if they cannot find a thin hole where they can bore through. Once in t h e wind it is comical t o turn around slowly and see their efforts t o keep under the lee of a red shirt, as one by one they lost their hold and are wafted away in the wind.

Returning t o the raft, nearly all of the remainder of the day was occupied in the splendid grayling fishing that was so abundant in this part of the Yukon, and if ancient writers were right in recommending these fish as proper food for sick persons, then Miles' Canyon (for so it was named in the expedition) would probably be one of the great health resorts of the world. They were delicious and fat, and as this fat the ancients also believed had the "property of obliterating the marks of small-pox, freckles, and other spots on the skin," if certain natural histor- ies can be believed, there might also be some curative power for the infinite variety of mosquito bites that were making the tops of our heads, as we sat in rows at meal times, look like half- bushel displays of assorted red apples.

These grayling were the most persistent biters I ever saw rise to a fly, and more uncertain than those uncertain fish usually arc in grasping for a bait, for thcrc were times that I really bc- licvcd we got fifty or sixty rises from one fish before he was hooked or the contest would be given up. The same invariable two sizes, already alluded to in the previous article, were yct met, with here and thcrc a slight deviation in grade. This grayling fishing was much diminished after we left the Miles' Canyon and rapids, but never wholly ceased until the White River, nearly a hundred miles below Selkirk, pours in its swift, murky waters, of supersaturated glacier mud, when all bait and fly-fishing ceases, and with only fish hooks as articles of barter with the natives, one must go into bankruptcy.

We did not leave this vicinity for two or three days after, and during our stay I believe that fully 400 or 500 were caught, and our Tahkheese Indian allies, some ten in number, men, women and children (graded according to type), lived almost solely off of our catchings. Whenever a little gravel bar ran o u t into the swift water and sent a long string of diminishing whirlpools

from its point, there any one could satiate his fishing appetite. The Iloctor was the only one with a reel in the party, and it kept a constant opposition in buzzing with the swarms of nlos- quitoes. The Doctor thought that the fish might be caught in scincs, but as hc tu~nblcd off of the slippery rock whcre he was . . . standing o u t in the water drawing then1 in, as he turned around t o see the effect, no court martial was deemed necessary in the case.

During warm sunny days not a "rise" could be had even in the shady places, but in the cool evenings with a few clouds over the sun, t w o or three flies on a line might each be rewarded with a fish a t a single cast. The picture of a Michigan grayling in "Sport with Gun and Rod" is a most accuratc portrait of the gal1ly fellows we captured near this part of t h e Y u k o n River, and I doubt not they arc identical varieties, o r very closely allied.

Whenever the strong southern winds that had done us so much good in sailing over the lakes would cease, a light breeze from the north would follow with clearing weather and warn1 sunny days, and for a few days during this particular part of the year, thcsc zephyrs from thc north would bring with then1 a perfect snowstorm of snlall brown moths o r millers, not unlike ;he grasshopper plague of years ago on the Western plains. A puff of wind o r an eddying gust would tumble many of them in the water whcre t h e currcnt would pack them down in strings of brown color faster than the fish could think of eating them, and most curious of all it was during this very time that we caught our gamy grayling, and that, too, with brown flies. The millers caught by the water and drifted into eddies would not be touched, and it was only when an isolated onc came beating its wings and fluttering on the waters' top around the swiftest corners that a spring for it was at all certain, and a brown hackle dancing around in the same place would monopo- lize every rise within the radius of a game fish's eyesight. They were not much inclined t o jump at any time in the vicinity of the canyon or its rapids, fearing that the mosquitoes would eat them up, as some onc remarked, bu t on several other occasions and places, especially during quiet b u t lowering and rainy evenings, they could be heard seeking their suppers, being probably the gnats and mosquitoes the rain was beating down; a t least, let us all hope so and pray for rain and graylings o r grayling.' Our Tahkheesh friends were as much surprised a t this peculiar kind of fishing as the grayling themselves, and ex- pressed their astonishment in guttural grunts.

They a te all the spare ones we would give them, which was often nearly a dozen a picce. The largest grayling we weighed was two pounds and a quarter.

Early on the morning of the 2nd of July a small rafting party of two o r three persons was sent over the portage trail to get below the cascades and help the raft's being brought ashore a t that point, and were supplied with rope for that purpose. A little after 10 o'clock in the morning, Billy, our half-breed, entered the canyon with our canoe and disappeared around thc corncr of the-basaltic columns. At 11:25 a:m. we loosened the raft from hcr moorings and, although it took fully five minutes t o pole her ou t from thc cddy where she had been moored, she at last got under headway and started out . The first accidcnt was a smashing collision with the basaltic columns of the canyon's west side, that tore off the inner log in a twinkling and snapped off the outer one and shot it into the middle of the stream. It swung around the landing place with tremendous velocity and soon took up its original swiftness. Right about the center the canyon widens ou t into a circular basin of basalt where the water's edge might possibly be reached on the western shore, and in this whirlpool and boiling cauldron it was

(continued o n page 18) * "Would you say that graylings or grayling were caught in large num-

bers on the Upper Yukon?" asked one writer of another of the party as they sat together in the evening balancing accounts for the day. "It makes no difference whether you lie in the singular or plural in Alaska," was the unsatisfactory answer of the individual interrogated, who had sup osed f,hc questioner referred to the Yukon above this place as the bpper.

PROFESSOR KATY DID ABBEY MONTREAL

REUBEN WOOD GRAY HACKLE PARMACHEENE BEAU ROYAL COACHMAN

COACHMAN JUNGLE COCK SCARLET IBIS FIN FLY

QUEEN OF THE WATER KING OF THE WATER WHITE MILLER YELLOW MAY

QUEEN OF MOOSEHEAD PARMACHEENE BELLE YELLOW BODY MONTREAL BROWN HACKLE

TROUT FLIES from .Mountain, 1,ukr 61c River 1902

TOODLE BUG SCARLET IBIS A,&. L

HENSHALL

ORIOLE

GRIZZLY KING

COL. FULLER SILVER DOCTOR

GRAY DRAKE

MONTREAL

POLKA

PROFESSOR

BASS FLIES

Grayling Fishing in Alaska (continued from page I 5 )

thought that the raft might get left spinning around in the big eddies, but no such misfortune befell it, and it shot through the basin so that a person on the banks couldn't have told it from a stern wheel steamer. It went grating over the rapids below, laboring like a ship in a heavy sea until nearly down to the sand- hills by the cascades, when Billy and Indianne, a large burly Chilkat-Tahkheesh Indian, rowed out to meet it at the bend, and, then gathering itself like a horse for a hurdle, it rushed at the cascades, first buried its nose in the flying froth, and then rising in the air shot through at an angle of twenty-five or thirty degrees in the air, sinking to a level in the simmering suds beyond. The same old halliards was gotten ashore that had stood us so well before, but it snapped like a thread as the raft reached its end.

A second attempt, about 400 to 450 yards below the cascades, was more successful, with a good, generous shaking up of the whole. Not far from here was a little grove of small pines, that had been well seasoned by some disasterous fire raging through them within the last two or three years, and as our present deck looked like the horizontal plane of a pound of fish hooks, we determined to take advantage of this little grove to redeck our boat, which was accordingly done.

All of these groves and timber districts must be subject to periodical devastation of fire, especially the conifers, the spruce, the pine and other resin-bearing trees, according to the appear- ances that were presented to us from time to time along our route, and are no doubt set fire to by careless campers of nomadic Indians, or more probably by their setting fire to dense masses so as to throw up a thick smoke that can be seen for miles as signals. In most of the fired ranges the trees are quite large, and falling into decay after having been killed by the fire, they soon form an entanglement of blackened limbs and trunks. ~ h f s is anything but easy for a pedestrian to make any headway through, especially when it is coupled, as usual, with a dense growth of young trees, whose limbs extend to the ground. As I have worked my way through them at a rate of a mile in twenty-four hours, I could not help thinking of the chances of escape if a grizzly bear should be out taking the fresh air at the same time, and the two paths should intersect at an. angle of 1800, and the bear was of that unreasonable nature that insisted

many mosquitoes for all the unwashed explorers from "the land of the midnight sun" t~ "the dark continent," no such collision occurred, and I was left alone to fight my mosquitoes in peace.

And, by the way, there is some reason why the grizzly should dread the mosquito of Alaska, and that reason is, that they have been known to kill them during the short summer months. Absurd as this appears, and as first it appeared to me, I was at last a convert to the theory advanced by the Indians, that the large brown bear of Alaska, here inappropriately, I think, called the grizzly, has been known to succumb to mosquitoes in these parts. I first heard of this on the lower river, and although I was in a better frame of mind than the average reader of the Forest and Stream for believing the story, I did not, until an old trader in these parts who had no object in stuffing me, and whose every manner and conversation on every other subject was perfectly reliable, confirmed it. Should one of these big brown fellows, tempted by something unusual, as a savory mess of de- funct salmon, wander down into or across a swamp unusually full of these prickly pirates, and they make their attack upon him, the bear is likely to rear up on his hindquarters, bruin fashion, and fight them with his paws until he is nearly exhaust- ed and his eyes become vulnerable to the incessant attacks of the insects, and in course of time they are swollen shut, and if in this condition the bear is not able to get away from the district, or should get deeper into the marsh, starvation finally ends his sufferings. Hard as this is to believe, I felt that the reasoning was not unreasonable and the outside facts in the case strongly corroborating it in all that was needed to make it appear possible and even probable.

I think I have spoken in a former article of the widespread terror the brown bear produces among all the Alaska natives within the limits of my travels. I found the animals or heard of them, by this means principally, along the whole length of the Yukon, and extending along all its estuaries whose Indian tribes visit the great river.

From "Dowrr the Yukon on a Raft" by Lt. Fred Schwatka, 1884

on the whole path and that "mighty quick." But as no bear in his right mind would have lived twenty-four hours among so

The famous Trude Ranch in Montana was host lo many a fIollywood movie star. Richard Arlen and friends pose for photos at the Ranch. This is the wife of Richard Arlen, who along with Noah and Wallace Reery were great fishers. The trout are from Henry's Fork.

(c. 1947) -donor Charles E. Brooks.

Ledge Fishing for Ouinaniche

To say the ouinaniche is a landlocked salmon, writes Ripley Hitchcock in the Christian Union, would seem to relegate him to the rank of his brethren of Lake Sebago and Lake Sunapee and other peaceful waters - an hpnorable rank, yet inferior to his own. For the ouinaniche, while the naturalists may dismiss him as simply the Salmo salar, variety sebago, is the result of pecllliar conditions. FOP him, more than most of us, life is a struggle. He lives in the rush and roar of torrents, and seeks his food where no weakling may venture unscathed. At the Main Chute of the Saguenay, where the vast volume of white water mars past Laurentian crags, and at the foot of cataracts on the Mistasshi and Peribonca, the ouinaniche is at home. Naturally, he has become possessed of a body like vibrant steel, a tail of incredible size and power, and a dorsal fin which shows above the water as he feeds like a lateen sail. If in all this there lurks the sin of over-emphasis, it will be pardoned by those who know the joy of finding a fisherman's legend founded upon the eternal verities.

I leave to others the discussion of the migrations of the ouinaniche, his exact habits, and the possibilities of his extinction. My own introduction was under circumstances so adverse at fll~t that I seemed on the point of repeating the familiar experience of those who goqe the bait offered to "sportsmen" by the hotel prospectus and railway advertisement. I had "outfit- ted" at Robewd on Lake St. John, and, with my two half-, breeds, a canoe, two tents, blankets, and a small mountain of supplies, 1 crossed the lake on an absurd little logging steamer, which finally stopped by the simple process of running aground on the sand-bars a mile off the mouth of the Mistassini. The biich-bark canoe was launched and loaded, and the men bent to their paddles in a heavy rain, which pursued us fitfully at our waking. The men hung back. "Trop mouillee," was Philippe's constant plaint - my stalwart Philippe, with a face more fero- cious than that of any Apache renegade whom I have ever seen in Arizona, and a voice like that of a homesick calf. It was simply one of the questions of will and discipline which are apt to be raised in "the bush," and by good men, too, merely to test a new employer and to determine the chances of an easy- going trip. But the issue was met and settled then and there, and late in the afternoon of the second day, despite rain and four long portages, we reached the magnificent fifth falls of the Mistassini and apparent failure. Not a single ouinaniche could be bribed to take my flies.

It is easy to console one's self with the familiar "it is not all of fishing to fish" when the fisherman stays his hand from mere satiety; but philosophy is more difficult for the empty-handed. It was true that the air of that norther solitude was a tonic, and the cataract itself worth the journey from New York. Yet phil-

osophy and the natural man fought hard for the uppa hand as I lay on my fragrant bed of fii boughs; listening to the patter of rain on the tent and the roar of the mighty waterfall close at hand. But in the morning, after mote fruitless endeavor here and there among waves which tossed the canoe like the traditional cockle-shell, we landed on a sharply sloping ledge of Lsuratian rocks. There I stood braced in a crevice above the water, but not out of reach of waves which leaped up from a troubled sea, and there in that angry flood, where fly-casting seemed a mockery, I found the ouinaniche. There was a sudden tug down under the surface, and at the answering strike a silvery body flashed four feet in air, and 1 heard Louis's whoop and Philippe's shout, "C'est un gros, Monsieur, un gos!" "Un gos" the fish certainly seemed to be, as twenty-fie yards of l i e were taken from the screaming reel in the first rush out into the rapids, where another leap was followed by a rush straight in, and then a fit of sulks. So the moments crept on, each second vibrant with suspense, while the gallant fish, now in water, now in air, fought with a courage and tenacity which 1 have never seen equaled by trout or black bass, nor by a grilse in point of endurance, nor hardly, pound for pound, by a salmon. How long this battle royal lasted it would be hard to say. Philippe measured time by his pipe, and he smoked three. At last, 1 was able to strain the ouinaniche toward the ledge where Philippe clung precariously, and in another instant the fish was in the net, Louis was grip- ping it through the meshes, and both men were scrambling like cats up the face of the rock to a safer place. There we adminis- stered the coup de grace, and 1 noted the shapely head, the cleancut body, with the iridescent greenish gill-markings and dark spots on the silvery sides, and I rrrruveled at the width of the powerful tail and the size of the dorsal fin. No sportsmen could ask finer game, and no gourmet could take exception to a fish whose flesh is more savory than the trout, and less cloying than the Salmo salar.

It was off this same Laurentian ledge that I fought and killed all my ouinaniche during those rare days. They were days of moving experiences with ouinaniche which seemed to spend all their time in air, with others which leaped up on the rock beside me, or fought their way far out into the rapids, or "bored" doggedly at the bottom, while the l i e vibrated as if at strokes of the powerful tail. And all this time .I was at a place which would make the fortune of the summer landlord if it were, unhappily, accessible to "summer visitors," and not so far to the northward that even the outpost cabins of settlers are below, and the only human being to the north are.a few trap pers and the ~skimos.

-

Anon. Forest & Stream 1891

Harold N. Gibbs is given credit for being one of the first to catch New England striped bass with a fly rod and salt water fly made with a hair wing. These two examples are the patterns that evolved about 1950 and came to be known as the Gibbs' Striper.

Other items,the old bamboo rod, reels and book were part of an exhibit 04 angling books sponsored by Brown University's Rockefeller Library. It was the first exhibit of fly fishing literature in America. (1968). The exhibit catalog is sold by the Museum for $3.00.

A previous exhibit presenting both English and American angling books were presented by Princeton University, honoring the late Otto Von Keinbusch for his discovery and gift to Princeton of the Arte of Angling, 1577. Fifteen showcases of rare books were dis- played at Brown plus an exhibit of antique hackle and fly displays. Over 400 visitors attended the exhibit's opening.

Photo, coUection Austin S. Hogan

An Adirondack Excursion Long Lake, Aug. 10,1845

Dear H. Let me introduce you t o our camp. I t is a lovely afternoon,

and a most lovely day, and there a t the foot of the lake, back a few rods in the forest, is burning a campfire. O n a stick that is thrust into the ground and leans over a log, hangs a small kettle of potatoes - a little t o one side is suspended t o a tree a noble buck just dressed, some of the nicest bits of which are already roasting in a pan over t h e f i e . In a low shantee, made of hemlock bark, entirely open in front, lazily recline t h e young clergy- man and t h e doctor, watching with most satisfied looks the cooking of the savory venison. O n t h e other side are stretched the weary hounds in profound slumber. An old hunter is watching, with knife in hand, t h e progress of a johnny cake he is bak- ing in the ashes, giving every now and then a most comical hitch to his waist bands, while, as if t o keep his balance, the whole sides of his face twitch a t the same time. Close b y him is my Indian guide whom I obtained yesterday, coldly scrkinizing my new modled rifle. Taciturn and emotionless as his race always are, he neither smiles nor speaks.

Knowing that his curiosity was excited, I remarked, "Mitch- ell, I wish you would try m y rifle, fo r I have some doubt whether it is perfectly correct." Without saying a word he took up an axe, and going t o a distant tree struck o u t a chip, leaving a white spot. Returning as silent as he went, he raised my gun t o his face, where it rested for a moment immovable as stone, then spoke sharp and quick through the forest. The bullet struck the white spot in the center. He handed the rifle back without utter- ing a word - that shot was a better comment o n its correctness than anything he could say.

Our venison and johnny cake and potatoes were at length done; each of us peeling off a bit o f clean hemlock bark for a plate, we sat down o n the leaves and placing our bark dishes across our legs, with a sharp stick for a fork, and our pocket knives in the other commenced our repast. I have dined in pal- aces, hotels and amid ancient ruins, bu t never so right royally before. We were kings here, with our rifles b y our sides, and n o one to dispute our sway; and then such a palace of countless columns encompassing us, while t h e tiny murmur of t h e waves as they laid their cheeks o n t h e small pebbles below, made har- mony with the refreshing breeze that rustled in the tree tops and lifted t h e ashes o f our already smouldering camp fire. I thought last winter a t t h e Carlton House, that the venison made a dish that might please a gourmet bu t it was tasteless, savour- less compared t o THIS venison, cut off from t h e freshly killed carcass and roasted in the open forest. A clear stream nearby furnished us with a richer beverage than wine; while the fresh air, and gleaming lake and sweet islands sleeping o n its bosom, gave to the spirits a healthier excitement than society.

After the repast was finished, we stretched ourselves along the ground and smoked our cigars, and talked a while of t rout and deer and bears and wolves and moose. A t length, the Indian arose and made preparations fo r departure. Taking our rifles add fishing tackle, we push our boats into the lake, and made for Raquette River, the outlet of the lake and thence into Cold River.

I wish I could give you some conception of this stream. At this season of the year it is almost as moveless as a pond, while its waters are as clear as fluid crystal, revealing a smooth and pebbly bottom. The shores of both the rivers are all trodden over with moose, deer and bear tracks. During the afternoon, we had endeavoured t o take some trout , o f whiih Mitchell told me

the river was full. But the unruffled surface o f t h e stream, combined with its pellucid waters, and an unclouded sun, made every fish fly t o his lurking place long before we got sight of him. Under the deep shadows of an overhanging and wooded bank, Mitchell a t length took one, while I had the pleasure of seeing a two pounder rise t o my fly with open mouth and dilat- ed eyes; but just as he was going to snap it , he caught a glimpse of us and darted like a flash of lightning t o the bottom, from whence n o after coaxing could lure him. But as the sun went down, I had better success. Being the only one who used a fly, I took all t h e trout. They were, however, of a small size and difficult t o hook, for I had nothing bu t a common pole cu t from the forest, o n which t o rig my line. I had left my light and delicate rod in the settlements, as I should advise everyone t o do, who endeavours t o penetrate this pathless region. when one is com- pelled t o carry his own rifle, overcoat and underclothing, and sometimes his cooking utensils, and that too, with a walk of twenty miles o n a stretch before him, he would d o well not t o lumber himself up with fishing rods.

But when t h e sun a t l e n g h totally disappeared behind the mountains, and the surface of Cold River, overshadowed by the impenetrable forest became black as ink, the t rout left their re- treats; and in a short time the water was in a foam with their constant leaping. Where but a short time before we bad passed looking down through the clear depths without seeing a single finny rover, now there seemed an innumerable multitude. Here a sudden bold bound - there a long shoot as a fierce fellow swept along after a large fly, kept the bosom of the stream in a bubble. The Indian and my companions had stiff poles, cord lines and large hooks, with a piece of raw venison for bait. This they would SKITTER along the surface, and the moment it caught the eye of a t rout , away he would rush with a leap and a plunge after it. I found that my light tackle was entirely o u t of place in this new mode of fishing for while I was drowning one big fellow, those in the boat with me would take half a dozen. Besides the time for fishing was short, for twilight had already settled on the forest - and so, after in my hurry breaking two or three snells, I, too, rigged on a cord line, big hook and piece of venison. I never saw anything like it in my life - it was a constant, leap, roll and plunge there around our lines - and some of them such immense fellows for brook trout. In half a n hour, we took a t least a half a bushel, many of them weighing three pounds, and a few less than a pound.

At length, however, it became too dark t o fish, and a single rifle shot of the Indian recalled our scattered boats t o start for camp.

Turning the head of our boat, we drifted down to Raquette River, and then pulled for the lake. This was a mile of hard row- ing, and it was late before we reached t h e outlet. One skiff having started sooner than we, was already at the camp - the cheerful fire of which burst o n us through t h e trees as we rounded a point of the outlet, and shot upon the bosom of t h e quiet lake. "Look," R-ffe I exclaimed, "Yonder is the campfire, and another light moves down t o the beach where they are dressing the t rout for supper." He sprang t o the oars, and the light boat fled like a wild deer toward that cheerful flame. Islands and rocks flew by, and under a cloudless sky and myriads of bright and glorious stars, we sped gaily o n , tili a t length the boat o n t h e pebbly beach, and a joyous shout that made the solemn old forest ring, went u p from camp and shore. In a moment all was bustle and preparation for supper and the noblest dish of t rout I ever a te I took there b y firelight in the woods. My appetite, it

is true, was sharp, and we made a sad inroad into our pile of fish.

After supper we lay around in every variety of attitude upon the dry earth, lazily snuffing up the fragrance of the woods, and looking off on the still surface of the lake in whose clear depths the stars of heaven stood trembling and listening to wild hunting stories, interspersed now and then with flashes of broad humor, till at length the deep breathing of the Indian admonished us that we, too, needed repose to prepare us for the toils of the next day.

A little after midnight I awoke - the wind had shifted to the east and was blowing strong and chill, sending a rapid swell on the beach, and a loud murmur through the cedar tops ahead. The fire had died away except for a few smoldering brands. The wild and lonely scream of the northern diver, came at intervals through the darkness, as he floated far away on the water; and night, solemn night with the great forest, was around me. I strolled down to the lake shore and let the breezes fall on my fevered head, while the glimmer of the dying embers of our camp fire through the trees rendered the scene doubly lonely. I returned, and seizing the axe, soon had a bright and crackling f i e sending its light over the sleepers. The sparks, borne higher and higher by the wind, danced about in the forest, and shed a clear light on a white hound that lay sleeping in careless ease at the foot of a tree. Tall trunks stood on every side gradually growing dimmer, till lost in a mass of blackness, and contrasting strangely with the motion and roar of the tops, through which the wind swept in fitful gusts. Again I stretched myself on the ground and woke no more until light was dawning in the east, and then with a shudder and a start as though a tomahawk was gleaming over my head. The Indian's dog had crawled upon me, and lay heavily along my body, his head resting on my bosom, his mouth to my mouth, while a low growl issued from his chest, startled the Indian by my side. I never was so struck with the alertness of an Indian. I am not slow to wake myself, espec-

ially in a case like this; but before I opened my eyes, Mitchell was on his feet and as I looked up I saw him standing over me with his piercing black eyes fixed on the dog. "Be still," he exclaimed, and then as if talking to himself, he added, "it is strange, but he is watching you. He smelled danger." His keen nose probably winded some wild animal prowling about our camp - attracted hither by the savory smell of venison. I gently caressed the noble fellow, and rose from my hard couch. The whole group was standing listlessly around the fire, yawning and stretching, while the few jokes that were cracked created only a mockery of laughter.

-

yours truly, J. T. H.

from Headley, J . T. The Adirondack; or Life in the Woods. N . Y., Chas. Scribner. 1861. (Cy. 1849) p. 121 - 130.

The native Indian of prehistory never used rods in their fishing so the "skittering" described by Headley evidently was learned from white pickerel fishermen or learned when the rod or pole was first used. Another mention of the method is more unique: "This beautiful lake (Raquette) is thronged with salmon and speckled trout. Talk about Pisico Lake and Lake Pleasant, and other border waters, where fishing has become a business. Come here if you wish to see the treasures the wilderness en- closes. The most beautiful and savory trout that ever swam are found in such quantities that you can take them without fly or bait of any description. Look to that inlet -there sits my friend B---n with a pole and line big enough to play a sturgeon with, and nothing but a piece of white paper on his coarse hook. He is skipping it, or as the fishermen call it, 'skittering' it over the water, and there rises a two pounder, by his side and there a three pounder - heigh ho a full dozen of them, with their speckled gleaming sides and wild eyes are making the water foam-" p. 205.

Edging the Adirondack wilderness were the settlements mentioned by J . T. Headley. Lake George, N. Y. offered luxurious hotels and nearby Saratoga boasted the country's leading race track, mineral springs and more fine hotels including a gambling casino.

Dyeing Fishing Lines Editor Forest and Stream:

Will you please inform me (or have some of your readers t o do so) what is a good homemade dye for fishing lines that will give them a fixed color, o r dye them black, and at the same time not injure them b y rotting, swelling or otherwise greatly affect- ing the form, texture or size of the lines?

In explanation of the question I have t o say that I never find any lines in the market dyed t o suit my taste, and it is sometimes, recently, difficult t o find any that are suitable, otherwise as to size and quality, for the locality. I therefore often have t o do my own dyeing.

In the clear water the bass are very wary and will not take the hook when the angler is in sight. It is necessary t o cast t o a great distance and t o remain concealed. As a four-pounder is a great rarity and the common run is below two pounds, a very small line must be used - one smaller than many first-class deal- ers advertise. A white line is quite a conspicuous object in clear water, and I am satisfied that bass cannot be taken readily when one is used. It is necessary t o use a line that cannot be seen readily, and this is all the more necessary in casting, as Dr. Hen- shall says truly that in that style of fishing the leader must be discarded. T o prevent the line from being seen by the game, manufacturers have, as we all know, made lines of various different solid colors, and also braided and twisted together threads of different colors. Either of these is better than a white line, but they still fall short of t h e requirement. The point I insist upon is this, that that which enables t h e human eye, as well as the fish's eye, t o catch and follow a line of any kind is the continuity of the line as t o form and color, and e converso, breaks or irregularities in contour o r color have a strong tendency to prevent the eye from following up t h e line. In other words, irregularity, so far as t h e vision is concerned, destroys a line. If a line be speckled or ringed, the continuity is not broken because it is still regular in that form. The line should be so dyed as t o run from one shade t o another, then perhaps t o spots, and then t o other shades, so as t o make t h e whole irregular and unsystematic.

I have dyed in this way b y wrapping or balling the line up upon itself so as t o leave irregular interstices for the penetration of the fluid, and then dipping in t h e juice of a walnut, warm, and renewing after a short time. The line can then be wiped off with a wet rag. Applications of water immediately after dyeing will reduce the shade. A line dyed in this way is not readily followed by the eye at some little distance; and I imagine when stretched on the bot tom of a stream it would attract little more

attention than t h e gave l and small twigs and stems of leaves that often lie there.

An illustration of the manner in which the eye can be misled by a broken line is this: Many a bass angler has spent hours of suspense lest the "one-gallused" boy would d o harm to his bucket of shiners, o r "steel-backs," in his absence. Let t h e fisherman cast his minnow bucket into the stream and fasten the cord t o a root or stone a t t h e shore; if the water be clear the cord will probably be seen very plainly. But then let him take two o r three switches, o r say a small branch with several twigs, and place them, in an apparently haphazard manner, a t the surface and a t a slight angle over and across the cord; and he will find, especially if shadows be cast, that he will have to look close in order t o locate the cord.

This may all b e regarded as very trivial and I may find in course of time that I have come too quickly t o a conclusion, bu t from fishing in company with others and from sometimes using two rods at once, my observation and experience lead me just now t o believe that the best results have been obtained with such a line as I have described, and I would suggest that anglers elsewhere on similar waters, especially where bass are wary, give it a trail, if the idea has not already been practically tested by others.

P. M. Franklin, Tennessee

[Hon. H. C. Ford, president of t h e Pennsylvania Fish Com- mission, makes a beautiful olive colored dye for gut by the following process: "Take two empty tomato cans; pour into one about an inch of Stafford's writing fluid; then pour in water until the can is over half full. Put two tablespoonsful of logwood into the second can, and pour in water until two-thirds full. Bring both t o a boiling point on your range. Then take your hank of gut, from which the rough ends have been severed, and immerse in the ink can a minute and a half. Hold it under the hydrant a short time t o wash o u t the superfluous dye, and then plunge into the logwood can for two minutes. Then wash off the superfluous dye as before. If t h e color is not dark enough repeat the process in both cans." We have seen this gut used in clear water and know that it is highly effective. Doubt- less the same method will be available for lines. Walnut leaves and shells have been used t o produce a brown color from a very early date with alum t o fix the color.]

1889

A CANADIAN TROUT Toronto, June 1 - In a lake which empties into the Montreal River, and through which I traveled b y canoe ten days ago, we caught with a troll twenty trout, the smallest 3 Ibs., the largest 8 Ibs. They are shaped like the speckled brook trout. There is a soft fin o r ex- crescence on the back next the tail. The fins, tail and flesh are blood orange in color. The back is dark, t h e belly white, the sides speckled with silver and gold spots. Some of the fish are reddish brown and some considerably inclined to gray or silver hues. The fish grow t o 40 Ibs. in weight. The officers of the Hudson's Bay Company call them speckled trout. Some people say they are silver salmon. This is a fresh-water lake, 300 miles north of Toronto. The water is very clear and cold, 600 ft. deep, resting on a pebbly bed. The fish d o not attempt t o leave the lake, though it has two outlets; they are never found out of it. The large 40 Ibs. fish are caught in the fall of the year with night lines sunk deep in the water. The fish is more beautiful than the speckled t rout of the brooks, and I say it advisedly, its flesh is more juicy and finely flavored. Please inform me what kind of fish they are. - S. R. CLARKE.

[We think this must be one of the large t rout known in our catalogues by name only - probably Ross's trout, described by Richardson. Would it be possible for Mr. Clarke to send us a specimen, o r a t least the skin of a large one? The skin can be sent dry o r in salt. Littlc is known about the t rout of the region referred t o in the above communication. We know the lake t rout and landlocked salmon occur there, bu t nothing more.] 1891

The Fun of Angling Literature by Josepll Spear Beck

"The True Measure of a Civilization is the number of its second-hand book stores. . . Montagu."

Izaak Walton may be a hero to all of us now, but it wasn't ~ lways that way. In 1658, five years after The Compleat Angler was published, Richard Franck in his book Northern Memoirs wrote: "Walton stuffs his book with morals from Dubravius . . . not giving us one precedent of his own . . . lays the stress of his observations on other men's observations . . . brings himself under the Anglers' censure . . . of plagiary . . . to be pitied, poor man . . . for loss of his time, in scribbling . . . other men's notions. These are the drones that rob the hives."

Later in his book, which incidentally was not published until 1694, is more ridicule - "I urged his own argument upon him, that pickerel weed of itself breeds pickerel. Which question no sooner stated but he transmits himself to his authority, Dubrav- ius, etc. I readily opposed . . . aserting, that pickerels have been fished out of pools where that weed never grew . . . nor pickerel ever known to have shed their spawn thae . This I propounded from a rational conjecture of the Heronshaw . . . who might lap some spawn around her legs . . . adhering to the bullrushes . . . where the fish have shed their spawn, and this filmy substance adhering to her legs . . . she mounting the air . . . in probability mounts with her. Where note, the next pond she arrives at, possibly she may leave the spawn behind her, which My Com- pleat Angler no sooner deliberated, but dropped his argument and huffed away."

Such passages add zest to the angling collector's hobby. What starts one on the collecting hobby is known to anyone whose fancy is stamps or coins or blondes. With books, stamps and coins there is a mental stimulus without the physical drain of the latter. In this writer's case it started while in college in the literary field, but was triggered into angling literature about 15 years ago through the good times fishing with Will Presba, Frank Steel and other friends.

If you are not already a collector, you can appreciate any-

way the kick one gets in reading and holding in his hands the first book written by some angling giant of the past or the f i s t book written on some important phase of angling.

Walking down LaSalle Street one day with my eye on a willowy beauty in a mini-mini skirt, I felt a sudden flash of excitement surge through me. I had just remembered that coming in the mail to me the next day from London was Saunders' The Compleat Fisherman, Edinburgh, 1772, in which was the first mention of silk-worm gut.

Most collectors start with contemporary authors, building the foundation of their collection and properly so. The enjoyment of their books stimulates them into looking up the classic writers so often referred to by our contemporaries. Before long, names like Venables, Halford, Ronalds, and Bainbridge are old friends. Halford says that the sportiest fish of all on a fly line is a mackerel. Isn't that a surprise?

Ronalds probably contributed more to fly-fishing than any other man - a rather large statement, but his many editions of The Fly-Fisher's Entomology starting with the 1st edition, Lon- don, 1836, and culminating with the 2-volume 13th edition, Liverpool, 1913 containing specimen flies beautifully tied, will convince almost anyone.

Among more contemporary experts is Professor R. Donners- berger, whose book The Tarpon and I , Miami, a prize winner of 1963 and reprinted 1964 and 1968, is well-known to all of us in the Anglers' Club. Not so widely read, but still worth studying, is his analytical work The Nymph and You , Dean River, B. C. 1966. In language that any layman can understand is this clear description of the nymph's life cycle, "After the eclosion the nymph starts to moult and continues until the ecdysis when he emerges as a dun or epeorus pleuralis, particularly if you are fishing in May."

Venables, an original thinker, wrote his well-known book

The Experienc 'd Angler: or Angling Improv'd in 1662. It is interesting that the book was written following his misfortunes. He served in the Parliamentary Army; was sent with Penn in 1654 in command of the expedition to conquer Hispaniola, and on their return from that disastrous enterprise, the generals were imprisoned in the Tower.

Each generation of anglers produces new ideas. One such is P. Schreiber, who in his book Well-Spent Evenings with Spent- Wing Adams, Langlade, a best seller of 1960 and reprinted in 1964 and 1967, introduced the Coronna Coronna. His com- ments are significant and fall logically into place. "First, bathe your Adams in a heavy layer of cigar smoke, second, the nico- tine puts the trout into a frenzy; third, the odor wards off insects; and finally, the cloud of smoke makes the angler invisible to the trout.."

Although Schreiber is generally credited for the wide use of tobacco, a search of early angling records reveals that a C. Hem- enway of Evanston, about 1890, started using tobacco with de- vastating effect on trout. The records back that far. however. " are very thin and reading difficult since so many pages are foxed.

For laughter in angling books, it is hard to beat Anglers A 11 by Foote, a collection of short stories which Graydon Ellis brought to the attention of many of us. The Wedding Gift is one of the classics in this collection. Another side-splitter is Syd Hoff's Upstream, Downstream and Out of M y Mind, Indianapo- lis, 1961.

For gentle rib-tickling there is none better than Harold Pickering's Angling of tbe Test, Derrydale Press, 1936. Written in old English style, it is delightful.

For beauty there is always pleasure in seeing an angling book so enjoyed by its owner that he had it richly bound in morocco or calf and artistically tooled in gold. The excellent sporting books published by Eugene Connett's Derrydale Press are eagerly sought. These books were published in limited editions, generally in 950 copies, and covered sports such as angling, hunting, horse racing, fox-hunting, and sailing. When one re- flects on the millions engaged in these sports, it's obvious that there aren't enough ~e r ryda les to go ariund. Too bad that the Derrydale Press folded in 1947 under the pressure of high publishing costs!

One of the most magnificent books in American angling, and also a rarity, is Dean Sage's The Kistigouche and Its Salmon Fishing, Edinburgh 1888. Dean Sage, in Salmon and Trout, N.Y. 1904, was the first to mention the single haul. Little did he dream then that 65 years later Allan Johnson, using the double haul, would be casting his line out of the county!

Shipley in his A True Treatise on the Art of Fly-Fishing, London, 1838, makes the first reference to fanning the fly, i.e., drying it out with several false casts. There are many of us in the Anglers' Club who have developed this into such a science that tornado warnings are often issued at the Langlade Weather Station.

The fly tyer's delight, of course, are those scarce and rare volumes that contain the actual fly specimens in sunken mounts, notably -

Ronalds' Dry Fly Entomology (2 vols.) 250 copies, referred - -

to before; Blacker's Art o f Angling, 1842; Aldam's A Quaint Treatise on Flees and the Ar t of Artyfi-

chall Flee Making, London 1875 and 1876; Halford's Dry Fly Entomology, 2 vols. London, 1897, 100

copies, and Modern Development o f The Dry Fly, 2 vols., London, 1910, 75 copies;

Baigent's A Book on Hackles f i r Fly Dressing, Newcastle-on- ~ L n e (n.d.);

Edmonds & Lee's Brook & River Trouting, Bradford, '50 copies (1916) ;

Taverner's Trout Fishing From All Angles, 1929, 375 copies, and Salmon Fishing, 1931, 275 copies;

Leonard West's deluxe volume of The Natural Trout Fly and Its Imitation, St. Helen's (n.d.) (1912), 30 copies.

West was so meticulous in his instructions to H. Milward & Sons who tied up the sets of flies, that he fills up a notebook in his correspondence, rejecting and accepting 106 flies for each set, in an exchange with the tackle house before the full set of flies was finally approved.

On this side of the water are the deluxe 2 vol. editions of Jennings' A Book of Trout Flies, Derrydale Press, 1935; and Phair's sumptuous Atlantic Salmon Fishing, Derrydale Press, 1937.40 copies.

It is refreshing to note that while these legendary figures introduced the flies which we have and use today, that there are always new tyers coming along with new ideas. One such is J. Buesch who presented a new angling first in his book The Brown Bomber Salmon Fly, Doctor's 1. 1969. "In tying these excellent salmon flies, first tie on a tail of finest deer hair. Then spin on the deer hair body and clip it sparse - real, real sparse. Follow with hackle and impala as per sketch and whip-finish. Now comes the real surprise. Cut off the tail! This drives the salmon out of his mind and POWIE! you've got him."

The first book on dry-fly fishing in America was Gill's Practi- cal Dry-Fly Fishing, New York, 1912. Gill & LaBranche were both members of the Anglers' Club of New York. Reports from those days relate that LaBranche planned to write such a book and became so angry when Gill brought his out first that it nearly broke up the club.

Even though we acknowledge the skill of such masters as Hewitt, LaBranche, Haig-Brown, and Lee Wulff, a new angler takes a new look. For instance, there is J. McCoy, who in his book The Southpaw Trout, Oconto, 1965, brought forth a challenging observation. "Fishing one evening at Camp 23, 1 noticed that I was missing numerous trout striking from the left bank, but taking those from the right bank. I gave this considerable thought and decided that the trout striking from the left were probably missing because the hook I was using was canted to the right. A simple twist of the hook to the left did the job, and proved that trout are individuals too."

It would be exciting to run across Chetham's Vade Mecum, London, 1681 because Chetham with Franck were the first men to describe salmon flies. Adventure lies ahead, I'm off to a second-hand book store.

WESTERN AMERICANA

Rainbow Trout of the McCloud Editor Forest and Stream:

Your correspondent "Scarlet-Ibis," in number of Junc 11, mentions thc Dolly Vartlen and rainbow trout.

A perusal of his article rccalls no st agreeably the two weeks spent by thc writer and Nat. K. l l a r~non on the famous McCloud Kiver is Siskiyou County, California, in Junc, 1887. Leaving San Francisco th; evening ;)f thc 17th we take the sleeper of the Portland train a t Oakland Mole, and the ncxt morning finds us at Sisson. 250 milcs north. ant1 at the headwaters of thc Sacra- ~ n c n t o , herc but a rncadow brook.

While eating our 1)rcakfast a t Sisson, we intcrview the landlord rcgarding the best fishing places, antl he rcfers us to the driver of thc Fall Kiver Stagc, which lcaves in twenty minutes. "Wall, ye git in with nic an ' I'll sct yc down over on the McCloud." We ask him how far hc proposes to take us, and lcarn that thc ncarcst stopping placc is Downing's Kanch, 1 8 milcs east, a t the southcrn I,ase of Mt. Shasta, which looms up 14,440 fcct., bright and glealning with eternal snows, a prominent landmark for a h~~nt l rc t l milcs in any direction. Having colnc to this point sirnply on the reputation of thc McCloud to furnish trout of rcriiarkaI)lc size and vigor. and with no definite c . .

destination in vicw, wc quickly placc our traps and ourselves in the open spring wagon, arid hugely enjoy the ride in the fresh, crisp morning air over Squaw Mor~ntairl, ant1 noon time brings us to Downing Kanch, a two-roomed log house, a stable of "shakcs" without roof, ant1 a shcep corral.

The driver introduces 11s to the ranch people, who conclude thcy can take care of us; so after a hasty lunch and rigging up in our fishing gear, we ask to be tlircctctl to thc most likely place on thc strcam, which we fintl a t its ncarcst point is some two milcs away. Only thc oltl pcoplc werc at home that day, and they dircctcd us to the Uppcr ta l l , s o ~ n c distance up the stream. We found a fall of sonic 9 0 fcct., a t thc foot of which was a swirling, eddying strctch of water, with dark, deep cavernous holes among the rocks that looked the vcry home of thc famous beauties we had come so far t o intcrview.

A word as t o our tacklc. My companion, an ardent lover of the royal sport, a veteran angler, is just now about t o test the qualities of a new split t~anlhoo from the hands of somc noted ~naker , and I have an humble rot1 of ash with lancewood tip, light, strong, and o f that whiplike flcxibility and perfect balance so pleasurable t o fccl. Our flics, a varied assortment of the com- moner kinds, the hackles in grays, browns, ginger, etc., predorn- inating. We are each supplicd with 6 ft. leaders, lines of lightest silk, in color darkest green, and srnall multiplying reels, and ample room in our creels fo r all that may conic t o our hooks, which, by the way, are No. 8.

Thus equipped, we fearlessly niake our first casts, and for somc time are successful; but as thc shadows lengthen small trout of 6 t o 8 in. begin t o take the fly, and at sunset we count a total catch of 104: Wending our &ay over the trail to the ranch, we discuss the situation, which, considering the largeness of our expectations as t o size of the fish t o be found in this stream, seems discouraging.

At our s u m e r of fried trout and corn bread. we meet the L 1

young son of our host, Will, a stalwart youth of skventeen, who laughs at our catch of "little uns," and says he can show us where we can see "some whoppers jumpin'," b u t in rather a sarcastic vein remarks tha t we "can't get 'en1 with them little bits of poles." In fact, he had "got on" numerous big ones, but they had either broken his "pole," the line o r the hooks, and he looked with contempt upon our slender tackle. However, Will proved extremely good-natured, and after breakfast a t early

dawn of the nes t morning we follow him to the hole at thc big springs, some two milcs helow thc scene of the previous afternoon and much nearer the house.

We find the river down in a narrow canyon, with rather pre- cipitous banks of two or three hundred feet, and the hole a somewhat turbulent pool of good lcngth and breadth, between immense springs, thc waters of which issue from the rocks a hundred feet abovc our heads, and came leaping, tumbling and cascading down and mingling with the waters of the McCloud.

Thcsc feeders o f springs, of which there are many in the short course of the river, find a channel under and through the lava bcds all the way from the snow line of Mt. Shasta, a veritable nature's ice house, antl afford an abundant and constant supply of the purest and iciest water t o the stream below. The space between these two big springs -- the largest on the river -- is about 100 yds., and in the pool between, according t o Will, the big trout lurked.

The morning is glorious, the sun just peeping through the tops of the giant sugar pincs, and while we eagerly joint our rods and tie o n our most taking casts a gentle breeze, drawn up the mountain gorge by some invisible force, slightly sways the bushes on the banks, and directly we see hundreds of June flics, dis- lodged from their retreat under the leaves, fly fluttering with damp and heavy wing over and near t h e water's surface. Talk about rainbow trout. They began their breakfast right then and there. Dozens of 2-pounders could be seen at a glance, as thcy leaped high, their beautiful sides gleaming in the morning sun, 16 in. sections o f the most brilliant rainbow.

A thrilling sight, truly, and we hastily change our flies for the gray and ginger hackles, as most nearly approaching in color the drab and dun of the natural fly, for which the trout so plainly manifest their liking. After two o r three short casts t o get the leaders straightened, I reach ou t a little further and softly drop my cast just over where but a lnonient before a grand specimen had shown me his whole length, when the hungry fellow, as if to dare me to battle, again leaps clear from his element and, with a saucy flip of his tail and a nlost graceful somersault, dis- appears with my gray hackle. A slight and quick motion of my wrist, and I know that I have hooked my first rainbow. I have held a plow behind a yoke of unruly steers, and it seems an apt though prosaic comparison t o the wild rush of that trout through t h e swift waters of the pool. When first struck, he vault- ed 2 ft. o r more into the air, and with a vigorous shake tried t o free himself from the hook; then, with zigzag and erratic course, down the stream he headed for a rock half hidden by a growth of watercress that partly dammed t h e channel a t the foot of the pool, making the reel sing as it paid ou t the line.

With some effort, I checked his mad charge, and shortening the line with every yielding turn, glanced about for a place t o land my prize, for I have no net. Suddenly the tension upon rod and line is eased and I fear the game is off, but quickly reeling in, as he leaps again and again, and soon showing the first signs of lost vigor, I have him turning up his gleaming sides in token of defeat and he comes a weary captive to the ready hand of Nat, who, standing by, has watched the gallant fight of this gamy fish. Time, 1 3 minutes. Will, who has cut a pole in the brush nearby, and has seated himself on a rock while making fast the small "clothes line" he has been wont t o fish with, drops his work and wideeyed and open-mouthed, is speechless from start to finish; b u t with the fish safely in hand he gives one wild yell and a jump t o where 1 stand with thumb under the gill of my captive.

"That's my trout, my trout," he exclaims, and points to a wire snell hanging from the mouth of the fish, where sure enough, I find a No. 2 hook firmly caught through the cartilage of the nose. Will recognizes this hook and snell as his property, which more than a week before he had baited with a grasshopper and cast upon the waters. It had been seized by this sake trout and in attempting to land it in the good old way, by a vigorous jerk of the pole, the trout objecting to such violent methods, had kept part of the tackle in protest. This magnificent specimen of the rainbow trout weighed, when caught, 3 Ibs. 9 ozs. Will had hooked and lost so many in this same pool that he had come to believe that short of a good-sized sapling for a rod and a hawser for the line, nothing could induce them to leave this, their favorite haunt. While I am telling all of this, Nat has not been an idle listener, but has hooked an almost exact duplicate of my prize, one as full of fight, game to the last.

Here let me mention and comment on the fly-taking pro- pensities of the rainbow as we found them. We confined our fishing for the next ten days mostly to this pool, and in this time, took from its dark waters with the fly over 500 trout, all rainbow, that would average 2 Ibs. each. The last day's fishing was as good as the first, with no apparent decrease in numbers or voraciousness. There seemed to be no small fish here, and their even size and wonderful vigor were most remarkable. Many were the repetitions of the scene describing the capture of the f i s t fish, and occasionally, when two of these gallant beauties were struck at one cast, the long and exciting contest can be better imagined than described. We lost but few fish, as they rose to the fly with no uncertain rush, and we always saw our game the instant of the rise, the fish invariably leaping clear of the water. Standing squarely facing across the stream, a long cast directly to the front would drop the flies well out, and the hackles, dry from their course through the air, would fall soft and light as a bit of down upon the swiftly-flowing waters, and floating airily while the slack of the line lasted, formed the most seductive lure. The good qualities of hackles, from the fact that

they dry quickest while casting, were here firmly impressed upon me, and since that time their use in many of the mountain streams and lakes of the Northwest has confirmed my first im- pressions.

I have not since that time found another place where all the elements were so perfectly combined as we found them on that trip to the McCloud - no mosquitoes, no black flies. The weather perfect and the hungriest and gamiest trout it has ever been my experience to deal with.

We found no Dolly Varden unless a trout captured by Nat at the foot of a fall some eighty rods above the hole could have been one. Here at high noon the sun's rays penetrated a deep, still pool, and here we could see some large fish almost mo- tionless near the bottom. They would not notice our flies, but a No. 4 hook baited with a piece of trout belly, a double gut leader, and a .44 cal. cartridge for a sinker, had the desired effect, and Nat had the liveliest kind of a time in very cramped quarters for 25 minutes.

This trout had the appearance of being a very old and over- grown rainbow, weighed 5% Ibs. and measured 24% in. from tip to tip. In color one could imagine seeing where the brilli- ancy and beauty of the rainbow once existed, but now dulled and gray with age. I carefully and reverently scraped the moss from his venerable pate, fully expecting to find the initials "B. C." thereon, but he had outgrown all reliable evidence of his certain years.

Words are inadequate to describe the full measure of our enjoyment on this memorable trip. I have not since then visited the McCloud, but my lines have been cast in other places where the trout, if not so gamy, have atoned in size and numbers. Some time, if agreeable, I will tell you of the sport to be found in the waters of western washington, the trout in the streams and lakes, and the salmon in the sound.

Geo. E. Miller Seattle, Wash. Forest and Stream, Aug. 13, 1891

Concerning the Dolly Varden An enthusiastic fly-fisherman residing in California writes for

information regarding the Dolly Varden (Salvelinus malma). He complains that they will not rise to the fly, though they take bait very well, even the humble "barnyard hackle," generally known as "wums." He is of the opinion that they need edu- cating, and suggests the introduction of a few of our sprightly Eastern brook trout for companions in order that a good ex- ample might teach them to appreciate the beauties of the "fluttering fly."

Many others have made inquiries about these Western trout, and the subject has been pretty well discussed, still such matters are always interesting to fishermen, and particularly to those who are about going on Western trips.

I have fished in some of the waters of the far West, and, as far as I could observe, I found three species of the salmon family, the Dolly Varden (Salvelinus malma), the black-spotted salmon trout (Salmo mykiss) , and the rainbow (Salmo rideus). The natives call these by all sorts of names regardless of rule, and it is impossible when they speak of "mountain trout," or "spotted trout," or "salmon trout," or "brook trout," etc. to know what they mean or what species they refer to. The Dolly Varden is the only true trout or member of the Salvelinus family found on the Pacific slope, but its habits resemble the lake trout more than the speckled trout. We could not catch them on the fly, though I was told that they did occasionally take a bright salmon fly. What few we caught we took by trolling with a mottled pearl bait. It was in the month of September and they were just spawning, so we did not make any great effort to capture them. The largest we killed weighed 9% Ibs.

The rainbows we took were small and did not seem very anx- ious to make our acquaintance. These fish spawn in the spring and were as indifferent about our flies as their brethren that have been introduced in our own waters. The Salmo mykiss or purpuratus (the black spotted trout) was decidedly superior to the rainbow. They took the fly boldly, fought bravely and were a fine fish on the table with firm pink flesh. They vary very much in color. and the male and female are so different in an- pearance that many of the resident fishermen consider them a different variety. They are found in all the Western lakes and rivers and furnish food and sport to thousands of anglers.

The quiet colored flies seem to be the favorites, such as the light and dark-coachman, brown-palmer, professor, brown- hen, golden-spinner and cowdung. The addition of jungle-cock shoulders adds to their killing qualities, and the patent fluttering flies are great favorites in the West. The sizes of hooks de- pend on thewaters they are to be used in, the same as in the East, but No. 8 will answer for most localities.

When first visiting the West, the Eastern angler will find dif- ficulty in hooking these fish, for they show their salmon blood in the manner of taking the fly, and it does not answer to strike them quickly. All that is necessary is t o tauten the line as they turn to go down. They are splendid fighters and jump freely, and a 2 Ib. fish will take off line in a manner that will make the reel buzz. They also spawn in the spring. Why these fish were not introduced on the Atlantic coast, instead of the rainbow, is a mystery that will never be explained.

SCARLET-IBIS, 1891

George Dawson A woodcut of George Dawson b y T. H. Thorpe graces our

brochures and letterhead. Thorpe was a fine artist and the like- ness is quite apparent b y a comparison of the features of the accompanying portrait.

George Dawson, while a trenchant political writer, was also fond of depicting life in the woods and on the streams. With pleasure I renewed my acquaintance with him in later years, when peace reigned in the land, and by invitation accompanied him to the Adirondacks when both were familiar with the use of the fly in luring the trout. He was born in Falkirk, Scotland, in 1813, and came with his parents to America five years later. He had no early schooling, but learned the printers' trade before he was thirteen, and educated himself. Then he went to Rochester and worked for Thurlow Weed, editor of an anti-Masonic paper, and in 1836 Dawson became editor of the Rochester Democrat. Weed was afterward editor of the Albany Evening Journal, and in 1846 Dawson joined him as assistant editor. Weed retired in the stirring days of 1862, and Mr. Dawson took his place as editor and proprietor of the Journal, then as now, one of the leading papers of the State of New York; and it soon became known that the pen of the new man was a most vigorous one. His love of nature was a most prominent trait, and fishing was his favorite means of enjoying this love. Once, while on the way to the Adirondacks with him, I remarked: "The woods to me is a place to loaf." If I had read Whitman then I would have added, "and invite my soul," but only added, "A couple of hours' fishing morning and evening is all I want; if the fish bite good it is well; if not, the trying for them suffices."

"My boy," he replied, "that is just exactly my own notion, and I have a dislike for the companionship of the bustling, busy angler, who fishes as long as he can see to do it, morn, noon and dewy eve, in the hope of getting the last trout in the water. Such a man makes a labor of fishing; I go to the woods for rest and other attractions purer, higher and more ennobling than the mere act of taking fish."

He ~ u t these same words down in a notebook. and while in camp wrote an account of the trip to the Journal and used them in its columns in June, 1873, now before me.

Once, in writing of "how really garrulous are the silent men of meditative mood," and relating how, when in the woods, their faces would be illuminated by the passing thoughts while they were really communing with distant friends, and their sil- ence was only seeming, and musing in an abstracted way was a rare and pleasant gift, he said: "It is not so with the chronically absent-minded, who may be heavy-browed, but are vinegar- visaged and constitutionally morbid, and would no sooner think of angling than of robbing the exchequer of the realm. An editor's life is neither the best nor the worst in which to cultivate this rare gift. There are those in the profession who can so con- centrate their thoughts that the pertinacious pleadings of a score

of office-seekers cannot tangle the thread of their meditations. And sometimes even the least abstracted among us have to throw off sentences amid such persistent din that bedlam itself would blush at the clatter. What little of the art came to me by nature and compulsory practice has been strengthened by the opportunities for silent meditation afforded by the habit of angling." Thus spoke the weary political editor, and we read between the lines his disgust with the horde of office-seekers, who, under the ante-civil-service laws, rendered miserable the life of every man who had "inflooence" in the smallest degree; but the deduction which he draws - that the practice of angling con- duces to deliberate thought - is one that should commend its practice to parents as the best of all sports for their sons. The murdering instincts of a boy are often satisfied with the death of a low form of animal life which cannot suffer as much pain as mammals or birds, under any circumstances, because their nervous organizations are lower. Shakespeare was greatly in er- ror when he wrote. in effect. that: "The Door beetle that we tread upon in corporal sufference finds a pang as great as when giant dies." Suffering is entirely a matter of nerves. A worm which can be cut in two and go on living, and perhaps grow in- to two worms. cannot suffer much. Pull a lobster's claw from its body and new one grows; pull a limb from a mouse and the animal dies.

Under date of July 3, 1878, Mr. Dawson wrote me: "No past time is so attractive to me as angling, and when not at it I greatly like to talk and write about it, ethically, not scientifical- ly, for I have never been able to master an 'ology' of any kind," and then he goes on to ask about the details of grayling fishing. Some time before this, I called on him and enlarged on the pleasures of a trip to the Au Sable River, Michigan, with Mr. Daniel H. Fitzhugh, of Bay City, and of the capture of the gentle grayling. He listened a while and then asked:

"How large do grayling grow?" "Those we took were fish that would weigh from three-

quarters to one and a half pounds, but some have been taken that would weigh as much as two pounds."

"My boy" - he seemed to be fond of addressing me in this way, perhaps because of the fact of the great disparity of years when we first fished together back of Kinderhook Landing, or because his son, George S., was my schoolmate - "you talk enthusiastically about this new fish, which never exceeds two pounds in weight; did you ever take a salmon?"

"No but "Well, I have, and the grayling may be a good little fish for

those who have never hooked bigger game; but it seems rather

small to one who has taken a salmon." This was a setback from an enthusiastic angler, and, after

pulling myself together, I ventured to suggest that his angling literature, as far as I had read it, rather placed the weight and number of fish in the background, and that, as the originator of the saying that "it is not all of fishing to fish," I had thought that the newly discovered grayling might interest him. He saw the point at once, became interested in the fish and went to Michigan to take them, an account of which can be found in his "Angling Talks," published by Forest and Stream in 1883 - a most interesting little work, full of flavor of the woods and waters.

Mr. Dawson died February 17, 1883, after a few days' illness, aged seventy years. His life had been such an active one, and as a political leader he was so prominent, that his death produced a profound sensation. The Albany Argus, politically opposed to Mr. Dawson, said of him: "To journalism this man bore no un- distinguished relation. He was -a ready, wise, dangerous writer. He was a Greek to be feared when he came bearing presents. * * * He was very able in stating a case for a party; he was even abler in stating a case against a party. He was ablest in giving a man either a fatal defense or a fatal attack. His genius ran to combat; battle was his element. Routine tired him. Peace gave him a sense of ennui. "

About five months before his death, he retired from his editorial labors, although his well-knit frame and compact form showed no more sign of weariness than did his mind. The Argus said: "Pneumonia wrestled the life out of this Scot, they say. Doubtless it did; 'twas pheumonia of which he died. But how came his constitution to take it? Through cold? Why, he had summered for years in water knee-high, or waist-high, putting up jobs on fish. Why, he had repeatedly slept on the floor of lumber cabins o ' winter nights, his feet to a fire and his head under an open window, in the Michigan woods. He had the con-

Editor Forest and Stream: In reply to your inquiry regarding the winter habitat of the

tarpon, I can only say that I cannot furnish information of a reliable character. It is a warm-water fish, and when the in-shore water becomes chilled it is probable that it seeks off-shore water or the edge of the Gulf Stream, to return when the water in the streams and lagoons is heated by the sun of lengthening days. Much has yet to be learned regarding the winter home of the tarpon and its spawning grounds. ~ t - a n early day I expect to make a marooning trip around the peninsula to the Bay of Bis- cayne, and shall endeavor to co!lect information regarding the home of the tarpon during December, January and February.

By the bye, my friend, Senator Quay, should be credited with the capture of the first tarpon with rod and reel in Charl- otte Harbor. On his return to Jacksonville he exhibited the head of the fish and was so elated by the capture that he presented me with the rod, reel and line used on the 0ccasion;and I have treasured them as a momento of the first capture of a silver king by the use of a rod and reel.

Grouper fishing is exciting sport and seldom engaged in by visitors to Florida. At almost any point along the Gulf Coast, where the water is from two to-six fathoms-in depth with a rocky bottom, this excellent fish can be captured in great numbers. Off the Anclote Keys and on the easterly side of Egmont Key this exciting sport can be enjoyed.

A notable fishing resort has, to a great extent, been overlooked. I refer to Lake North, south of Jupiter Inlet, on the eastern coast of Florida. During the winter months bluefish

quering will that defied wet and blasts. Did his prolonged labors undermine his constitution? Emphatically no! He was ever strongest in harness. When he weit to press every day he went to bed every night to sleep the easy-breathing, refreshing sleep of a boy. Knocking off work unsettled his man's strength. Labor was a tonic to him. He would have lived through sheer love of labor had he remained a scalp-taker every day, armed with his keen pen and keener thought. None can be blamed. He quitted work because he said he wanted to quit it. He thought that less- ening the tension would enable him to play in the youth of old age. And he loved to play. But work was his best play. Then he played with thunder."

Only once did Mr. Dawson hold public office. He was post- master of Albany from 1861 to 1867, at a time when his pen was most actively engaged in the patriotic work of upholding the integrity of the Union. But he did not stop at writing editor- ials and equipping his eldest son for the army. He publicly an- nounced that he would pay to the families of any six printers who would volunteer, $4 per week during the time they remained in the United States' service, and he did it. One of the six, Charles Van Allen, of Bethlehem, Albany County, went out with my regiment in August 1862, and died in Andersonville prison September 18, 1864. His wife received the pay for nearly a year after he died, or for the full term of his enlistment, some $624, all to one family.

George Dawson was a member of the Baptist Church, a Sun- day School teacher and lay preacher. A noble man and a most charming one to be in camp with. Entirely without ostentation, his acts of charity were known to but few, and if within his power, his pencil would be drawn through most of these lines, written by one who is proud to have known him and to have called him friend.

from Men I Have Fished With by Fred Mather

1897

from 2 to 7 Ibs. are found in the lake in countless numbers. They will eagerly appropriate a squid or other movable bait. Fly-fishing can be enjoyed in the capture of cavalli and sea trout. If the sea is calm (which is usually the case) fishermen can pass out of the inlet of Lake North, and capture sea fish on the reefs off, but near, the shore.

Anglers visiting Florida should carry with them a 10 to 12 oz. fly-rod, 12 ft. long, with a supply of large flies. If they in- tend engaging in the capture of ravallia the hooks should be snooded on fine steel wire, or else flies and fish will be lost, and language unworthy of a fisherman indulged in. As a rule, the hooks upon which flies are mounted are too light for Florida fishing. The best flies that I have found are the small spoon-fly bails made by Hall & Co., of Grand Rapids, Mich. The feather portion is large and gaudy, the spoons small, and the hooks of large size and of extra quality. The smallest baits, No. 112, 1, 1-112 and 2 are best adapted to fly-fishing in Florida. In using the artificial fly in salt-water fishing in Florida, it should be allowed to sink a short distance beneath the surface before an effort is made to bring it home. I would advise intending fly- fishermen to use a heavy fly-rod, a large reel and at least from 50 to 100 yds. of line. I prefer a 12 oz. split-bamboo rod 1 2 ft. long, the finest Cutthunk line and an Abbey & Imbrie quadruple multiplying reel. Such an outfit is necessary to capture cavalli and ravallia ranging from 10 to 20 Ibs., and channel bass weighing from 5 to 30 lbs.

Al Fresco Forest and Stream, Jan. 16, 1890

The Angler in Nicaragua The student of Natural History will fmd a rare field for ex-

ercise in the wonderful flora and fauna, while to the sportsman, the country is a veritable paradise. In a previous letter, I spoke of the various kinds of game to be found in the forest on the Atlantic slope. To those may be added deer, which are abundant on the Pacific slope, particularly in the vicinity of Rivas. But it is the angler who will find greatest cause to rejoice. To say nothing of the barracuda, snapper, and other fine sea fish to be had of Greytown, let me confine myself to the fish of the lake and the San Juan. The most highly-esteemed fish is the jua- poti (pronounced wah-po-ti), which somewhat resembles the black bass in appearance, but is much more savory. The sabal- letta, a silvery fish, shaped like the striped bass, is a gamy fellow, who when hooked will leap out of the water and endeavor often with success, t o shake the hook out of his mouth. He is, however, rather bony and not highly thought of as a food fish. But the great game fish of the fresh water is the savaloreal, or tarpon, which fairly swarms in the river and lake. Wherever there is a shoal place in the river they are to be seen breaking in hundreds. and at the Toro Rapids, above Castillo, they are so

numerous that they frequently jump into the boats ascending or descending. When ex-United States Minister Hall, who is the agent of the canal company at Managua, was descending the river to meet Senator Miller, five large tarpon jumped into the little steamer which carried him down the Toro Rapids. Lake Nicaragua is, so far as I know, the only body of fresh water in the world that can boast of the shark. It is full of genuine man- eaters, similar in appearance to those of the ocean, and quite as savage. It is said that at least 25 persons annually fall victims in the lake to these monsters. Of course, they also travel up and down the river. A large alligator or crocodile - - I should say the latter from the shape of his snout - - also inhabits the river. At the Toro Rapids we saw a huge one swimming. His head alone was about 5 ft. long. These "gators" have a queer way of fishing. They select a shoal place in the rapids and lie head to the current, with mouths wide open. They have been a good deal shot at since work was begun on the canal, and consequently, are now extremely shy of man. The natives, however, do not seem to have ever dreaded them half as much as the sharks.

W. E. S. in The Sun, 1891

Wyoming Territory, Nov. 25, 1876 - Perhaps some would like to know something of fishing out in the far west, where the foot of white man has scarcely ever trod; if so I will tell of some I enjoyed while after the wily Sioux last summer; yet it was fishing under difficulties in some respects; as one was obliged to take carbine and pistols, and often an escort, for we were in the famous hunting grounds of the Indians, called by them the Hunter's Paradise. During the past summer I was with the Big Horn and Yellowstone Expedition, under the command of Gen- eral Crook, U.S.A., which left Fort Fetterman, Wyoming, the outskirt of civilization, the last of May. The country past over between that point and Tongue River was very uninteresting, rolling prairie covered with sage brush and grease wood timber very scarce except along the creek bottoms,where cottonwood, aspen and willows are often abundant. Very little game of any kind was seen during the march, except jack rabbits, antelopes and a few old buffalo bulls. During part of June and July we were in camp on Goose Creek, a tributary of Tongue River, rising in the Big Horn Mountains; a clear cold mountain stream; quite a luxury after having used the water of the Cheyenne and Powder Rivers. The trout fishing in Goose Creek was splendid. Do not think I exaggerate when I say that from 10,000 to 15,000 were taken while the command was in camp. Hundreds were brought in every day; took a hundred myself in a few hours. The creek debouches from the mountains in a perfect Niapara, cascade upon cascade. 'Tis wonderful how the-finny den&ons get up them, yet they do after their own way without fishways or ladders. The trout taken were small, brook trout weighing from a quarter to three quarters of a pound - a few turning the scales at three pounds. Many of your readers would be amused at seeing the outfit of the fishermen; willow poles cut from the bank, hook of any size, often a bent pin, a coarse line about ten feet long. Yet with this tackle, trout were taken without number. Grasshoppers which were very abundant furnished the bait. I and a few others used artificial flies and were as successful as those who used bait.

August 2 the command moved to the headwaters of the Tongue River, where the fishing was magnificent. Just after getting to camp, I started for a fish taking two mounted men with me, crossed over at the river at camp. The river here was not

over sixty or seventy feet wide, very cold and clear as crystal, two feet deep, bottom rocky and sandy. By this time, many of our Indian scouts were fishing. They ride into the water on their ponies and fish without dismounting, going to the bank in order to land the fish. I was much amused at their manner of taking and preparing fish. Soon after crossing I dismounted, cut a pole and prepared my tackle, very much to the amusement of several of our Indian scouts who were intently watching. When my fly book was produced and they saw the fly - the last one to m i re- gret - they were very curious to examine it, not comprehending what was to be done with it. When they saw me put it on the line and prepare to make a cast, one of them offered me a grasshopper for bait which was declined. He looked at the fly - one of Read & Son's gray professors - shook his head saying in his guttural voice, "No good, no good -" but no sooner had I made a cast into a deep pool near by than a fine trout made a dart for the fly and took a good bite, almost pulling the rod, or pole I should say from my hands. After playing him a short time he was landed, much to the surprise and delight of my Indian spectators. After taking my fish from the hook, they again ex- amined the fly, saying "Heap good, heap good!" Made another cast and soon landed a f i e one, which was continued until I had six fine trout, weighing more than two pounds each. Find- ing no more in this pool, moved down the river a few rods to another where I made a cast. No sooner had the fly touched the water, than it was taken, but in attempting to land him too soon, the snood broke and away went fish and worst of all, taking my last fly with him. Calling to one of the men who was holding the horses nearby, to catch some grasshoppers, proceeded to put on a new hook, baited with the hopper and commenced fishing again. They bit splendidly and never had better sport, for as fast as I could throw in I pulled them out, and without moving more than a yard or two, took fifty-one as f i e fish as you ever saw weighing from one to two and a half pounds each. As we had as many as we could well carry, returned to camp and soon had some of them in the frying pan. So ended my f i s t fishing in Tongue River, S. Wyo.

Rod & Gun, Vol. 9, ,Yo. 10 Dec. 9, 1876 - p. 146

MEMBERSHIP INFORMATION

THE AMERICAN FLY FISHER is but one of the many benefits received by participating in the Museum affairs. Also included with your membership are the information publications, free research services, a direct line of communication to experts in history, literature and technology, free appraisals for donors of materials and an opportunity to individually promote a new movement in the field of fly fishing that is completely unique. Your dollar supporr becomes far more than finanical help. I t is the keeping of an unspoken promise to future generations. A brochure will be forwarded on request.

A tie tac is presented with each membership of $25.00 or more.

Associate $ 15.00 Sustaining $ 25.00 Patron $100.00 and over Life $250.00

All membership dues, contributions and donations are tax deductible.

Please forward checks to THE TREASURER, The Museum of American Fly Fishing, Manchester, Vermont 05254 with your NAME, ADDRESS and ZIP CODE; type of membership desired and a statement of the amount enclosed. Upon receipt, a magazine and membership card will be mailed immediately.

EXHIBITS The Museum exhibits are located in the O ~ i s Showrooms at

Manchester, Vt. Three rooms displaying many hundreds of rari- ties are open to the public every day, all year. Rods, reels, flies, books and other related items can be viewed without charge. The rooms are air conditioned, well lighted and comfortable. Regrettably all the items owned by the Museum cannot be exhibited at one time because of lack of space but displays are changed frequently so that over a period of two years, members, donors, and the general public have the opportunity to view all contributions.

BROWN UNIVERSITY ANGLING BOOK CATALOGUE In 1968 Brown's Rockefeller Library put on exhibit a select-

ion of rare angling books. The catalogue, with its history of angling literature soon became a collector's item. An anonymous donor has contributed a limited number to be sold for the bene- fit of the Museum at $3.00 each. Make checks payable to The Museum of American Fly Fishing.

FOR SALE Ogden Pleissner's Lye Brook Pool, one of the artist's most . . . colorful and lovable water colors reproduced on the finest

papers. Limited Edition $400.00, unframed. Of this $380.00 is tax deductible.

A Check List of American Sporting Periodicals by Austin Hogan. A prime reference source over ten years in the writing, $5.50. -

Where the Pools are Bright and Deep by Dana S. Lamb. A limited offering. Autographed. $8.95.

OFFICERS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . President Carl Navarre

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Vice President. Steve Raymond . . . . . . . . . . . . . Vice President and Curator .Austin S. Hogan

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Treasurer. .Leigh H. Perkins Secretary and Ass't Treasurer. . . . . . . . . . .Mrs. Laura Towslee

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Registrar David B. Ledlie . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Assistant Registrar. Mrs. Ruth Upson

MEMORIAL CITATIONS Joseph W. Brooks, Jr.

1901 - 1972 Arnold Gingrich

1903 - 1976

Highest Awards 1977

Kay F. Brodney Dana S. Lamb Alvin Grove, Jr. Anne K. Secor

Donald D. Zahner

HONORARY TRUSTEES Harry Darbee Herman Kessler

TRUSTEES Robert Barrett Richard Bauer Joseph Spear Beck Stanley Bogdan Ms. Kay Brodney Charles E. Brooks Roy Chapin Carroll C. Curtice Julia Fairchild G. Dick Finlay William A. Glassford Gardner L. Grant George Griffith Dr. Alvin Grove, Jr. George W. Harvey Austin S. Hogan Susie Isaksen Martin Keane Raymond A. Kotrla Peter Kriendler Dana S. Lamb

David B. Ledlie Alvan Macauley, Jr.

Leon Martuch Dudley Mills Carl Navarre

Ed Oliver Leigh H. Perkins

Mrs. Leigh Perkins Steve Raymond

Rick Robbins Willard F. Rockwell, Jr.

Ben Schley Ernest G. Schwiebert

Col. Henry Siege1 Prescott A. Tolman

Bennett Upson Ralph Wahl

Roger White Richard Whitney

Shirley Woods Donald D. Zahner

Ed Zern

STAFF AND CONSULTANTS Library

Mrs. Leigh Perkins, Librarian David B. Ledlie, Assistant Librarian

Joseph Spear Beck Stanley Bitchell

Ms. Kay F. Brodney

Public Relations Donald Owens

Dan Reid Tony Skilton

Bennett Upson

Technology Charles E. Brooks

G. Dick Finlay Poul Jorgensen Martin Keane John Orrelle

Page 32

AMERICA'S FIRST POLLUTERS The lumber mills that dotted the landscape by the

- thousands during the nation's coming of age, choked the spawning beds and killed the trout.

Editor Forest and Stream: As the season will soon be

quiring where to go and shall we - find trout, o r shall we find the streams where trout used to abound now depleted of fish and the waters filled with sawdust?

The reply, although hard t o give them, yet from general as

that one could get goo great many large wide s caught a string of t rout large enough t o satisfy the longings of any true fisherman; bu t what is the fishing today? With bu t a few exceptions those now caught are small fish. These t rout when small are found at the head of the small streams, which are the headwaters of the larger streams, and which as they grow in size naturally seek larger and deeper waters, and as they work down toward the deeper holes in the large streams what d o they find? Generally a sawmill emptying large quantities of sawdust _ __ = , __-- - -- - - - --- - = - _:_- - =~ -=-- 2--- -. - - - -- -- - - -- - - - - = - - ~ - - - - - - - - . - =-~-===-

-- . - - -- -~ -

- - - = -- - _ I - - -:-- which flows down stream, filing the water and depositing itself - - ---- - --s==y -- - -- --=-- - - ~ -==-- -- - - -

- - - --- -I- __=_ - . ~

- L - +; :- ---.-=z=-z- . -. - -- .. - - - - :T--z - - --% :... along the banks as it goes, until the shores along the entire T - - z - - = - - - -

. .-.. - - .. - - -

- - -~ -~ - .. - - - - - - - < __= - -~ - ; - -- . - ~- -~

length of the stream are covered with it. - - . ~ ~ - - - = -- --_.--? ~ ~ - . .-- ---- , - - - - -;--.=.-- -=- - - - - -- . -- -. -~ - . - - ---- - - -

- . .- ~ --

One stream I had brought to my notice last summer; o n a Old Mill, Putney ~ - .- .. -. - ~

trouting trip to Ossipee I had planned t o fish Lovell's River and its branches, there being about six miles of good water for trout, 1874 but there was so much sawdust floating down from the sawmill at the head of the river that fishing with any prospect of success used t o be good fishing, also in Swift River, a branch of the was out of the question. F o r several miles you could see the Saco, and which joins it at Conway Corner; this is a stream sawdust floating down as well as piled up on the banks, in some which has from ten to fifteen miles of wide, deep water, with places from a foot t o three feet deep, so that when wading t h e plenty of large pools, o u t of which trout used t o be taken, but river you did not know whether you would sink down a foot now the same fishermen who have followed this stream for under the surface o r go over your waders. In Gulf and Colby years are satisfied if they catch a few fair-sized fish. brooks, which run into the head of Lovell's River, b y going u p Is there no way b y which the sawmills can be stopped from stream far enough so as to be above the sawmills, plenty of emptying their sawdust into these streams? small trout were found and no sawdust. Osborne

In the Saco River, from Crawford Notch to Conway, there February 5, 1891

STAFFORDSHIRE

"If the breathless chase, o'er hill and dale, Exceed your strength, a sport of less fatigue, Not less delightful, the prolific stream Affords. The crystal rivulet, that o'er A stony channel rolls its rapid maze, Swarms with the silver fry. Such, through the bounds Of pastoral Stafford, runs the brawling Trent; Such, Eden, sprung from Cambrian mountains; such, The Esk, o'erhung with woods."

Armstrong

I will give thee for thy food No fish that riseth in the mud. But trout and pike that love to swim Where the gravel from the brim Through the pure streams may be seen; Orient pearl fit for a Queen, Will I give thy love to win And a shell to keep them in; Not a fish in a l l my brook That shall disobey thy look, Butr when thou wilt, come sliding by, And from thy white hand take a fly

The Faithful Sheperdess Beaumont & Fletcher, 161 1

Fishing, if I, a fisher may protest Of pleasures, is the sweetest, Of sports the best Of exercises the most excellent; Of recreations the most innocent. But now the sport is marde, and wotte ye why Fishes decrease and fishers multiply.

Thomas Bastard, 1598

The American Fly Fisher - American Museum of Fly Fishing · The Sportsman Tourist Florida Fishing -...

Documents

Transcript of The American Fly Fisher - American Museum of Fly Fishing · The Sportsman Tourist Florida Fishing -...