Morning journal and courier., 1891-04-10

of May, as in New York state. "Why," said he, "only yesterday man told me he caught three trout, each weighing half pound, and he did not know they were on his hook. They bite like suckers, and the flesh is not much better. Give me the month of May, when the apple trees arc in blossom, for catching trout.
 A Fisherman's Paradise.
 [Julian Ralph in Harper's Weekly.i Up along the shores of Lake Nepigon, which is thirty miles by an air line north of Lake Superior, many of the Indians lay up white-fish for winter. They catch them in nets and cure them by frost. They do not clean them. They simply make hole in the tail end of each fish, and string them, as if they were beads, upon sticks, which they set up into racks. They usually hang the fishes in rows of ten, and frequently store up thousands while they are at it. The Rev. Mir. Reni- son, who has had much to do with better ing the condition of these Indians, told me that he had caught one thousand and twenty pounds of white-fsh in two nights with two gill nets in Lake Nepigon. It is unnecessary to add that he cleaned his.
 Lake Nepigon is about seventy miles in length, and two-thirds as long, at the points of its greatest measurement, and is picturesque body of water, surrounded by forests and dotted with islands. It is famous haunt for trout, and those fisher men who are lucky may at times see scores of great beauties lying upon the bottom; or, with good guide and at the right sea- son, may be taken to places where the wa ter is fairly astir with them. Fishermen who are not lucky may get their customa- ry experience without travelling so far, for the route is by canal, on top of nearly IL ac mode of locomotion consumes nearly as much time as the other, despite the differ ence between the respective distances trav eled. The speckled trout in the lake are locally reported to weigh from three to nine pounds, but the average stranger will lift in more of three pounds weight than he will of nine. Yet whatever they aver age, the catching of them is prime sport as you float upon the water in your pie turesque birch bark canoe, with your guide l paddling you noiselessly along, and your spoon or artificial minnow ripping through | the water or glinting in the sunlight. You | need stout baitrod, for the gluttonous | fish are game, and make good fight every | time. The local fishermen catch the | speckled beauties with an unpoetic lump | of pork.
 1 A lively French Canadian whom I met
 on the .sa. cars , on my ~ way g, to 1 Nspigon & de | place for de fish in all over de worl'." And he added another remark which had at least the same amount of truth at the bot tom of it. Said he: "You weel find dere dose Mees Nancy feeshermans from der
 Unite State, which got dose hunderd-dol-
 lar poles and dose leetle humbug flies,
 which dey t'row around and pull lem back
 again, like dey was afraid some feesh
 would bite it. Dat is all one grand stu
 peedity. Dose man which belong dere put
 on de hook some pork, and catch ono ta-
 reeble pile of fish: Dey don't give A.
 about style, only to catch dose feesh.'
 himself on the distance he can cast, and
 who owns splendid outfit, will despise
 the spirit of that French Canadians
 speech; yet up in that country many 6
 scientific angler has endured failure oi
 "bites" for a long and weary time, while
 his guide was hauling in fish a-plenty, and
 has come to question "science" for the
 nonce, and follow the Indian custom. Fol
 gray trout (the namaycush, or lake trout
 they bait with apparently anything edible
 that is handiest, preferring pork, rabbit partridge, the meat of the trout itself, ol
 of the sucker; and the last they take first if possible. The suckers, by-the-way, art
 all too plenty, and as full of bones as any
 old-time frigate ever was with timbers
 You may see the Indians eating them ant !: discarding the bones at the same time; ant
 they make the process resemble the actio1
 of a haycutter when the grass is going il
 long at one side, and coming out short, bu , in equal quantities, at the other.
 The namaycush of Nepigon weigh iron
 nine to twenty-five pounds. The native
 take big hook and bait it, and then rur , the point into piece of shiny, newly l 1aol SE,,1o l.,s, bites, but give them tight line and stead, , pull. These fish make a game struggle
 leaping and diving and thrashing the wa
 ter until the gaff ends the struggle. II
 winter there is as good sport with the na , maycush, and it is managed peculiarly The Indians cut into the ice over deep wa
 ter, making holes at least eighteen inche } in diameter. Across the hole they lay stick, so that when they pull up trou l fish will hit that obstruction instead o 3 l the resistant ice. If fish struck the ic
 the chances are nine to one that it woul, tear off the hook. Having baited a hool | with pork, and stuck the customary bit o
 lead upon it, they sound for bottom, ant then measure the line so that it will reacl , l to about foot and half above sound :: ings, that is to say. off bottom. The they begin fishing, and their plan is Git i 7 the same all over the Canadian wilderness to keep jerking the line up with single ? quick, sudden bob at frequent intervals l The spring is the time to catch the bi Nepigon jack-fsh, or pike. They haun the grassy places in little bogs and cove. F and are caught by trolling. A jack-fish what we call @ pike, and John Watt, tn , famous guide in that country, tells o 3 those fish of such size that when man 0 ' ordinary height held the tail of one up
 his shoulder, the head of the fish dragge, 7 on the ground. He must be responsibl for the further assertion that he saw al t Indian squaw drag net, with meshe seven inches square, and catch two jack fish, each of which weighed more than fiji 3 ty pounds when cleaned. The story an f | other local historian told of surveyo who caught a big jack-fish that felt like sunken log, and could only be dragged ur 3 til it's head came to the surface, when h
 shot it and it broke away-that narrative
 will leave for the next New Yorker wh
 goes to Nepigon. And yet it seems to m
 that such stories distinguish fishing rt 8 sort quite as much as the fish actual 0 caught. Men would not dare to romano 8 like that at many places have fshed ir
 where the trout are scheduled and mum bered, and where you have got to go to
 certain rock on fixed day of the mont . | to catch one.