THE BROOK TROUT'S RIVAL
When the German brown trout was introduced in the brook trout streams of Pennsylvania some years ago fly-fishermen condemned the act because they believed the brook trout (S. fontinalis) was superior to the brown trout as a game fish. Deforestation, rendering the streams too warm for the brook trout, has changed the fly-fisherman's feeling in the matter. The brown trout can thrive in warm water, and with the brook trout's gradual extermination the brown trout is being welcomed as the next best thing. A correspondent at Reading, Pa., signing himself "Mourner"—he mourns the passing of the true brook trout—declares the brown trout strikes harder than the brook trout and after being hooked, unlike the brook trout, makes two or three leaps out of the water, but is not so gamey and cunning as the brook trout and tires out much quicker. The German species has been popular because it attains a larger size quickly and destroys almost every fish in the streams, including the brook trout. "The fly-fishermen who for years have matched their skill, cunning, artifice, and prowess against the genuine brook trout that since creation dawned have inhabited the mountain brooks that flow down every ravine," says Mourner, "have had forced on them, as never before, the sad truth that, like the deer, bear, quail, woodcock, and grouse, brook trout are slowly but surely passing. There never was a fish so gamy, elusive, and eccentric, so beautiful and so hard to deceive and capture by scientific methods as the native brook trout. No orator has yet risen to fully sound its praises; no poet to sing its merits as they deserve; no painter to produce its varied hues. The brook trout was planted in the crystal waters by the Creator 'when the morning stars sang together' and fontinalis was undisturbed, save as some elk, deer, bear, panther, or wildcat forded the shallows of his abode, or some Indian or mink needed him for food. In this environment the brook trout grew and thrived. Much warfare made him shy and suspicious until he became crafty to a degree. The brook trout successfully combated man's inventive genius in the shape of agile rods, artificial flies and other bait calculated to fool the most wary, and automatic reels, landing nets, and other paraphernalia designed to rob a game fish of 'life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.' But it was not until the tanner and acid factory despoiler turned poisoned refuse into the streams and the dynamiter came upon the scene and the sheltering trees were cut away by the lumberman, letting in the sun and warming the water to a nauseous tepidity, that the brave trout faltered, hesitated, and then quit the uneven conquest. Carp and bass were planted in the streams to further endanger the brook trout's existence. Next the California trout and the German brown trout, who prey upon the true brook trout's progeny, followed, till finally, beaten, baffled, dismayed, poisoned, routed, and overwhelmed by the superior numbers and size of a cannibalistic race, he gradually began his retreat. It is good-bye to the brook trout now. With him it was either cool pools, solitude, and freedom, or extermination. The waters that pour down into larger streams are sad memories now of his school playgrounds. No more will the sportsman's honest hunger be appeased by the brook trout's fine-grained flesh from hardening waters of nearby mountain brooks. But memory of the brook trout cannot be wrested from those who knew him at his best, and braved personal danger from rattler, bear, and wildcat to win him from the crystal waters. The brook trout has been butchered to make a carp's holiday. Gone he may be now, but he will live forever in the dreams of all true fishermen as the real aristocrat of the mountain streams. The like of him will not soon be seen again." The Fish Commission has mastered the science of the artificial propagation of the brook trout—millions are now produced with little trouble and expense—and the stocking of waters is a common practice, but the Fish Commission can't propagate forests and woodland streams. Mourner must know that the brook trout itself is not hard to save; it is the preservation of its wild habitat that is the great puzzle. If the United States Forestry Department will protect the trout streams from the greedy lumberman, the factoryman, and acid maker, the Fish Commission will have no trouble in saving the brook trout.
CHAPTER XIV
TROUT ON BARBLESS HOOKS
Most women who indulge in fishing are, like children, mere fish takers, not Anglers, but the craft is honored by the association of many fine female devotees who study and practice the gentle art in its fullest meaning—a devotion to the poetic, artistic, healthful, and humane elements in piscatorial pursuits. Dame Juliana Berners, who wrote the earliest volume on gentle fishing (1500), was the first celebrated example of the artful and merciful woman fisher, and Cleopatra the first female to make notorious the coarse and ungodly method in fishing for pastime. Sweet Dame Berners believed in angling—the desire of fair treatment to the quarry, correct tackle, a love of the pursuit superior to greed for number in the catch, and a heavenly admiration of the general beauties of nature in the day as well as in the play; and brutal Cleopatra believed in mere fishing, the killing of the greatest number, regardless of means, mercy, or method.
Our modern Dame Bernerses and Cleopatras in the fishing fold are many. The wife who aids the net fisherman—the marine farmer whose calling emulates the professional duties of Jesus' disciples, Peter. Andrew, James, and John—does not count. Her part in fishing, while by no means angling, is as honest as the work of the upland farmer's helpmate, and God Himself will not condemn little children, male or female, who fish indiscriminately, "because they do not know." Fishing for the modern market is just as honorable as market fishing was in the ancient days when Jesus praised the net fishermen and made them His nearest and dearest friends, and angling—merciful ungreedy fishing with humane tackle and a clear conscience—is even more righteous than net fishing, because, while the main result of the Angler's pursuit is the same as the marketman's—fish taking—the Angler's method of capture is far less cruel, and his creel of fish is far less in number than the boatful of the marketman.
The distinction in angling and fishing is made by the modes employed in the taking, the killing, and the disposing of the fishes. Any fisherman who uses tackle appropriate to the various species, who is not greedy in his catch, who plays his game with mercy, who dispatches it with the least suffering, who disposes of it without wanton waste, and who is thankful to the Maker for the ways and means for all these conditions, is an Angler. And cannot woman be as artful and gentle in pursuits and as appreciative in feeling as man? Surely. England and Scotland and Ireland are famous for their women Anglers, and Maine, the Adirondacks, California, and Canada boast of the finest female fly-casters in the world. There are more women Anglers in these last-named territories than there are men Anglers in all other parts of the United States. A woman, Mary Orris Marbury, wrote the best volume scientifically descriptive of trout, bass, and salmon flies of modern times, and Cornelia Crosby, a daughter of the Maine wilderness, is the fly-fishing enthusiast of America.