It is a burning shame, a foul blot on the character of Americans, and tarnish on their reputation for far-sighted economy, that their only idea of the treatment of the wild game of the woods and waters seems to be total annihilation. “After me a desert,” is their motto; and they never rest till, by planting snares and liming streams, they have caught the last partridge and poisoned the last fish. Thus have they already destroyed one of the most valuable resources of the country; the Hudson, the Connecticut, the Penobscot, and even the Kennebec, yield no more salmon, and we yearly pay to Canada enormous sums for what we once had, and might still have, in plenty on our own shores. Not many years ago a person buying shad on the Connecticut River was required to take such a proportion of salmon. Now that the head-waters are covered with tanneries and saw-mills, and are crossed by dams without the simple expedient of a flume that the fish could ascend, and now that early salmon are worth a dollar a pound in New York market, where are the former denizens of the Connecticut?
All the timber cut on the streams would not pay for the damage done to the fisheries. In Canada the people have discovered, fortunately for them not too late, the importance of stringent protective laws. The nets can only be set within a certain distance, and cannot extend across the entire stream. In Lower Canada the net fishing terminates on the first day of August, and the rod fishing on the fifteenth of September, and spearing, the most cruel, unprofitable and injurious mode of destruction, is forbidden altogether.
About one hundred and twenty miles below Quebec the wondrous Saguenay pours its dark waters and fierce current into the placid bosom of the St. Lawrence. It is one of the natural wonders of our still new and scarcely explored country. Hills rise a thousand feet sheer up, and its waters descend a thousand feet deep at their base. The St. Lawrence, at its mouth, is only some thirty feet deep, but the bottom suddenly descends at the entrance to the Saguenay, and becomes from five hundred to a thousand feet in depth. The breadth of the Saguenay is so great that the grandeur of the mountains is lost to the eye, and the scenery is remarkable more for ruggedness than beauty. At the mouth of this river was the first station of the Hudson Bay Company, a little village called Tadousac, which is pronounced with the emphasis on the last syllable, and in that village stands the mission church of the Jesuits, the oldest in the country.
Close to Tadousac, and almost adjoining at the back, is a still smaller village called L’Anse à l’Eau, and although great ships no longer lie at Tadousac, and the houses are fast falling to decay, and the good men of the olden days have long gone their last journey, and the trappers are never more seen around the famous station, and the glory of the Hudson Bay Company has departed, the trout and salmon coast along the rocks and visit the inlets as they did when priests promenaded the natural terraces of Tadousac, and when the shortest road to the Northwest was up the Saguenay River. The trout care not though the iron horse has sprung two great leaps across the water that they live in, and know not that a woman, the only Catholic that can read, officiates as high priest in the sanctum of the woman-haters, the mission church of the Jesuits.
The St. Lawrence abounds with most delicious food for trout; there are acres of small fish; the sand eels crowd the bays yards deep, the sardines, the mullet, the capelin, the tommy cods, push and jostle their way along, while shellfish innumerable cover the sandy bottom. Flies swarm on the water, and the deep rivers in Winter and the cool streams in Summer constitute the paradise of the salmonidæ.
Along the shores of the tide water, early in Spring the trout and salmon make their appearance, and wandering about pass the merry days of May, June and July in feasting and junketing, in visiting new scenes and tasting every variety of food, till instinct warns them the waters are falling, and they must hasten to their sylvan bowers and enjoy the pleasures of love and paternity. Then slowly, the largest first, they leave the tide waters and swarm up all the practicable streams, running the rapids and steadily advancing to their pebbly spawning beds, which kind nature appears to have prepared in the heart of these impassable mountains for their especial protection. Through all this season, June, July and August, the fishing is magnificent; they are in great numbers, and of immense size; but after they have once left the salt water, the angler must accompany them in their ascent if he would continue his sport, and by day struggle in his canoe against the rapids, up which he hears them darting at night.
While the fish are still in tide water, and the fisherman is fishing from the rocks, the head of some bay into which flows a stream of fresh water, and the time of the lower half of the tide, are both desirable. The former as furnishing a variety of food, and the latter as contracting the fishing ground. The eddies of a swift current, and the hollows of a rocky bottom are both affected by the fish; although they are often found along a smooth sandy shore, chasing the minnows, and now and then dashing at a fly or sand-hopper thrown off the land. It is nothing unusual to capture a hundred fish in as few hours as it will require to land them, and often the only limit to the number will be the sportsman’s humanity. They are a difficult fish to preserve; it seems sacrilegious to salt them; they are not good pickled in brine, and smoking is both injurious and troublesome. The fisherman, if he would not have them rot before his eyes, must put a bridle on his eagerness.
They run very large, sometimes above a dozen pounds, are often taken of five and six, and frequently a whole day’s catch will average three pounds. They are found at the mouth and along the shore of every river that empties into the lower part of the St. Lawrence. They ascend the Saguenay, and are taken at and near its mouth in great numbers, and in fact everywhere in the lower St. Lawrence and all its tributaries they abound. It would be more difficult to tell where not to find them than where to find them. But the best trout-fishing season is later, when they have followed the salmon and retired to the upper waters of the mountain streams, where they lie together in shoals, in the deep pools. Then they may be traced by the wake their motion leaves in the water; then may the fisherman, casting a long line and careful fly, pick the finest and go on fishing till heart and soul are satisfied. There, amid the wild scenery, at the foot of the granite hills, by the shade of the stunted spruce, he may take his stand upon some point of rocks, near to a black pool, and deftly wielding the slender rod, may bring to the net one after another of the mighty denizens of the water. But even then, if he would take the mightiest he must prove himself a sportsman by keeping out of sight and casting far and straight. And when his sport is terminated by the declining day, or his ample satisfaction, and he meets his companions round the camp-fire, over a well cooked supper improved by a vigorous appetite, he will exchange experiences of the habits of fish or the arcana of the angler’s art.
If, however, he loves the “wet sheet and the flowing sea,” a nautical anomaly, by the way, he may pursue his prey in the open bays, and with a smart breeze and long line, and gaudy fly dancing from wave to wave, have great sport. Under these circumstances the fish are almost uncontrollable and must be often followed with the boat for a long way before they can be killed. It is gloriously exciting, the bright waters sparkling with foam, the light boat leaping over the billows, the sky magnificent in its depth of blue, the fresh breeze cool and strong; and the fish just hooked, furious, vigorous and courageous, rushing hither and thither, plunging to the bottom or springing high out of water. Then the exciting chase as he takes off fortunately down wind, and exhausts all but the few last turns of line on the reel till it becomes a question of speed between him and the boat, and at last his final surrender and capture. Truly is it magnificent.
Rivière du Loup, a little Canadian village situated on the St. Lawrence, opposite the mouth of the Saguenay, is now connected with Quebec by railroad, and is only a day and a half distant from New York. It affords good accommodations, but there is no place anywhere on the Saguenay or at its mouth where the traveller can stop.[6] The Habitans although generally willing to offer such accommodation as they possess, are too dirty in their habits, and often too much beloved of creeping things to suit American taste. So that as there is little or no trout fishing at Rivière du Loup, the angler must make his arrangements for a camp-life, and would do well to descend the St. Lawrence in a pilot boat, which he can hire with a man and boy for two dollars a day, and stop at the mouths of all the streams that debouche into it. The river is over twenty miles wide, and he must look out for storms, as these boats are open and by no means good sea boats. At night he can go ashore, build a fire, put up his tent, and call into requisition the numerous luxuries this mode of travelling will enable him to carry.