The Game Fish, of the Northern States and British Provinces / With an account of the salmon and sea-trout fishing of Canada and New Brunswick, together with simple directions for tying artificial flies, etc., etc.

by Robert Barnwell Roosevelt

But the most wonderful mode of all is that practised in the St. Lawrence, and generally among the larger waters of Canada and the northern States. The fisherman places himself in the stern of a light canoe-shaped boat, with his face forward, the oarsman sits near the bows, of course facing aft; on each side of the fisherman are pegs like row-locks, or grooves, in the gunwale, with corresponding round holes in the stretchers on the opposite sides; two short, stiff rods are laid across the boat, projecting on each side like wings, kept in their places by the pegs, and their buts supported by the holes. A long line is let out from each rod, say forty yards, armed with a spoon bait; while the fisherman holds an ordinary trolling-line in his hand, and is thus rowed about till either he, or more frequently his oarsman, perceives from the bending of the rod that he has a bite, or he feels a dead drag on his hand-line. If it falls to the share of the rod, he takes the latter up, ends it round till he can reach the line, when he pulls the fish in by hand. If he uses a reel, it is a good plan to take one or two turns of the line round it, so that it will just render. By so doing he might save the rod from breaking, which would be apt to happen with a heavy fish. Mascallonge invariably stop perfectly still when struck.

In landing a fish by hand, which is always the preferable mode, the reel only being used for an emergency, hold the line very lightly between your fingers and give to every jerk or rush. Innumerable large fish are lost by an endeavor to pull them in by force, and I have seen men, with their hands cut by the line, complaining that they had lost a mascallonge of forty pounds. Pickerel never make many nor long-sustained rushes, but they give powerful jerks and flounces that, if resisted, will tear out or break any hook; otherwise, they can ordinarily be drawn through, or more properly over, the water like a wet rag. The person who pulls them in as though it was a question of strength between him and the fish, deserves to lose them and have his fingers cut besides. The moment, however, the fish is at the side of the skiff, he should be either gaffed or lifted over the gunwale at once, as more are lost then than at any other time. Their jaws are mere skin and bone, the skin tearing away at once, and the bone forming no substance in which the hook can imbed itself, the latter sometimes slips out or more frequently is broken off. If you value your fingers, never put them in a pickerel’s mouth or gills, which are armed with innumerable sharp and even venomous teeth. The best weather for trolling is a light, southwesterly breeze, and in large and deep waters a bright sky; in a heavy wind, it is impossible to manage the boat.

The hook should always be on wire or gimp, the former preferable as the latter is so rarely what it professes to be, and of course should be attached to the line by not less than two swivels. The best spoon is the so-called Buel’s patent, with three hooks, either in one piece, or soldered firmly together, and a small elliptical piece of tin, copper or brass, made to revolve round them by means of a shoulder on the shank. This may be tin on one side and red on the other, or copper and brass, or copper or brass alone, to suit the angler’s fancy, and the shank of the hooks is wound with scarlet flannel, or covered with the ibis feather, or left uncovered, as experience shall dictate. Bright spoons are preferable on dark days, and for mascallonge the oldest and most successful fishermen use no feathers or flannel. Avoid purchasing any spoon with small, dangling hooks, or with more than three or less than two, or with any fastening of any kind except wire or gimp. Nothing else will for a moment stand the terrible teeth of these ferocious monsters. I once had an expensive imitation pearl fish, that was fastened with thin brass wire, bitten off by the first pickerel that touched it. If you use a reel, you will of course use your ordinary bass line; if not, purchase a common stout hand-line, and troll with from forty to fifty yards out. Your trolling-rod must be short, stiff and strong, not over ten feet long, and can be readily made by adding a stout top to your but and second joint; while, for weed fishing, you must have a long, stiff rod, and when the fish are heavy and tangle themselves in the weeds, which their first rush will often do, you must reach your line and draw them out by hand; by taking hold of the wire or gimp, you can readily land a ten-pound fish.

These fish, both pickerel and mascallonge, can be captured in immense numbers in the St. Lawrence, at Cape Vincent, Clayton, Alexandria Bay and many other places; in Lake Champlain, near Rouse’s Point; and in all the lakes of Canada; but they are dull sport in the catching and poor food in the eating. Believe no one who boasts of the fine flavor of the mascallonge, cook him as you will, he is nothing but a dirty, flabby, tasteless pickerel. And as for the sport, carry a blanket with you, take a turn with the hand-line round your leg, and stretching yourselves as best you may in the bottom of the boat, sleep comfortably till either a call from your oarsman or a tug on your leg rouses you to the dreary work of pulling in a worthless, unresisting log. When you strike and lose one fish, remain rowing round and round; if he is not much hurt, he will bite again, and where there is one there are more; remain at that spot till, by passing over the ground once or twice without a strike, you are thoroughly satisfied you have exhausted the supply. There is sometimes great beauty of scenery, and if your guide has anything to say, which he rarely has, you can, as you should be able ever to do in the open air, enjoy yourself.

The mode of fishing among the pond lilies that I have described is much more exciting, requiring continued activity, some skill and no little judgment, while there is greater risk of losing your prey. To avoid the latter casualty, if the fish weigh not over four pounds, lift him out at once, and proceed in the same way with larger fish to the extent your rod will stand. As for snap-fishing, that is, using a hook so constructed as to spring open or shut the moment it feels the bite, and thus grasping the fish or imbedding an extra hook in his jaws, I have only tried it sufficiently to be disgusted with it, although probably it may work well in open water. If, however, it touches a weed, it will be sprung, and then you cannot catch a fish at all till it is reset. It was invented to avoid the hook’s coming out of the pickerel’s mouth, which, from the nature of the latter, it is apt to do, a difficulty which old, slow, poky, English puntfishers endeavor to remedy by allowing the pike or jack, as they call him, to gorge the bait. A pickerel, like a trout, rushes up, strikes his prey, and immediately returns with it to his haunt; he then ends it round, having generally struck it crosswise, and swallows it. This he takes much longer to do than a trout, and the English works on fishing direct you to wait five minutes or till he runs again, and then, by striking smartly, you can fix the hook into his gills or stomach, from which nothing but the knife will remove it. The disadvantage, however, is that the pickerel often eject instead of gorging the bait, and when the fisherman, having impatiently awaited his five minutes, comes to strike, he strikes naught but the thin water or the stem of a water lily. After a few such disgusting results, he will probably determine, as the writer has, to strike at once, unless, by one of those exceptional cases to all good rules, some peculiar difficulty forces him to proceed otherwise. The word spoon, that has been so frequently used, is derived from the use originally of the bowl of a pewter table-spoon, into one end of which was fastened three hooks, and into the other a swivel attached to the line, and which, by playing and flashing through the water, attracted the fish; the old-fashioned spoon is now out of use, and entirely superseded by Buel’s patent. Pickerel, especially the smaller varieties, will take a fly, but not very readily; and this can hardly be said to be an established mode of fishing for them.

There is another style of pickerel fishing which is amusing, to say the least of it, and is practised extensively throughout the State of New York. You take a small piece of flat board about nine inches across, and pass a stick through a hole bored in the centre so as to project above and below it; the lower end is then loaded, and to the upper is attached a line of some twenty or thirty feet, that is baited with either a live or dead minnow. The line is coiled on one side of the wood, and leaving sufficient end for the bait to sink to a proper depth is fastened slightly in a slit cut in the wood like the thread of a spool. As many as you please to use are then placed in the pond and left to fish while you row about or otherwise employ yourself. If a pickerel takes the bait, the line is jerked out of the cleft, and uncoiling, allows him to carry off and pouch the bait, but when he undertakes to move away he is hooked by the resistance of the wood against the water. The motion of the float can be seen from some distance, and it is quite interesting to chase one after another that go “bobbing around,” as fish after fish is hooked. A plan somewhat similar to this is described by Walton and other writers, and it is merely a modification of an old invention.

The best season for pickerel fishing is after the first of September, although they are taken at all times, including their spawning seasons of February, March and April, and are quite good, voracious and abundant in July and August. The English pike is reported to show an abstinence from food in Summer that our fish never exhibit, and, indeed, differs from ours in many particulars, and none more to his credit than his scarcity. In Summer our fish resort to the shallow water, as they are also said to do in their spawning season, and at both times they are shot or speared without mercy. In fact, the quick eye, ready hand and steady foot required for spearing renders it an exciting and reputable sport, worthy of, and often unattainable by, the best of us. In Winter, pickerel seek the warm, deep water, and are caught through a hole in the ice by a live bait on a hand line. This is said to be very exciting, provided a rude hut is built over the hole, and a fire made in the hut, end provided the fisherman, seated in a comfortable chair, provided with a book, a segar and a glass of hot punch, has an assistant to pull out the fish. It is alleged that these fish are, “during the height of the season,” brilliant and beautiful; if that is so with any, except the Long Island Pickerel and the Federation Pike, the height of the season must have been too high for me to reach.

The family of the Esocidæ are truly typified by the voracious and terrible Esox luceus, wolf-fish, the true pike, from which they take their name, and include among their numbers the formidable Gar-pike, Esox osseus of the Southern waters. Although their flesh is hardly fit for the table, they are universally abundant, and their capture affords that kind of pleasure always derived from taking many and large animals of any description.

The principal species known in this country are:

The Mascallonge, Esox Ester.