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T IS spring in the Adirondacks. The ice is out of the lakes; the trees are beginning to bud, and into your blood creeps the old restlessness, known since the world was young. Some evening when you have caught a glimpse of the first robins in the elms down by the river, a fisherman comes along the road with a string of speckled trout,- and that night you dream of going fishing.

But it is one thing to go fishing, it is another thing to catch fish, and the guide, philosopher or friend who tells you where to go to catch fish and how to catch them after you get there often proves to be a vain deceiver, a blind leader of the blind. As fishing is a sport indulged in by grave and reverned men, this discourse naturally divides itself into three heads, like sermons of the old divines:

Firstly.

Fishing with a guide.

Secondly. Fishing with a philosopher.
Thirdly. Fishing with a friend.

Firstly. It is taken for granted that the reader needs advice. A true fisherman is born, not made, and to such a one no advice is necessary, but to the timid soul, whose most intimate acquaintance with fish is in long-cherished memories of sunfish caught in small ponds or smiling brooks in the days of innocent childhood, some few hints may be useful.

So if you want to catch fish get a guide. Get a good guide, a real guide who knows how to catch fish and likes to catch fish more than he likes to sit around and tell fish stories: A guide is a somewhat expensive luxury, but so is a speckled trout. You must leave the metropolis of the Adirondacks far behind you; you must go whither soever your guide takes you. He knows; you don't. You must go early and stay late. Plan your fishing trip for a two or three days' stay if possible. You must be bitten of black flies and blistered of the sun. You must follow your leader. And you will come home with a fine string of trout, a really glorious string, fit for a photographer's window. You will be the envy of all your friends; the despair of all your enemies. You will have had when you think it all over and over the time of your life. You will stand on the pinnacle of fame and you must never, never tell where or how you caught

your fish until time shall have woven a web of fairy romance around that never-to-be-forgotten fishing trip, and that long and ever-growing-longer string of speckled trout.

Secondly. The philosopher goes fishing; he doesn't care much about catching fish. He is inclined to be lazy, and like most philosophers, his pocketbook is never very long. So when you go fishing with your philosopher you never go very far from home. If there are no trout in the neighborhood, a pickerel will do. You select a warm, bright day. Your philosopher has no liking for a drizzle trickling down his neck. What are fish- one does not play for the prize the joy is the fishing. If he hasn't a rod he cuts an alder pole. You start up the river rowing your own boat; the boat glides soothingly. You see the pond lillies nodding in the sunshine, you watch the fishhawk circling overhead. You eat a comfortable and lazy lunch in the shadiest nook you can find.

At sunset two fishermen return home. They have had a happy day. They have been near to nature's heart-but there are no speckled trout in the basket.

Thirdly. Would you go fishing with a friend? Do not trust too much to friendship. When it comes to fishing "mankind is unco' weak." Your friend is a natural born fisherman; you are not. He would rather pull a trout out of a hole first and pull you out afterwards. You spend an evening with your friend; his tales are alluring, his successes fire your ambition. He tells you of a fine string he caught in Two-bridge Brook or in McKensie stream. And you plan a fishing trip together. He buys your tackle for you that is you pay for it while he stands at your elbow giving advice. He tells you poor tackle is never cheap. Your outfit at last completed, you wend your way to the brook. There friendship ceases. He tells you you had better go down stream while he fishes up. Your ways part. You spend most of your time slapping mosquitoes and untangling your flies from the alder bushes and you manage to pull out two or three fingerlings. After three or four hours you see your friend again. He has a full creel, which he shows you exultantly and asks you, with a somewhat superior

less many Adirondack persons will resent the statement about to be made that the game laws are better observed in Maine than in the Adirondacks, but that statement is absolutely true. The individual guides are no better in Maine than in the Adirondacks, but they seem more in harmony, and do not wink at the violation of the game laws. When a man has caught his quota of fish they do not hesitate to tell him so. Deer and fish are not brought into the hotels out of season as they are in the Adirondacks, and there is no hounding.

These facts cut both ways. That is, sportsmen on entering a region where the game laws are always or nearly always - obeyed follow the customs of the country and do likewise. The result is that the game does not diminish, and that there are as many trout and land-locked salmon in Maine as there were formerly. Moosehead lake is the great reservoir for trout. All the streams, save one or two, that are tributary to this immense body of fresh water are protected by the State.

There is a red post about a hundred feet above the mouth of each of these streams. Beyond that red post one cannot fish, although your canoe may lie outside, and you can cast flies beyond the red post. This is a splendid law. Multitudes of trout, secure and undisturbed, work up the streams to spawn, and grow large and then return to the lake.

The Adirondack trout from Ampersand pond, Lake Clear, Moose pond, Lake Placid and the Cascades are as fine as can be caught anywhere in the world. The greater the body of water the larger the fish. Yet fishing in a large body of water is more uncertain. In Lake Clear there are splendid strings of large fish caught early in the spring, but later in the season one may fish for many hours, and unless he happens to strike a school he usually returns disappointed. If some of the ponds could be closed for four or five years we would have better sport. As an illustration, consider Ampersand pond. When the Santa Clara Lumber Company took charge of it. many years ago, Ampersand was about fished out. It was a famous pond-made so because the sages of Cambridge and Concord had their camp there. The Santa Clara Company charged five dollars a day as a fishing privilege. The result was that most of the fishermen did not care to go, for they were against the principle of paying a fee, others had not the five dollars to spare. A number of poachers slipped up to the dam on the Saranac river and got in for some fishing, but whenever discovered such persons were run out by the gamekeeper. As a natural result the trout greatly increased at Ampersand pond. It is no trouble at all for fishermen to take all that the law allows in a single day. The fish are beautifully marked, and their flesh is of the brightest pink.

It is not at all difficult to increase the fish in other ponds and lakes even as they have multiplied in Ampersand. It is simply a matter for the Legislature or the Fish Commission to regulate, and having set aside a certain body of water, if people will obey the laws, we shall all have good fishing again in a few seasons.

There is a terrific drain on the trout supply of the Adirondacks. There are thousands and thousands of persons who fish, and a few hundred real fisherman who visit the brooks

and ponds. Averaging five trips per person during a summer, and counting only five or six fish per person, one has a total of several

million. No wonder the Fish Commission has difficulty in keeping the water stocked.

Men who possess great estates, while "roasted" by the unthinking, yet render both the citizen and nature a service. They can control their land and waters, but with all their unlimited power they cannot prevent the fish migrating from their waters elsewhere. Therefore the streams, etc., thanks to the property of these gentlemen. are benefited, very largely benefited I repeat, by such preserves.

The Ampersand or Lake Clear trout are, perhaps, as large as any trout - that is, trout taken in quantities to be found in the Adirondacks. Every spring a few four and fivepound trout are caught in the Adirondacks, but they are quite rare. Moreover, they come from small isolated ponds, and are not well shaped fish. I have seen several stuffed specimens in Saranac that are short and fat, and shaped more like bass than trout. The large fish in Moosehead, Maine, are as delicately proportioned as the 8-inch Maine trout.

One cannot emphasize too strongly the difference between the brook trout in the lake and the brook trout in the brook. There is a great deal of nonsense printed about the brook trout. The same fish becomes, as all fishermen will admit, of different color, both externally and internally, according to the bottom on which he lives and the kind of water in which he swims. Brook trout from Cold river (the Cold river tributary to the

Raquette, I mean) are as pink as trout from any spring hole in Moose pond or Ampersand. The meat of trout from Two Bridge brook, Black brook and several other streams is usually a creamy pink, light brown or even white. The brook trout that lives in the spring hole in the lake, it seems to me, is better fish than the same creature that lives exclusively in the brook.

Brook fishing is hard work and requires more skill than fishing in a lake. Moreover, the tyro will enjoy an outing in a boat on the lake more than a wearisome tramp through the thick alders lining a brook. One may catch more fish in a brook, but they will be small, and most of them under the law limit. Trout are apt to become diseased when returned to the water, unless the fisherman first wets his hands before removing the fish from the hook. This is always done by the humane disciple of the rod.

The big catches of 100 or 120 trout are made. by saving practically everything. It is really a crime for one to keep fish no larger than sardines, and yet many fishermen do it in order that they may boast of the number that they have taken. It is no credit to a man to have 100 trout in his creel.

What can be more enjoyable than on a pleasant spring day to take one's rod and What depart for a certain brook or lake? place? O, any place. For your true lover of

M

Just A Few "Puzzles."

ner.

ANY publications have a puzzle corSometimes it is a series of chess problems, sometimes word puzzles, sometimes picture puzzles. Why not a nature puzzle corner? Not a day passes that old Dame Nature does not propound some interesting conundrum to each of us. To the eye keen to note the beauties and curiosities of nature, to the ear alert to catch the many sounds of field and woodland there frequently come sights and sounds that baffle explanation. Many of us accept these as facts and seek no reason. Why not bring them to the Journal of The Outdoor Life Puzzle Corner and let all your friends have a try at a far more interesting kind of puzzle than any charade or acrostic?

1. Why, for instance, does mist form a hard snow-ice coating upon the limbs of trees down near the seacoast while it forms beautiful leaflike frost crystals up on the high mountains?

2. Is there more oxygen in the air in summer than in winter?

3. Does dew fall, as the common expression would lead one to think, or does it rise from the ground?

4. What is the insect which makes the fine white wool-like substance seen in summer upon young elms?

One question has bothered me for years. I have asked many people and obtained conflicting answers.

When I was a boy a small, very select band of "braves" used to go into camp in a lonely back pasture overlooking a bottomless morass. Many a night our blood ran cold at the mournful cry, hoo, hoo, ho-ho-hoo-0-0, from the deep woods across the marsh. Owls, raccoons and the ghosts of those who had been lost in the marsh were the explanations offered by the fright-shaken "braves." Since that time I have found many good woodsmen in widely separated localities who firmly believe that the 'coon utters a cry very like that of the hoot owl.

On the other hand, so far as I know, no naturalist has ever been able to settle the question or indeed to discover that the 'coon ever utters a sound of any consequence.

What, then, is the explanation of this widely accepted belief? Is it entirely a popular error or has it, like the belief in Pixies, a foundation of truth?

FISHES' NATURAL ENEMIES.

HE open season for fishing will soon be here. With the balmy breezes and the greening hillsides comes the angler patiently fishing for food, for the sport, or simply for an excuse to loiter in the shade of alder, willow and water maple and watch the lights and shadows make pearls and diamonds of the shallows and unfathomable mystery under the water-worn banks and still deep pools.

To the lover of angling it is very satisfying to know that fish have many natural enemies more deadly than the hook. The lake lamprey, the garpike and the mud puppy each destroys more fish than all the fishermen combined, and these are only the three worst of the many foes against which the fish has to contend.

The lake lamprey, which must be distinguished from the harmless brook lamprey by its greater size, is the most deadly enemy of our food fish, and is estimated to destroy more fish each year than are taken lawfully. All lovers of angling should know enough of this queer fish-like parasite and its habits to aid in its extermination.

The eggs of the lake lamprey are laid in early May in brooks where the current is swift enough to lay bare pebbles the size of a hen's egg. As soon as the larvae are hatched they work their way through the sand to some bend or pool where the ebbing current deposits silt and vegetable matter. When first hatched they look like minute sulphur yellow worms, about an eighth of an inch long, but they grow rapidly and attain a length of varying from two to six inches before the end of their first year.

At this stage they have small mouths guarded by a sieve of thin plates, between which they draw the diatoms and vegetable matter which forms their food. They live thus in the sand as larvae for three or four