In my Canoe, July, 1846.
This is to be my last letter from the Mississippi valley, and my passion
for the gentle art of angling, will not allow me to leave the great
river without recounting a few fishing paragraphs, as mementoes of my
journey thus far.
The largest and unquestionably the most abundant variety of fish found
in the Lower Mississippi is the cat-fish, and here I believe they are
found in the greatest perfection. They vary from one to six feet in
length, and in weight from three to one hundred and fifty pounds. As an
article of food they do not amount to much, and yet I have met with many
people who considered them a great delicacy. They are invariably taken
with the hook, and to those who admire muddy water, and love to handle
the ugliest of creatures, capturing them must be a fascinating
amusement. They are caught and eaten at all seasons of the year.
Another fish which abounds in the turbid portion of the Mississippi is
called by the western people a perch, but is in fact only a
sheep’s-head. They are most abundant in the spring. They vary from one
to eight pounds in weight, and as an article of food are about on a par
with cat-fish. The above mentioned fish are the principal varieties
which may be said to flourish in the Lower Mississippi; it is true,
however, that specimens of almost every species of fresh water fish are
occasionally taken. The baits used for the cat-fish and sheep’s-head are
pieces of fresh meat. Almost every steamboat on the river is well
supplied with cotton lines and common hooks, and the principal anglers
for this fish are steamboat hands and raftmen.
But I must confess that I made a number of attempts to capture one of
these monsters. The adventure took place after the following manner. Our
boat had stopped at Alton in the evening, and was to remain there until
about midnight. The river was without a ripple, and the marvellous
beauty of the surrounding landscape threw me into a romantic mood; and
tipping the wink to one of my companions to accompany me, we took an
assortment of tackle with about two pounds of beef, and jumped into a
skiff for an hour’s sport. We pulled for the opposite side of the river,
and having moored our shallop at the mouth of a bayou, baited our hooks,
and threw them in. We had sat in silence just long enough to watch the
shooting into darkness of a star, when my line was suddenly made taught,
and I knew that I had a prize. I gave the fellow about one hundred feet
of line, and he made use of his “largest liberty” by swimming around a
certain snag, which of course made me a little angry, but greatly
increased my excitement. I managed, however, to disentangle my victim
after a while, and in due time had him safely ensconced in the bottom of
the boat. His length was nearly four feet, and his weight must have been
upwards of sixty pounds. While we were recrossing the river to reach our
steamboat, a savage little steamer from Keokuck came rushing down, ahead
of another with which it was racing, and passed so very near our shallop
that we were swamped, and while my companion and myself were swimming to
the shore for dear life, the monster we had captured was probably
scooting away towards the Torrid Zone, not much injured, but a good deal
frightened. About two hours after that adventure, I was the victim of a
most painful nightmare, for I dreamed that I was dying from
strangulation.
Before taking my leave of the cat-fish I must transcribe a description
of him as recorded by Father Marquette:—“We saw also a very hideous sea
monster; his head was like that of a tiger, but his nose was somewhat
sharper, and like a wild-cat; his beard was long, his ears stood
upright, the color of his head being gray and neck black. He looked upon
us for some time; but as we came near him, our oars frightened him
away.” This is about as near the truth as Marquette ever arrived, but
every one acquainted with the cat-fish of the Mississippi will readily
perceive the resemblance of the description to the original.
I would now descant upon the fish of the Upper Mississippi. The largest
is the sturgeon, of which there are two varieties, the common and the
long-billed sturgeon. They constitute a staple article of food with the
Indians, who take them with gill-nets and the spear. Their manner of
preserving them is by drying and smoking. In size they vary from three
to eight feet in length, weighing from thirty to one hundred and thirty
pounds. Like all the larger fish of the Mississippi, their flavor is far
from being delicate. With the sturgeon, which is a plebeian fish, I am
disposed to class the mullet, sucker, rock-bass, sun-fish, bill-fish,
bull-head, and chub, and can affirm from personal knowledge that all
these fish are abundant in the Mississippi.
They are in their prime in the spring, but very few of them are fit to
eat in the summer. With the Indians, however, they are eaten at all
seasons, and I have never yet seen a fish in their country which they
did not use as an article of food. Pickerel and perch also abound in all
the waters of this region, but I do not consider them equal to the same
varieties in New England. All the larger lakes which help to swell the
Upper Mississippi are well supplied with white-fish, the best of which
are found in Leech Lake. As an article of food they excel all the fish
of the northwest, but as they are of the shad genus, the angler can only
praise them in the abstract.
The Indians employ a great variety of modes for taking all these fish,
but the gill-net, the spear, and the bow and arrow are the more
successful ones.
But the regular game fish of the Upper Mississippi, are the muskalounge,
pike, black bass, and trout; and of these it always affords me unfeigned
pleasure to discourse. The two former varieties are so nearly alike in
appearance and habits that I am disposed to speak of them as one and the
same thing. Formerly I entertained the opinion that a muskalounge was
only an overgrown pike, but within the past year I have compared them
together, and am convinced that they are materially different. Their
habits, however, are precisely alike. They are exceedingly abundant in
the sluggish waters of the Mississippi, and vary from five to fifty
pounds in weight. They are in season about nine months of the year, but
in the spring, at which time they ascend the river to spawn, are in
their prime. It is well known that these fish are bold biters; but the
pike is unquestionably the most active and cunning of the two, and
consequently the most valuable to the angler. The muskalounge is
somewhat of a sluggard, and owing to his size and hyena-like character,
the very fish of all others for spearing by torchlight. The handsomest
pike I ever had the pleasure of capturing was a resident of Lake Pepin.
I was sauntering along the base of one of the rocky bluffs of this
beautiful sheet of water, and had spent most of the day without success,
trying to take a trout with a mammoth fly. I had thrown out my line for
the last time, when, as I was carelessly winding it up, I was astonished
by a sudden leap within twenty feet of me, and in a moment more it was
whizzing through the water in fine style. I humored the gentleman for
about ten minutes, leading him meanwhile towards a sand-bar, where I
secured and placed him in my canoe. He weighed upwards of twenty-one
pounds, was very fat, had a black back and silvery belly.
My best muskalounge fishing occurred at a bend in the Mississippi, about
one hundred and fifty miles above the Falls of Saint Anthony. I took
them with a spear and by torch-light, standing in the bow of a canoe
which was propelled by an Indian. Noiselessly did our birchen torch
glide into a thousand nooks of the stream, like a will-o’-the-wisp, with
a couple of deluded followers. I took no note of time on that memorable
occasion, and the only thing which prevented me from fishing until
morning, was the fog which covered the river about midnight. We landed,
however, with a sufficient quantity of fish to supply the whole
encampment of Indians for at least three days, and among them were seven
specimens of the muskalounge,—the remainder being composed of small fry
in general. On opening one of my prizes, an immense black-snake was
found in his bowels, from which time I date my antipathy to this fishy
genus as an article of food.
The best, and one of the most universal fish of the Mississippi, is the
black bass. They vary from one to seven pounds in weight, are taken with
the fly, the minnow and the frog, and in my opinion, as a game fish, are
only second to the trout. They are found in great abundance at all the
rapids in the river, but afforded me the finest sport at the Falls of
Saint Anthony. When I was there the water was uncommonly low, so that
pool fishing was in its prime, and I enjoyed it to perfection. If I
thought that my word would not be doubted, I should be pleased to
mention the fact, that on one occasion I captured no less than
thirty-five superb bass in the space of two hours, and that too, without
once moving the anchor of my boat. I took them with a hand-line, baiting
with a minnow, and the majority of them weighed over three pounds
apiece.
The only respectable trout region of the Mississippi extends from
Prairie Du Chien to Lake St. Croix. An expert angler may here capture an
occasional pounder, out of the river itself; but the rarest of sport is
afforded by all the neighboring brooks, which run through a hilly
country, and are rapid, rocky, and clear. The trout of these streams
average about eight ounces in weight. As I sailed up the Alpine portion
of the river in a steamboat, my opportunities for wetting the line were
not frequent or particularly successful, as the following illustration
will testify.
I had just arisen from the breakfast table, when the pilot of the boat
informed me that he was about to be delayed for two hours, and that
there was a fine trout stream a little farther on, which I might
investigate. I immediately hailed a couple of my travelling companions,
and with our rods in prime order, we all started for the unknown stream.
Owing to a huge rock that lay on the margin of the river, we were
compelled to make an extensive circuit over a number of brier-covered
hills, and we found the bed of our pilot’s trout brook without a
particle of water. What aggravated our miserable condition was the
intense heat of the sun, which shot its fiery arrows into our very
brains. In about an hour, however, we succeeded in reaching the
Mississippi once more, and there, comfortably seated in the shadow of a
bluff, we threw out our lines and awaited the arrival of the boat. We
happened to be in the vicinity of a deep hole, out of which we brought
five black bass, weighing three and four pounds apiece. We did not
actually capture a single trout, but the sight of one immense fellow
that I _lost_ almost brought upon me a fit of sickness. Something very
heavy had seized my hook, and after playing it for some minutes I was
about to land it, when I saw that it was a trout, (it must have weighed
some three pounds,) but making a sudden leap, it snapped my line, and
was, like a great many objects in this world, entirely out of my reach;
and then I was the victim of a loud and long laugh. The only thing that
kept me from falling into a settled melancholy was the incident which
immediately followed. When the boat came along, a Frenchman who was a
passenger, and happened to have a canoe floating at the stern,
volunteered his services to take us on board the steamer. Knowing that
my friends had never been in a canoe before, I would not embark with
them, and in about two minutes I had the _pleasure_ of seeing them
capsized, and after they had become completely soaked, of seeing them
rescued from all danger, minus the three fine bass which they had taken.
This feat was performed in the presence of quite a number of ladies, and
to the tune of as satisfactory a laugh as I ever enjoyed.