GLIMPSES OF CANADA, ETC.
Perhaps I may be allowed to say that my visits to both Canada and the
States were on journalistic work which gave little time for play of any
sort, and I half fear that I only introduce these scraps of fishing
matter to get an excuse for re-telling my own story of how I caught a
big "'lunge" in Canada, in the early autumn of 1897. In the Natural
History books of the Province of Ontario the designation is Maskinongé.
The word is often made mascalonge, or muscalunge, and, it being less
labour to pronounce one than four syllables, people in many districts
where the fish is caught, for short call it "'lunge." As offering a
minimum strain upon the pen, in this form I will refer to it in the
course of my chronicle of how I caught my sample. The fish is, in a
word, the great pike (Esox nobilior), and it is to all intents and
purposes possessed of the general characteristics of the Esocidae
family. Our old friend E. lucius occurs in Ontario waters, and the
Indians call it kenosha. The French having, in old days, rendered this
kinonge, we can easily understand why the name, as adopted by Ontario,
was given. While, however, the pike proper is common to both sides of
the Atlantic, the 'lunge is confined to the basin of the St. Lawrence.
My angling friends in the club at Toronto could lay before me a
bewildering choice of places where I should have a fair chance of that
one 'lunge and one bass with which I professed I would be content. But
to do them justice it would require a week of time, and much travel by
night and day. After contriving and scheming I discovered that three
days would be the utmost I could spare for fishing, and on the advice
of friends, Lake Scugog, at Port Perry, was decided upon as a tolerable
ground, not more than forty miles from the city. We were set down on
the permanent way of the Grand Trunk line about nine o'clock, and were
met by a couple of local gentlemen, anglers good and true, who had been
advised of our approach, who had kindly come down to guide our
footsteps aright, and who welcomed us in the true spirit of sportsmen.
First came breakfast in the hotel opposite, or to be exact, first came
inquiries of the boatman and all and sundry as to possibilities of
sport. The lake was most fair to look upon from the veranda, the water
curled by a nice breeze, the sun shining over it, and the abundant
woods of an island about two miles from our landing-place.
But the fish had not been biting well for a week. It was
incomprehensible, but true, that the boats had never returned so empty
of fish as latterly. One shrewd boatman, who fell to our lot for the
day, said that the Indians, of whom the small remnant of a tame tribe
lived as agriculturists on the island, had a tradition that in August
and part of September the 'lunge shed their teeth, and that during this
period they never take the bait, or feed in any shape or form. What
fish did Scugog contain? Well, there were shiners, suckers, eels----
Oh! sporting fish! Ah, well, there were no trout, but there were
'lunge, perch, and any number of green, or large-mouthed, bass. This
was Ben's information, elicited by cross-examination as we sat on the
veranda before unpacking our effects.
As to what he considered a reasonable bag, he had often, from a four or
five hours' outing, returned with a dozen and a half of 'lunge or bass,
the former averaging 9 lb. or 12 lb., the latter 2 lb. or 3 lb. The
opening day was June 15, and at daylight the lake, so he said, was
alive with boats, each containing its fisherman. He had known a ton of
'lunge and bass landed every day for the first week. I am not to be
held responsible for these statements, but everything I subsequently
heard from gentlemen who weigh their words and know what they are
talking about, confirmed the assertions of the Port Perry professional.
'Lunge of 40 lb. had been taken moreover, but not often. These were
the encouragements which dropped like the dew of Hermon; refreshing us
into temporary forgetfulness of the undoubted fact that the visitors
who had been angling on the lake had met, even on the previous day,
with bitter disappointment. The boats had not been able to account for
more than perhaps a brace each of four or five pound fish.
Skipper Ben stared in amaze at the preposterous tackle with which I
proposed to try and catch my first 'lunge. I had much better take the
rig-out provided with the boat. If, however, he disapproved of my
equipment, how shall I describe my feelings with regard to the vessel
for which (man and tackle included) we were to pay two dollars per
diem. It was a canoe of the smallest, built to hold one person besides
the man at the small oars. It was impossible to stand up in such a
cranky craft, and your seat was about 6 in. from the bottom boards. No
wonder all the fishing was done by hand-lines. The local method was
simplicity itself. To fifty yards of line of the thickness of
sash-cord was attached a large Colorado spoon, armed with one big
triangle, and mounted on an eighth of an inch brass wire. The canoe
was slowly rowed about, up and down and across the lake, the spoon
revolving behind at the end of from ten to fifteen yards of line. All
that the angler had to do was to sit tight on his tiny seat in the
stern of the cockle-shell, holding the line in his hand, and dodging
the inevitable cramp as best he could by uneasily shifting his position
from time to time.
This, of course, is trailing in its most primitive form, and it is the
method adopted by the majority of fishing folks on Canadian inland
waters. Even the grand lake trout (Salvelinus namaycush really) are
taken in this way in the spring and fall when they come in upon the
shallows. The fish hook themselves, and are generally hauled neck and
crop into the boat; but the careful boatman will have a gaff on board
for the emergency of a ten-pounder or over. Many, however, do not
affect this luxury, but treat great and small alike on the
pulley-hauley principle. They say, nevertheless, that few fish are
lost. The hooks are so big and strong that there is no reason why they
should be lost when once they are securely hooked, as they will almost
invariably be by this easy style. The boatman is always maintaining
his steady two mile an hour pace, just sufficient in fact to keep the
spoon on the spin, and the lightly hooked fish of course quickly find
freedom by honest and abrupt tearage. The coarse triangle fairly
within the bony jaws would be instantly struck into solid holding
ground, and with tackle fit for sharks, there would be no more to be
said. Something, however, there would be to be done, and the same
simplicity which characterises the style of angling is carried on to
the process of dealing with a hooked fish.
"Yank him in," is the order for medium sizes, and I had the opportunity
very early of seeing how it was done. We were nearing a canoe in which
a gentleman was seated, holding his hand-line over the gunwale, and
slightly jerking it to and fro; suddenly he struck with might and main.
The effort should, as one would suppose, have wrenched the head off an
ordinary fish, and I should say this event often happens with 2-lb. or
3-lb. victims. In this instance there was no harm done. Out of the
water, like a trout, ten yards or so astern of the canoe, came a
yellow-hued, long, narrow-bodied fish, and presently, hand over hand,
it was dragged up to the side and lifted in by sheer might. It was a
'lunge of apparently 7 lb., and the only one taken by the fisher,
though he had been out three or four hours.
We had not been long afloat before I began to see that Ben was not far
wrong in preferring his rude tackle to mine, though he was all abroad
in his reasons for ruling me out of court. His belief, expressed in
the vigorous language of the born colonial, was that it was darn'd
nonsense to suppose that my line would hold a fish, or that my rod was
other than a toy. The difficulty, of course, was with the boat. For
the sort of spinning to which we are accustomed in England the thing
was useless. The discomfort was vast and continuous, and as the hooks
were everlastingly fouling in loose weeds, and the progress of the boat
converted the hauling in of the line into not inconsiderable manual
labour, the outlook became barren in the extreme. My companion A. in
the stern was furnished with the orthodox hand-line, and I sat on the
second thwart facing him. The rod rendered this necessary, and A. told
me afterwards that Ben spent most of his time winking and
contemptuously gesticulating over my shoulder. Probably this accounted
for the number of times he pummelled the small of my back with the
clumsily advanced handles of his oars.
My rod, I might explain, was the trolling or sea fishing version of a
capital greenheart portmanteau rod, to which I had treated myself in
hopes of use in Canadian waters, and was a stiff little pole (in this
form) of a trifle over 9 ft. The medium dressed silk trout-line on a
grilse winch was about a hundred yards in length, and quite sound, and
on a twisted gut trace I had attached a 3-in. blue phantom. Ben
impartially, not to say profanely, objected to the lot. We had ample
opportunity to admire the very pretty scenery of the lake shores, and
the charmingly timbered island which for ten miles diversified the blue
water. The depth was seldom over 6 ft. or 8 ft., there were subaqueous
forests of weeds in all directions, but there was a kind of channel
known to Ben where one had the chance of intervals of peace--spells of
clear spinning for A.'s great spoon to starboard and my delicate
phantom to port. In those times of tranquil leisure we learned much as
to the splendid duck-shooting of the fall and the wonderful stores of
fish in the lake.
Scugog is not a show place, but it is beautiful in its quiet way; the
surroundings are quite English, and Port Perry is a pleasant type of
the small, prosperous Canadian town where nobody perhaps is very rich
and nobody very poor. The aforesaid island in the centre makes the
lake appear quite narrow, and, indeed, its length of fourteen miles is
double its widest breadth with island included. And it is one of a
chain of Ontarian waterways so vast that, had we been so minded and
properly prepared, we might have passed through close upon 200 miles of
lakes and connecting channels. Two hours of incessant hauling in of
weed bunches, and no sign of a run of any other kind, were enough; you
could not be always admiring the green slopes and woodlands of maple
and pine; discussions of local topography cannot be indefinitely
prolonged.
Thank the gods my good shipmate and travelling companion A. was cheery
to the backbone, as, in truth, a good-looking fellow of fourteen stone,
and with nothing to do but travel about the world and enjoy himself,
ought to be. Being no angler, it was all the same to him whether fish
sulked or frolicked; his patience was as inexhaustible as his
amiability, and when my questioning of Ben about fish and fishing
ceased by force of self-exhaustion, A. would quietly cut in with
reminiscences of his recent run out to Colorado, former campings in the
Rockies, adventures in Japan and all parts of Europe, and personal
acquaintance with the States and the Dominion. The trouble that dear
A. saved me in looking after baggage and tickets, the reliance I felt
in his fighting weight and well set-up body, the placid smile with
which he took life whatever it might be, were invaluable to me; and,
though he accepted the ill-luck of our forenoon as only what he
expected, as being, indeed, the ordinary outcome of most fishing
expeditions, my chief desire was that he should have the bliss of
landing a good fish. For myself I was not hopeful, and we went
fishless ashore in the hot sun at mid-day, glad to release ourselves
from the cramped positions in which we had been enduring the
discomforts of that wretched skiff.
In the afternoon we went out again. What would I not have given for a
boat really fit for the work--a steady, square-sterned craft, on the
floor of which one might have stood firm, casting right and left, and
able to take every advantage of those weeds which now made trailing a
positive nuisance? Ben's theory was that twelve yards of line were
enough for his style of business; that though a fish might be
temporarily scared aside by the passage of the cockle-shell, it would
be just about restored to quiet when the spoon came along, and more
likely to dash at it than with a greater length of line. Of course, I
stuck to our English ways, and kept my phantom engaged at a distance,
when possible, of never less than thirty yards. In course of time
Ben's objections and protests were once for all silenced; he gave me up
as an opinionated ass, whom it was waste of time to trouble about any
more.
"Smack, smack," at last--a momentary sensation at the rod-top. How the
fish could have struck at my phantom, doubled up the soleskin body,
without, however, touching a single hook of the deadly trio of
triangles, was as much a marvel as ever it has been from the beginning.
In the course of half an hour I had three such abortive runs at the
phantom, and one small fellow of 1 1/2 lb., lightly hooked, bounded
into the air and fell back free. Under these circumstances there was
little thought of discomfort. Who cared for cramp now? The fish were
assuredly on the move, and that one 'lunge of my modest desire was not
so remote a possibility as it had been in the forenoon. The chances of
friend A. were of course held by Master Ben to be the best of the two,
and, in truth, why not? For reasons hinted at above it would have
delighted me if it was left for him to prove how unnecessary were all
the finer precautions of scientific sport. Such things have happened
in salt water, and, it may be, in fresh.
Musingly, as the canoe was proceeding midway between island and
mainland, I was thinking of examples of the caprices of piscatorial
fortune and of the positive instances when art and skill had been
practically put to shame by the rudest methods. From the reverie, and
a crouching position on the low seat of the miserable canoe, I was
roused as by an electric shock. The rod was jerked downwards almost to
the water, the winch flew, and the line, run out at express speed, cut
into my forefinger. A., facing me, saw from my expression that
something had happened, and, with the instinct of a sportsman, began to
pull in his sash-cord and coil it neatly out of the scene of action.
"I have him," I said by way of assurance, and Ben realised that the
whirring scream of the winch was not a mere private rehearsal. Growing
excited he began to give me directions how to behave under the
circumstances, taking it for granted that the rod and line would fulfil
all his prophecies of disaster and failure. By the backing of small
line, which was now for the first time being rushed off the reel, I
knew that my game had in the preliminary dash not stopped under eighty
yards, and it seemed therefore as if the great fish that plunged on the
surface away in the wake, and leaped 5 ft. or 6 ft. into the air, could
have no connection whatever with us. I had seen that kind of thing
before, however, with salmon and sea trout, and tingled with joy at the
evidence I presently had that the tumble back into the lake had not
parted me from my game. Ben noticed as quickly as I did that the line
presently slacked, and called Heaven to witness that the darned fish
was off, and that he had been predicting such a result all along; the
fact was the 'lunge was racing in towards us. I am one of those
anglers who hate being pestered by advice when playing a fish, and
never pretend to choose my words to the interrupter.
Moreover, Ben had continued pulling, so that, besides the wind behind
us and the weight of the fish, whatever it was, against me, I had the
way of the boat to assist the enemy; furthermore, he announced his
intention of pulling ashore, as he was in the habit of doing with the
hand-line operation, and the nearest land was not a yard less than a
mile off. Then I opened my mouth and spake with my tongue, and Ben,
finding that I could shout bad language as well as he, proved himself
after all a fine fellow amenable to orders, and a veritable sport when
once he comprehended that here was a fish that must be humoured and not
lugged in by brute force. He not only ceased rowing, but quickly
tumbled to the trick in other respects. He backed water, and, shortly,
was most intelligently taking care that the canoe should follow the
fish. We all knew it was worth catching, and from its appearance
during its flashing somersault in the air I had estimated it at about
15 lb.
It was a new experience to play a lively fish of respectable
dimensions, sitting low and cramped, and fearing to move, in a
cockle-shell canoe. If one could have stood up square and fair to the
fight the course would have been clear; it would have been something to
have knelt, but there was no opportunity for even that modest sort of
compromise. And the fish did fight most gamely; certainly, too, with
the odds immensely in its favour. Wrist, arms, shoulders, back, and
legs of the angler were strained and pained by the efforts necessary to
keep the taut line free of the boat, but A. ducked his head deftly once
when the fish shot to the left of me at right angles, and lay low until
I had it back in line of communication again. Twice the fish tried the
expediency of running in towards me, and alarming Ben with the slack
line, delighting him in proportionate degree when the winching-in found
all taut and safe. So far as we could make out afterwards the fight
with my 'lunge lasted half an hour, and it was fighting, too, all the
while in the gamest fashion.
Little by little the line was shortened, and the battle, so far as the
rod and line went, was virtually won. Aching by this time in every
limb, I welcomed the yellow-brown back when it came to the surface a
few yards from the canoe. But here was another difficulty. How was
the fish to be got into the boat? I could see now that it was
certainly twenty pounds, and A. confessed that he had never used the
gaff. Ben was out of the question, having his oars to look after, and
even if he had been free the position would not allow me to bring the
fish up to him. The gaff was strong and big, and it was furnished with
a rank barb, generally a detestable implement in my estimation.
Yet it proved our salvation. The gaff handle, I should state, was
tapered the wrong way--that is to say, it was smaller at the end where
it should have afforded some sort of grip to the hand. A. slipped the
barbed affair into the body with great adroitness, but he had no
experience of the strength of such customers, and at the mighty plunge
it made the gaff slipped out of his hands, and I had my fish (with the
added weight of wood and steel) once more on my conscience.
Fortunately the tension on the line had not been relaxed. A. remained
cool; Ben ordered him to seize my line. "I'll knock him out of the
boat if he does," was the shout of another of the party, with a dulcet
aside, "Lay hold of the gaff, old chap; we'll have him yet." And we
did have him; A. leaned over, grasped the stick, hoisted the fish,
kicking furiously, out of the water, and deposited it amongst our feet,
where, in the confined space, there was for awhile an amusing
confusion. Ben had a "priest" under his thwart, and by and by I found
a chance for a straight smite at the back of the neck. The 'lunge
received his _coup de grâce_, and we cooled down to sum up. Truth to
tell, the three of us had for the last five minutes been as excited as
schoolboys; the odds had been so much against us that the tussle was
not what is termed a "gilt-edged security" until the fish lay still in
the bottom of the canoe. He had been well hooked far down the throat
by one triangle; the phantom with the other two came out of its own
accord at the application of the priest, and the double gut of the
triangle that remained inside was cut through.
Ben was profuse in his apologies for attempting to interfere and for
making light of my rod and line, and frankly explained that he had
never seen the like before in 'lunge fishing. The absent triangle lost
me two fish in succession, and we went ashore to repair the damages and
to weigh the fish. It was absolutely empty, was 4 ft. long, yet it
only weighed 24 1/2 lb. For the length it was the narrowest fish I had
ever seen. The head was 11 3/4 in. long from outer edge of gill cover
to tip of lower snout. Ben showed it in triumph as we walked in
procession from the landing-stage to the hotel, and when it became
known that it had been caught on a small rod and trout line there was a
popular sensation in the nice little town of Port Perry.
Men left their horses and buggies, workpeople threw down their tools
and hurried to the scene, mothers caught their children in their arms
and held them up to see. Later in the afternoon I killed another
'lunge of about 6 lb., and that too had an empty stomach. A party of
American visitors returned at night with four or five of similar size,
and every fish presented the same emaciated appearance. There was not
a vestige of food in their stomachs. Had my good one been feeding well
for a few days previously he would have been many pounds heavier. As
it was, I ought to have preserved the skin and brought it home as a
specimen, so long and gaunt was it, so different from our deep-bodied
English pike, to which it otherwise bore, of course, a close family
resemblance. This conclusion I arrived at by the aid of a suggestion
from A. when it was too late; and some day I must try and catch a still
finer specimen.
Captain Campbell, of the Lake Ontario (Beaver Line), informs me that he
once brought over in a whisky cask the head of a maskinongé from the
St. Lawrence that was said to weigh 140 lb., and it would really seem
that these fish do occasionally run to weights far into the fifties and
sixties. I never heard of anyone trying for 'lunge with live baits, or
spinning with dead fish and the flights such as we use at home for
pike. The use of the big spoon is universal. And I may add that a
month later (say October) those fish would not have been quite so much
like herrings in their insides.
Green bass and speckled trout are Canadian names, signifying the
large-mouthed variety of the black bass for the one part, and our old
friend fontinalis for the other. It will be remembered that under the
circumstances of brief opportunity and far-distant waters which I have
duly explained, my expectations were modest, and hope would have been
satisfied with a simple sample each of the black bass, immortalised by
Dr. Henshall, and the maskinonge of the lakes. How I caught my first
'lunge has been already told, and the story was, like the fish itself,
a pretty long one. I may confess at once, with deep regret, that I
have no excuse for length as to black bass, since I did not get even
one. I had been warned that only in the early part of the season--the
month of June--is there any chance with the fly in lakes, and very
little in the rivers. They were, however, to be obtained by bait
fishing, and on the day when I killed the 'lunge Ben took me out in the
evening equipped with the correct tackle for bass. It consisted of a
single piece of bamboo, about 15 ft. long, a strong line a few inches
longer, a bung as float, and a hook with 2-in. shank, and gape of about
3/4 in. You will remember this kind of rig-out, only with hook of
moderate size, as often used by Midland yokels in bream fishing. It is
delightfully primitive. Heavily leaded, you swing out the line to its
full extent, and, hooking a fish, haul him in without the assistance of
such a superfluous luxury as a winch. There was a kind of bait-can in
the bow of the canoe, but I asked no questions, contenting myself with
trailing with a 2-in. phantom.
The fishing ground was along the water-grasses and reeds that extended
hundreds of yards from the shore into the lake, and very shallow it
was. The wind had completely died away, and the sun by six o'clock was
well down in the west. Ben by and by told me to wind up, and urged the
canoe into the heart of the weeds, in and in, until we were apparently
in the midst of a verdant field of high coarse grass. Here he threw
out the killick and unwound the line from his fishing pole. Then from
the bait-can he took out a half-grown frog and impaled it upon the huge
hook, which I now perceived was of the size and blue colour of the eel
hooks of our boyhood. Looking around as he made his preparations I
began to understand things. There was a uniform depth of 3 ft., and
here and there were clearances--small pools, free of vegetation, and of
varying dimensions. They might have an area of a couple or a couple of
dozen yards. The frog was swished out into these open spaces, and if a
bass was there, well and good. The fish was not allowed more than five
minutes to make up his mind, and if nothing happened the bait was
withdrawn and hurled elsewhere. If the bass mean feeding they let you
know it pretty quickly, and in this simple way a fisherman often, in a
couple of hours, gets a quarter of a hundredweight or so of them,
ranging from 2 lb. to 5 lb.
But after a quarter of an hour with the frog, Ben pronounced the
absolute uselessness of remaining any longer. While he was operating I
had fixed up my most useful portmanteau-rod with its fly-fishing tops,
and with a sea-trout collar, and a small, silver-bodied salmon fly cast
over the open spaces. This was no more successful than the frog, and
we, as a matter of fact, caught nothing at all that evening. These
green bass take the bait voraciously ("like so-and-so bull-dogs," Ben
assured me) when they are sporting, and haunt these reedy coppices in
incredible numbers. As with the 'lunge so with the bass. I should say
that with proper appliances and some approach to a skilful method, the
arm, on a favourable day, would ache with the slaughter. One of the
canoes next morning at breakfast time brought in a couple of these fish
of about a pound weight. They were dark green in colour, fitted up
with a big mouth and a spiny dorsal fin, and had all the burly
proportions of a perch, minus the hog-shaped shoulders.
That same day two Port Perry gentlemen, keen and good anglers both,
left their homes and businesses to drive me and friend A. in a pair
horse buggy some nine miles across country to a fishing house belonging
to a club of which they were members. Indeed, they were part
proprietors, for more and more in Canada every bit of water that is
worth the acquisition is taken up for preservation. The club consists
principally of professional and business men from Toronto, and the
doctors are a large proportion. For the sake of a couple of ponds, and
the facilities for damming others out of a picturesque valley, these
sportsmen had formed themselves into a company, and bought up some
hundreds of acres of land. Their house was a wooden one-storied
building in the middle of a fine orchard and garden, and outside the
front veranda, where you sat in squatter chairs to smoke the pipe of
peace away from the noise of civilisation, there stood a discarded punt
converted into a bed of gloriously blooming petunias. It was an ideal
spot for week-end outings. The pond nearest the clubhouse had once
served the business of a mill long abandoned, and it was full of sunken
logs and of fontinalis--always spoken of in Canada as speckled trout,
and the same, of course, as the "brook trout" of the States. They were
said never to rise to a fly, and they are fished for with live minnows
or worms, with float tackle. There was a lower lake less encumbered
with snags and submerged timber, made by the club by building a
workmanlike dam at the lower end of the property, and the clear little
stream which once worked the mill keeps it clear and sweet, after, on
the way down the valley, between the two ponds, doing good service at
the club hatchery hidden in a lovely thicket of sylvan wildness, and
looked after for their brother members by the intelligent farmer, who
with his mother and wife takes charge of the clubhouse and fishery.
The fun we all had at eventide, sitting in the punts and catching or
missing the trout that dragged our floats under, was certainly
uproarious, and I am ashamed, now that I am writing in cold blood, to
say that I enjoyed it as much as any of the party.
But this was a bad example to friend A., who, as I have previously
stated, was "no fisherman." He blandly smiled as I begged him to
understand that it was nothing short of high treason to catch such
lovely trout with anything other than artificial fly. Just then his
float went off like a flash almost close to the punt, and as he fought
his fish with bended rod he murmured that, meanwhile, minnow or worm
was quite good enough for him. The way in which a fifth member of the
party, a youth who had brought us a bucket of minnows (so-called),
hurled out half-pounders high in the air, and sent them spinning behind
him, was provocative of screams of laughter. In the morning I was
anxious to try this lower lake with the fly rod, though warned by the
farmer that it was of little use. For the good of A.'s piscatorial
soul I, nevertheless, insisted, and the capture of two quarter-pounders
with a red palmer, and several short rises, rewarded my efforts in his
interests. If he has not received my counsel, and laid it to heart, it
will not be because he did not have ocular demonstration of the virtues
of fly-fishing. I was not surprised to hear that these club fish were
not free risers at the fly, for both ponds were swarming with half-inch
and one-inch fry, as tempting as our own minnows, and the trout simply
lived in an atmosphere of them. Our Canadian brother anglers here, as
elsewhere, are of the real good stamp, sportsmen to the core,
pisciculturists, botanists, naturalists, racy conversationalists, and
big-hearted to a man. Please fortune I shall shake hands with them
another day.