trolled for successfully with the above
lure; but I do not much affect fishing for them. Excellent sport may be
had with them, however, early in the season, when they are working near
the shore, but they soon retire to water from fifty to seventy feet
deep and can only be caught by deep trolling or buoy-fishing. I have no
fancy for sitting in a slow-moving boat for hours, dragging three or
four hundred feet of line in deep water, a four pound sinker tied by
six feet of lighter line some twenty feet above the hooks. The sinker
is supposed to go bumping along the bottom, while the bait follows
three or four feet above it. The drag of the line and the constant
joggling of the sinker on rocks and snags, make it difficult to tell
when one has a strike--and it is always too long between bites.

Sitting for hours at a baited buoy with a hand-line and without taking
a fish, is still worse, as more than once I have been compelled to
acknowledge in very weariness of soul. There are enthusiastic anglers,
however, whose specialty is trolling for lake trout. A gentleman by the
name of Thatcher, who has a fine residence on Raquette Lake--which he
calls a camp makes this his leading sport and keeps a log of his
fishing, putting nothing on record of less than ten pounds weight. His
largest fish was booked at twenty-eight pounds, and he added that a
well-conditioned salmon trout was superior to a brook trout on the
table; in which I quite agree with him. But he seemed quite disgusted
when I ventured to suggest that a well-conditioned cattie or bullhead,
caught in the same waters was better than either.

"Do you call the cattie a game fish?" he asked.

Yes; I call any fish a "game fish" that is taken for sport with hook
and line. I can no more explain the common prejudice against the
catfish and eel than I can tell why an experienced angler should drag a
gang of thirteen hooks through the water--ten of them being wane than
superfluous. Frank Forester gives five hooks as the number for a
trolling gang. We mostly use hooks too small and do not look after
points and barbs closely enough. A pair of No. 1 O'Shaughnessy, or 1
1/2 Sproat, or five tapered blackfish hooks, will make a killing rig
for small-mouthed bass using No. 4 Sproat for lip hook. Larger hooks
are better for the big-mouthed, a four-pound specimen of which will
easily take in one's fist. A pair of 5-0 O'Shaughnessy's, or Sproat's
will be found none too large; and as for the