"Let your line run slowly off the reel, checking occasionally, and, as it were, feeling for the bottom with your sinker, until it strikes; try and check your line at the moment of contact, and reel in a few feet. As the boat moves on, repeat this manceuver until you have out the proper length of line, and this depends much upon your sinker; a heavy sinker means a short line, while a lighter one takes a longer line. The idea is to keep your sinker as near the bottom as possible; you will touch once in a while, to make sure, but do it lightly, and beware of rocks!

"Spoon baits are also used in deep trolling, and in the absence of live minnows you may be compelled to resort to the artificial. You make no change in your tackle except the bait. (The gang is also a favorite bait in shore or surface trolling for Bass and Pickerel. It is more deadly than the spoon).

"A Bass-spoon may be much improved by tying a hook, with a length of gut, so that the hook falls two inches below the burr of the spoon. You will be surprised to find how many Bass miss the treble hook and catch the single one. The larger fish are caught in the deeper water, as a rule. Always see that your hooks are sharp before you put out your bait, and examine well your gang after catching a fish.

"If any one imagines that deep trolling is very simple, affording little sport, I only ask him to defer judgment until he has tried it."

Buoy fishing is now practiced very little, having made way for what is far better-trolling. It is so unsportsman-like a method, that I will do no more than mention it here, adopting Seth Green's description as sufficient comment:

"Anchor a buoy out in deep water, and cut fish in pieces varying in size from a hickory nut to a butternut, scattering the pieces around the buoy for some days; then anchor your boat to the buoy, using a piece of the same kind of bait on your hook that you had been in the habit of scattering around your buoy; fish near the bottom, and give it a little motion by giving your line short jerks. The buoy should not be baited the day you go fishing."

Still another method adopted is that of the ardent sportsman, who cannot wait until the spring, but cuts a bell-shaped hole in the ice of the lake in midwinter, puts his little three-sided shanty to windward, and with a hand-line keeps his baited gang in motion, until rewarded with a strike-or a frost-bite! The process resultant to the strike is surprisingly simple. The line is thrown over the shoulder, and the stiff-limbed fisherman runs or hobbles off, till the poor defenseless fish is flung up and out through the hole, and left to freeze on the ice, while the hook is baited for fresh slaughter. I recall one instance where a clerical friend of mine bought some fish caught in this way, and gave them to the cook with instructions to put them in a pan of water to thaw out before cooking. She, poor soul, was horrified, in the course of a quarter or half an hour, to find them vigorously and indubitably alive. It was merely a case of suspended animation. But I cannot recommend this ice-box method, either for comfort, or for sport.

The Lake Trout is occasionally taken with the fly, though the cases are so exceptional as almost to verify the contrary as the rule. Mr. H. H. Vail, of Cincinnati, states in -'Fishing with the Fly," that "at several points on the Nepigon river, particularly in the wild water at the foot of falls, the Mackinaw Trout {Salvelinus namaycush) was abundant, and took the fly with as much vigor as any Salvelinus fontinalis. We could not tell which we had struck, except from a flirt of the caudal fin. The 'well-forked' caudal fin of the Mackinaw Trout was frequently distinguished by our guides at a great distance. They do not play toward the surface so much as the Brook Trout. They were fat and lazy, two or three long runs generally wearying them so that they led peacefully into the net."

Another writer, unknown to me by name, says:

"I have just returned from a three weeks trip to Moosehead Lake, Maine, and my experience this season is a repetition of the past five or six years at the same place. I took with the fly at least one half-dozen Lake Trout, weighing from one and a half to three pounds each, and I have taken them weighing four pounds, but they are rarely taken above that weight with fly. The time when the fly is most successful with them is from 4 to 7 p. m., though I have occasionally taken them in casting, even at high noon.

"It is difficult to tell their 'swirl,' or rise, from the true Salmo fontinalis, but their tactics after being hooked reveal their true family quickly, as they set out at once on a grand exploration of the bottom.

"I have also taken this fish with fly at the Sysladobsis and Grand lakes, Maine."

Thus far we have been considering the characteristics of the fish, and the methods of his capture that are used in the smaller lakes during the summer months. But in the Great Lakes no sue h preparations are necessary. In them the water is so cold that he is not confined to the deeper portions, but is found very near the surface, certainly in the northern parts of Lakes Michigan and Huron, and in Lake Superior. In these waters, from early spring until late fall, our friend Namaycush may be caught, with trolling line or rod, from sailing vessel, yacht, or boat, in waters that range during the whole summer from 55 degrees in the neighborhood of the Manitous or Thunder Bay, to 38 or 40 degrees in the waters of Lake Superior. No wonder that under such bracing circumstances the Trout is lusty and frolicsome, ana ready to take his chances at any time in an encounter with the fascinating and mysterious spoon.

I have a dream, which sometime I hope to realize. Others have proved its worth and pleasures, but for me it is still in the vague "to be." It is to take a Mackinac boat and a couple of trusty Indians from the Sault, and coast north along the shore of Lake Superior, with not more than two or three friends for company, putting in at night, or during stormy weather, into one of the numerous shelters that the guides know very well, and fishing during the day, either from the boat or the rocks; enjoying meanwhile the balm-laden air, and the glorious scenery that belong inseparably to this lake. Even the prosaic cyclopaedia enters into the realm of the romantic in describing this wildly picturesque region: