THE BROOK TROUT'S RIVAL

When the German brown trout was introduced in the brook trout streams of Pennsylvania some years ago fly-fishermen condemned the act because they believed the brook trout (S. fontinalis) was superior to the brown trout as a game fish. Deforestation, rendering the streams too warm for the brook trout, has changed the fly-fisherman's feeling in the matter. The brown trout can thrive in warm water, and with the brook trout's gradual extermination the brown trout is being welcomed as the next best thing. A correspondent at Reading, Pa., signing himself "Mourner"—he mourns the passing of the true brook trout—declares the brown trout strikes harder than the brook trout and after being hooked, unlike the brook trout, makes two or three leaps out of the water, but is not so gamey and cunning as the brook trout and tires out much quicker. The German species has been popular because it attains a larger size quickly and destroys almost every fish in the streams, including the brook trout. "The fly-fishermen who for years have matched their skill, cunning, artifice, and prowess against the genuine brook trout that since creation dawned have inhabited the mountain brooks that flow down every ravine," says Mourner, "have had forced on them, as never before, the sad truth that, like the deer, bear, quail, woodcock, and grouse, brook trout are slowly but surely passing. There never was a fish so gamy, elusive, and eccentric, so beautiful and so hard to deceive and capture by scientific methods as the native brook trout. No orator has yet risen to fully sound its praises; no poet to sing its merits as they deserve; no painter to produce its varied hues. The brook trout was planted in the crystal waters by the Creator 'when the morning stars sang together' and fontinalis was undisturbed, save as some elk, deer, bear, panther, or wildcat forded the shallows of his abode, or some Indian or mink needed him for food. In this environment the brook trout grew and thrived. Much warfare made him shy and suspicious until he became crafty to a degree. The brook trout successfully combated man's inventive genius in the shape of agile rods, artificial flies and other bait calculated to fool the most wary, and automatic reels, landing nets, and other paraphernalia designed to rob a game fish of 'life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.' But it was not until the tanner and acid factory despoiler turned poisoned refuse into the streams and the dynamiter came upon the scene and the sheltering trees were cut away by the lumberman, letting in the sun and warming the water to a nauseous tepidity, that the brave trout faltered, hesitated, and then quit the uneven conquest. Carp and bass were planted in the streams to further endanger the brook trout's existence. Next the California trout and the German brown trout, who prey upon the true brook trout's progeny, followed, till finally, beaten, baffled, dismayed, poisoned, routed, and overwhelmed by the superior numbers and size of a cannibalistic race, he gradually began his retreat. It is good-bye to the brook trout now. With him it was either cool pools, solitude, and freedom, or extermination. The waters that pour down into larger streams are sad memories now of his school playgrounds. No more will the sportsman's honest hunger be appeased by the brook trout's fine-grained flesh from hardening waters of nearby mountain brooks. But memory of the brook trout cannot be wrested from those who knew him at his best, and braved personal danger from rattler, bear, and wildcat to win him from the crystal waters. The brook trout has been butchered to make a carp's holiday. Gone he may be now, but he will live forever in the dreams of all true fishermen as the real aristocrat of the mountain streams. The like of him will not soon be seen again." The Fish Commission has mastered the science of the artificial propagation of the brook trout—millions are now produced with little trouble and expense—and the stocking of waters is a common practice, but the Fish Commission can't propagate forests and woodland streams. Mourner must know that the brook trout itself is not hard to save; it is the preservation of its wild habitat that is the great puzzle. If the United States Forestry Department will protect the trout streams from the greedy lumberman, the factoryman, and acid maker, the Fish Commission will have no trouble in saving the brook trout.