Page:Athletics and Manly Sport (1890).djvu/462

Rh deeper water. The "swampers," who live on the borders, never fish beyond the line of stumps, which are at farthest a hundred yards from the shore, so that the fish of the lake are not at all completely known. The garfish, because he jumps, has been seen sometimes eight feet long, but no other fish is seen in the deep water. You cannot see one inch into the lake; it is like looking into a bowl of ink. This makes it dangerous for light boating, for the snags are numerous, and though they may not be a nail's breadth under water, they are quite invisible.

The fish in the lake, great quantities of which we caught, and on which, indeed, we chiefly lived, are the speckled perch or "Frenchman," a delicious fish, the raccoon perch, chub (a black bass), yellow perch (small), flyer, garfish, catfish (very numerous), gaper, blackfish (thirty inches long), roach and eel. There are plenty of pike in the canals.

The following story has been told me about the strange disappearance of a fish from the lake: "There was a very numerous fish known there as the brown perch, which was esteemed as the finest of all fresh-water fish. One year, about 1866 or 1867, they disappeared and never have been caught since. It was the year of the great swamp fire, which lasted through a continuous drought of more