A Yarrum Idler Summary

Printed in Forest and Stream, Rod and Gun for September 26, 1903, 'A Yarrum Idler ' based in Washington DC, prepared for his Canadian fishing trip by first seeing if the Library of Congress could provide practical information in preparation. He found little. The large Michie & Co. in Toronto “who furnish tourists with anything from a motor launch to a box of candy” wrote back to him giving him some idea, but as he hadn 't been explicit enough, the details were insufficient. So he and his team had to wing it a bit. Once up in the Muskokas he noted how some rivers were of an “ugly color” due to the “immense tanneries”, not all that healthy for the fish.

In this story is the mention of John Jennings and the “superintendent” of a near by lumber

This empties through Crane River, a narrow, shallow outlet into Crane Lake, the greatest fishing water in the Parry Sound District — and that is almost equivalent to anywhere — but there are no trout. Of our happy camp here under the birches and hemlocks it is enough to say the summer girl would call it a dream — and so it seems now.

The fishing is all that could be desired for a bob or bottom angler, but surface fishing is at a discount. For bait we had shipped from Toronto a thousand or more dew-worms, a great earth worm of six inches or longer, much like the marsh worm of the south, except they are lighter in color, inclined to be slimy, and not nearly so tough, but if one must use worms, these are of the best. With the worm bass are taken freely, though rarely of above a pound and a half, and rock bass and sunfish in plenty.

The first rock bass prepared for the pan disclosed the yellow muscle worms in the thick flesh of the back. He may have been the only one so afflicted in the lake, but investigation went no further. Fish were so plenty it was no sacrifice to let the rock bass go, and he is a wonderfully numerous individual here — pestiferous when you don 't