19th century fishing — Trout biting at Sly Brook
2 min readOct 12, 2024
Trout were biting at Sly Brook.
“Trout fishing is just booming at present. Ed McVeigh and John Cunningham are entitled to the belt as the champions,” the Chestertown correspondent reported in The Morning Star of Glens Falls on May 10, 1886. “They visited Sly Brook on Monday and returned with twelve pounds of the speckled beauties. Ed says, ‘There wasn’t one of them under eight inches.’”
In other 19th century fishing news collected from historic newspapers of the region:
1860
- “Wednesday morning last, Messrs. J. Eldridge of the Railroad House and Barnes, canal contractor, in two hours fishing, took five bass weighing in the aggregate seventeen pounds and five ounces,” The Fort Edward Ledger reported on Aug. 10. “If anyone beats this, they will try again.”
1880
- “John J. Miller, aged 77 years, walked from Saranac village to an island in the Lower Saranac Lake, a distance of 3 ½ miles, on the 20th and caught at trout 28 inches long and weighing 8 pounds,” the Elizabethtown Post & Gazette reported on April 1.
- “Tis sweet to be remembered by such a delicious 2 ½ lb. trout as our friend J. V. Nash sent us, caught in Lake Placid. Never was trout more eagerly devoured. Accept our thanks kind friend — and do so again,” the Post & Gazette reported on April 29.
- “We went up the Boquet River Saturday afternoon fishing, and the result did no injury to our reputation as a fisherman, but we carelessly left them in reach of the pet cat and the miserable brute deprived us of a trout breakfast by eating the both of them,” the Post & Gazette reported on May 13.
- “A number of our citizens are contemplating a trip to Lake Placid next week for the purpose of enticing some trout in that beautiful lake to take their tempting bait. Look out for fish stories,” the Post & Gazette reported in May 20.
- “Mr. Frank Potter caught at Clear Pond in North Hudson a few days ago a trout which weighed 18 lbs. Another weighing 15 pounds was also taken by another party a short time ago,” the Post & Gazette reported on June 24.
- “Fishing good in this vicinity,” the Westport correspondent reported in the Post & Gazette on July 1. ”Dr. Barber caught, while trolling one day last week, a muskellunge that weighed 15 pounds. Pike are being caught in large numbers just across the lake north of Basin Harbor at Mole Point. Two fishermen were in town with about 50 pounds one day last week.”
- “The catching of three and four-pound pike and pickerel by anglers from the Rouse’s Point pontoon bridge is now a matter of frequent occurrence, but bass have not yet this season ran in that part of the lake,” the Post & Gazette reported on July 1.
Click here to read the most recent previous 19th century fishing post.