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Ouananiche
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The ouananiche is another land-locked relative of the Atlantic salmon. While best known as an inhabitant of the Lake St. John region, Mr. Chambers presents evidence showing it to have a much wider distribution than has been generally assigned to it. He reports it from Arnold Bog, and in the lakes of the Goynish, which enters the St. Lawrence north of the island of Anticosti. It is also said to occur in many streams and lakes in the interior of Labrador.
Though in most, perhaps all of these waters the ouananiche would, if it so desired, have free access to the sea, it apparently does not avail itself of that possibility, and is therefore land-locked so far as all questions of geographic distribution are concerned.
The name "ouananiche" is of Montagnais Indian derivation, and is popularly supposed to mean "little salmon." But Mr. Chambers shows that it is probably derived from ouen-a, a Montagnais interrogative "Look there! What is that?" The name is frequently written "Winninish," "Winnonish," "Wananishe," and a score of other ways, all variants of the same word.
As a game-fish, those who have had experience with the ouananiche think it has no equal. They may be taken at any time between the going out of the ice and the middle of September, though the best fishing is said to be late in May. During the early part of the season it may be taken with bait of worms, pork, pieces of chub, or even ouananiche itself along the shore of Lake St. John. It is occasionally taken then with the artificial fly, but fly-fishing for the ouananiche is usually not a successful method of capturing it.
According to Mr. Chambers, who has written a delightful volume on the ouananiche, no better direction can be given for angling for the fish in the lake itself than some of the quaint instructions for catching salmon, of Thomas Barker, in Barker's Delight, or the Art of Angling:
"The angler that goeth to catch him with a line and hook must angle for him as nigh the middle of the water as he can with one of these baits: He must take 2 bob-worms, baited as handsomely as he can, that the 4 ends may hang meet of a length, and so angle as nigh the bottom as he can, feeling your plummet run on the ground some 12 inches from the hook: if you angle for him with a flie (which he will rise at like a trout) the flie must be made of a large hook, which hook must carry six wings, or four at least; there is judgment in making these flyes. The salmon will come at a gudgeon in the manner of a trouling, and cometh at it bravely, which is fine angling for him and good. You must be sure that you have your line of twenty-six yards of length, that you may have your convenient time to turne him, or else you are in danger to lose him: but if you turne him you are very like to have the fish with small tackles; the danger is all in the running out both of salmon and trout, you must forecast to turn the fish as you do a wild horse, either upon the right or left hand, and wind up your line as you finde occasion in the guiding the fish to the shore."
At the Grand Decharge the ouananiche will take the fly at any time, but not so freely after the middle of July. In the northern tributaries of Lake St. John they may be taken at the surface during July and August.
The Rev. Henry Van Dyke writes thus entertainingly of the ouananiche:
"But the prince of the pool was the fighting ouananiche, the little salmon of St. John. Here let me chant thy praise, thou noblest and most high-minded fish, the cleanest feeder, the merriest liver, the loftiest leaper and the bravest warrior of all creatures that swim! Thy cousin, the trout, in his purple and gold with crimson spots, wears a more splendid armour than thy russet and silver mottled with black, but thine is the kinglier nature. His courage and skill, compared with thine,
'Are as moonlight unto sunlight,
And as water unto wine.'
"The old salmon of the sea who begat thee long ago in these inland waters became a backslider, descending again to the ocean, and grew gross and heavy with coarse feeding. But thou, unsalted salmon of the foaming floods, not land-locked as men call thee, but choosing of thine own free will to dwell on a loftier level in the pure, swift current of a living stream, hath grown in grace and risen to a better life.