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'EMMSYLVAMIA NOLER :TOBER 1954 LVANIA FISH COMMISSION wm&&.,. Looking north across Allegheny River valley at Kinzua into Cornplanterland. —photo by Don Conaway The Hills of Home -- PennsyLuania When my shade returns from Its chrysalis In the lyric stream that laves their feet; Of centuries to these loved hills Where wild azaleas, honey-sweet, And finds them not at all like this, Snatch away the breath and wits— But victim of winds and waters' wills— And break one's sophistry to bits. Leveled again to a humdrum plain, It shall fade with grief, though it grieve Yes, my grieving ghost shall fret and fade, in vain Missing the candled pine trees' shade; For the domes and cones and odd triangles The oak and maple, birch and spruce, Where gold deer graze and the wild grape And faintly crying, What's the use! dangles; Shall disappear for another eon Where dogwood hangs suspended in Till earth, grown satiate with sleep, May's air, translucent as the fin Turns once again, with a sigh so deep Of a polka-dotted trout that lies, It heaves up the lawned monotony With coral flesh and agate eyes, To lovely hill-geometry. Marion Doyle THE PENNSYLVANIA FISH COMMISSION Proudly joins Pennsylvania ns everywhere in observing PENNSYLVANIA WEEK OCTOBER 10-17 1954 COMMONWEALTH OF PENNSYLVANIA ANGLER PENNSYLVANIA HON. JOHN S. FINE GOVERNOR VOL 23, No. 10 OCTOBER, 1954 PENNSYLVANIA FISH COMMISSION PAUL F. BITTENBENDER, President WILKES-BARRE LOUIS S. WINNER, Vice-Pres. LOCK HAVEN BERNARD S. HORNE IN THIS ISSUE PITTSBURGH MILTON t. PEEK RADNOR SUSQUEHANNA BRIDGES . Dr. Richmond E. Myers 2 WILLIAM D. BURK MELROSE PARK FISHING THE UPPER ALLEGHENY Don Neal 6 GEN. A. H. STACKPOLE DAUPHIN WALLACE DEAN WHAT'S THE MATTER WITH PANFISH? Don Shiner 9 MEADVILLE, PA. • PUTTING THE PAN TO PANFISH J. Almus Russell II EXECUTIVE OFFICE C. A. FRENCH, Executive Director SPINNING THE HEAVYWEIGHTS Ray Ovington 12 ELLWOOD CITY H. R. STACKHOUSE Administrative Secretary HOW TO ANALYZE A BASS POOL Richard Alden Knight 14 R. C. McCASLIN Comptroller BASS IN THE DARK OF THE NIGHT Albert G. Shimmel IS • CONSERVATION—EDUCATION DIVISION TAKE A BOY—TAKE A GIRL—FISHING! Bill Walsh 16 J. ALLEN BARRETT Chief PENNSYLVANIA FEDERATION OF SPORTSMEN'S CLUBS RESOLUTIONS • MEETING—SEPTEMBER 17-18, 1954 18 FISH CULTURE C. R. BULLER Chief Fish Culturist PENNSYLVANIA FISHES, THE BLACK CRAPPIE Keen Buss GORDON L. TREMBLEY Fishery Biologist, Pennsylvania Fish Commission 23 Chief Aquatic Biologist ARTHUR D. BRADFORD THE EDITOR'S ANGLE . 32 Pathologist CYRIL G. RESAN Chief Div. of Land and Wafer Acquisition GEORGE H. GORDON Chief Photographer THOMAS F. O'HARA Construction Engineer THE COVER: What's the matter with HATCHERY SUPERINTENDENTS catchin' panfish? Our angler on the Dewey Sorenson—Beliefonte cover seems well pleased. See article on Merrill Lillie—Corry & Union City Edwin H. Hahn—Erie page 9. T. J. Dingle—Huntsdale Howard Fox—Linesville —Don Shiner photo J. L. Zettle—Pleasant Mount George Magargel—Reynoldsdale Bernard Gill—Tionesta John J. Wopart—Torresdale BACK COVER: Sittin' and 'afishin' on an Indian Summer Day! ENFORCEMENT —Herbert Lanks photo W. W. BRITTON from Black Star Chief Enforcement Officer DISTRICT SUPERVISORS Northwest Division CARLYLE S. SHELDON Conneautville, Pa.: Phone 3033 Southwest Division MINTER C. JONES 361 W. Lincoln St., Somersef, Pa.; Phone 5324 North Central Division George W. Forrest, Editor 1339 East Philadelphia Street, York, Pa. C. W. SHEARER 200 Agnew St., Mill Hall, Pa.; Phone 375 South Central Division The PENNSYLVANIA ANGLER Is published monthly by the Pennsylvania Fish Commission, HAROLD CORBIN South Office Building, Harrisburg. Pa. Subscription: $1.00 per year. 10 cents per single copy. 521 13th St., Huntingdon, Pa.; Phone 1202 Send check or money order payable to Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. DO NOT SEND Northeast Division STAMPS. Individuals sending cash do so at their own risk. Change of address should reach RALPH O. SINGER us promptly. Furnish both old and new addresses. Entered as Second Class matter at the {Acting Supervisor) Post Office, Harrisburg, Pa., under Act of March 3, 1873. Tafton, Pike Co., Pa.; Phone Hawley 3409 Southeast Division Neither Publisher nor Editor will assume responsibility for unsolicited manuscripts or JOHN S. OGDEN illustrations while In their possession or in transit. Permission to reprint will be given 242 E. College Ave., York, Pa.; Phono 7434 provided we receive marked copies and credit is given material or illustrations. Only communications pertaining to manuscripts, material or Illustrations should be addressed to the Editor at the above address. COVERED BRIDGE at McGee's Mills, built 1860. This is COLUMBIA-WRIGHTSVILLE BRIDGE the last covered bridge over any part of the Susque­ special toll rate of $1.00 per month. Fat cattle per head and coV hanna river. and calf cost 6'/2 cents; poor cattle per head, 3 cents and sheep or swine, per head, 1 cent. Bridge was burned when Gen. Early * troops reached Wrightsville with intention of attacking Harrisburfl from the rear. SUSQUEHANNA BRIDGES Pennsylvania's anglers motor over them, fish from and under them; often wonder about the remains of lonely piers jutting from the river bottom as they toss a fly or bait nearby. The ghosts of the old river bridges come to life again in this article to take form over these abandoned skeletons of yesterday. IVERS have always been in somebody's road. In time, as man moved up the ladder of achievement, R Back in the days before civilization appeared on the ferryboat appeared and became a recognized in­ the horizon, our cave-dwelling ancestors began to stitution. Its logical successor was a bridge, and as operate under the assumption the other fellow's fields soon as man reached a point where his engineering were greener, and migrations took place. Eventually skill made it possible to construct permanent passage­ such population movements involved crossing rivers. ways over rivers, bridges became commonplace. Small streams presented no obstacles. These could be The Lower Susquehanna River, almost from the forded. The large rivers, however, could only be very first days Europeans entered the valley, was the crossed by swimming. This was not always convenient. river for them to cross. In the first place, it lay di- By DR. RICHMOND E. MYERS Dean of Men—Moravian College, Bethlehem (formerly Chief of Industrial Research, Penna. Dept. of Commerce) (Photos courtesy of author and Lancaster County Historical Society) PENNSYLVANIA ANGLER I COLUMBIA-WRIGHTSVILLLE BRIDGE of 1868, was a combination railroad- highway structure. rectly athwart the land route from Philadelphia to self with the bridges that followed many of the ferry the tidewater south. By 1695 a ferry was in operation crossings over the river. across the mouth of the river. Then, as land in the In order for a bridge to be built, two things are seaboard region was rapidly taken up, new arrivals necessary. First, there must be a need for it. Enough from the old country had to move further west to find people will have to benefit by the bridge to warrant open country. Now the port of Philadelphia received the cost of its construction. This is purely an eco­ the bulk of the sixteenth century immigration, and nomic consideration, but it is a basic one. The second the Susquehanna lay directly west of the Quaker thing needed is technical, or engineering skill. Al­ capital. It is obvious more and more people had to though a plank over a brook may serve as a bridge, cross the river to find new homes as the years passed. it is not so simple to span a mile-wide river, even By 1800 there were fourteen ferries operating across though it may only be a foot deep. the Susquehanna River between Harrisburg and the In the case of the Susquehanna, both these condi­ Chesapeake Bay. Your author has told the story of tions were met. Certainly the traffic was there by the 1 these ferries elsewhere. This paper concerns it­ (Turn to next page) RUINS of the bridge of 1868, destroyed by a severe storm, left only one big batch of kindling wood. end of the eighteenth century. It was concentrated at three ferry crossings. The first of these was at the mouth of the river on what we might call the "main line" of north-south land movement along the At­ lantic seaboard. In the opening decade of the nine­ teenth century this was the route that connected the new national capital with Philadelphia and New York. FIRST BRIDGE ACROSS THE SUSQUEHANNA River at Rock- The second major point of ferry service was the cross­ vilio, completed by the Pennsylvania Railroad in 1849. ing between Columbia and Wrightsville in the Lan­ The most important and most costly structure on the caster-York Valley, which led westward via the new railroad. Monocacy Path through York and Frederick to Vir­ ginia. A branch road led west from York over the mountains to Chambersburg. The third major crossing of the Susquehanna was at Harrisburg, where the Lebanon-Cumberland segments of the Great Appa­ lachian Valley met at the river. Here was a pathway west over the Tuscarora Mountain to Bedford and Pittsburgh, the old Forbes Road, or south via Hagers- town into the Shenandoah Valley. All these crossings were heavily used, and the ferries serving them were taxed to capacity. It was only natural that people be­ gan thinking about bridges. The need was there. Just at this time, the technical skill was also avail­ able in the person of Theodore Burr, who has been called "the father of American bridge building."2 Dur­ ing the first decade of the nineteenth century, when the need for bridges over the Susquehanna was be­ coming more and more apparent, and the agitation for the building of such bridges was growing stronger and stronger, this Yankee bridge builder was estab­ lishing his reputation as a master in his profession.

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