Other Game Fish 219 



wipe out a whole season's crop. Chronically roily water is 

 therefore unfavorable for bass, but even otherwise suitable 

 water may be roiled by freshets, or — and here the villain 

 enters — ^by other animals. The carp, that unadmired immi- 

 grant from China via Europe, does little direct harm to 

 game fish. His babies furnish excellent food for his betters, 

 and there is no evidence that he is guilty of feeding on their 

 young. He is largely a vegetarian, but it is in this very fact, 

 innocuous as it seems, that he causes trouble, for in his search 

 for his preferred foods he is continually rooting up the bot- 

 tom and roiling the water. The carp can in this way be a 

 menace to the bass. 



The other natural disaster which can overtake the bass 

 family is a sudden lowering of the temperature after the 

 eggs are laid and before they hatch. Under these conditions 

 the eggs die, and father knows it is no use, and abandons his 

 nest, to try again later on. This sensitiveness to and dislike 

 of cold weather extends to the adults. When winter comes 

 and temperatures go down, they go down with them. They 

 burrow into the mud, or pack themselves in crowds into 

 crevices in the rocks. They cease to move, they cease to eat. 

 They literally spend the winter In hibernation — except in 

 Florida and in certain parts of California, where the mild 

 climate keeps the large-mouth, the species which thrives best 

 in these regions, active and eating all through the year, and 

 brings him sometimes to a weight of over twenty pounds, 

 as compared with a maximum of six to eight in less favored 

 regions. 



Further, this distaste for cold weather may bring on a fit 

 of sulks at any season. For whenever the temperature drops 

 below 50 degrees both species, according to reliable authori- 

 ties, sink to the bottom and become inactive. At such times 

 there is no use in fishing for them. If this is true, the ther- 

 mometer should be an indispensable part of every bass 



