38 The American Angler 
the coming year, and may this same 
good right hand that won the victory 
over you, retain all its cunning next 
season and bring to the net thy suc- 
cessor. 
Most of the few good fish caught this 
fall were taken by setting your rod on 
the shore, at an angle of forty-five de- 
grees, with click of your reel set, and 
then getting into your boat and taking 
your minnow out from seventy-five to 
one hundred and fifty feet to a spot 
clear of grass, then pulling back to 
shore, there to sit and ‘‘feed thy soul 
with patience,’’ until a bass happens 
that way and appropriates your bait, 
then gvab—this gives the idea better 
than any other word I call to mind- 
your rod, remove the click, take to 
your boat and go after your fish, which, 
by the time he has turned your minnow, 
will have run three-fourths of your line 
under and in and out of the grass, and 
unless you extricate yourself from this 
muddle with the utmost care and deli- 
cacy, you will discover you have had 
all your trouble in vain; that Mr. Bass 
has smelled a mouse and concluded to 
take his meal where there 
much of ‘¢a pull.” 
Fish of 1,114 and1% tb. seemed fairly 
plenty, while those under a pound were 
so plentiful as to be quite a nuisance. 
In the absence of better sport, I put in 
two evenings catching these small fry 
in the pool below the dam and putting 
them in the back water above. 
Thanks toan indifferent, or inefficient 
—perhaps both—State Fish Commis- 
sioner, the statute requiring owners of 
dams to construct and maintain fish- 
ways in their dams, is a dead letter in 
Indiana. It would be a surprise if the 
conditions were other than they are. 
What does the average layman know 
or care about such things ? 
is not so 
One of my fish, a beautiful clipper- 
built, 234 th. small-mouth, a fighter 
from Tigerville, was to me a rara avis, 
being handsomely ornamented with six 
jet black spots, three on the belly, one 
each on the right pectoral and ventral 
fins, and one on the under half of the 
tail; those on the belly being round, 
in form of the size of a dime and larger; 
those on the fins and tail oblong; that 
on the right pectoral 34 inch long; that 
on the right ventral 1 inch and, that on 
the under half of the tail 1% inch. 
Whether a freak of nature—an every 
day bass in mourning—or the advance 
a new variety of the bass 
family, I never saw its like before. 
Another peculiarity of my catch was 
the fact that a much larger per cent. 
contained spawn than those taken in 
former years out of the same waters, 
and about the same time; of the seven 
or eight fish brought to my house, all 
but one contained spawn, and the same 
conditions prevailed in the fish sent to 
friends, so far as I have been able to 
get the facts. In some the eggs were 
apparently much nearer the stage of 
fecundity thanin others. The observa- 
tion of the best informed anglers who 
have fished the streams of Indiana for 
the past fifteen and twenty years, is to 
the effect that the bass are done spawn- 
ine by the last of June. For. years 
have taken an occasional fish as late 
as October and November, containing 
spawn, but why they should predomi- 
nate this fall is a question I have not 
been able to satisfactorily determine. 
It does not help matters any to say this 
result was brought about by the fact 
that I took more females than males; 
that is self-evident, but what were the 
conditions making this result possible ? 
What are the causes producing these 
conditions, and why did these causes 
guard of 
