THE PERCH FAMILY. 119 



Bream are taken with shrimp, minnows, crawfish, red worms, 

 or a wedge-shaped fish-bait. They should be fished for with 

 a slight reed rod, short line, and a No. 3 Kirby hook ; the 

 bait from fifteen to twenty-four inches below the float, what- 

 ever be the depth of the water. They haunt the mouths of 

 small branches that put into creeks, ponds, or bayous, and are 

 found around old stumps and logs, and love to lie beneath 

 the scum or drift of sluggish waters. 



In fishing the bayous in the South, the angler frequently 

 pushes aside the light drift with the end of his rod, and drops 

 his bait into an opening not larger than the crown of his hat, 

 and in a short time has captured a hatful of them. They are 

 the delight of all juveniles ; a little urchin of ten years 

 frequently catching a string of them as long as himself, and 

 when Bass are not on the feed, they are the dernier ressort of 

 the more ambitious angler. 



I have taken all three of these species in Bayou La Branch, 

 about thirty miles north of New Orleans, on the Jackson 

 Eailroad, going and returning the same day. With a pleasant 

 companion, a bottle of claret, ice, and cold fowl, the day would 

 pass pleasantly enough. In the month of April the black- 

 berry bushes that grew along the banks of the bayou were 

 laden with fruit, and when we could not reach them from the 

 pirogue, we were sometimes tempted to go ashore for them, 

 at the risk of meeting an alligator in its journey from the 

 bayou to its nest in the canebrake. It was a dismal water, 

 with long weepers of gray moss drooping from the trees ; 

 and when a solitary fisherman paddled his canoe over the 

 dark, waveless bayou, his form in the distance would suggest 

 the idea of Old Charon. It certainly was a river of " sticks, ^^ 

 if not of Acheron. 



Will I ever wet my seagrass line in Bayou La Branch 

 again ? I think not. 



