Fishes 



Sonic fishes are very gamey while they are alive, and these are more highly 

 jrizecl by the true sportsman than fishes which only become gamey after 

 softening up for several hours in the hot sun, like a menhaden. The mud 

 turtle is not a game fish. 



Most game fishes will rise to the fly, but the fishes which are fly enough 

 not to do this pay lower rates on life insurance. 



The trout is a various fish. In the South he is a lazy black bass with No. 14 

 mouth and the flavor of sour mud. In the Catskills he is mostly a work of 

 imagination, and lives only in the clear, cold, running prospectus of a hotel 

 charging $4 a day. In Parmachene Lake and other fastnesses of Maine he is 

 a medium sized whale with red speckles onto his sides, and it costs a sportsman 

 $9 a pound to go and drag him out of his native lair. In other portions of the 

 effete North he is generally a five-inch spotted minnow capable of stretching an 

 extra inch in the frying pan, and is as full of spirit, beauty and natural cussed- 

 ness as a young and red-headed girl. 



The untutored trout prefers a gob of worms to a fly, and this distressing 

 fact has got more of the authorities on game fish in trouble than has the 

 malaria. 



The black bass is another game fish. He is of two species : the big mouth 

 and the small mouth. To tell a big mouth from a small mouth has bothered 

 the authorities for many years. Dr. Henshall says one is a grystes Sdmoides, 

 whatever that is, and that the other is a something or other Djlmieu; but I think 

 that the Doctor is prejudiced. There is a simpler way of distinguishing the 

 two. Catch a six-inch bass, and if you can insert your fist in his countenance 

 he is a small mouth, but if you can crawl down him yourself he is the other kind. 



The black bass is very capricious in his diet. Sometimes he will take the 

 fly, sometimes the minnow, and sometimes he prefers a large and fierce bug 

 with thirty-four legs, and a name which I will not mention in an article which 

 may be read by ladies. A black bass is as uncertain as a lottery ticket, but 

 differs from this in that he is worth the money. He weighs from seven pounds 

 down. Most bass weighing" seven pounds are still swimming in their native 

 waters, having been lost by fishermen who tell the truth. 



A bass weighing under three-quarters of a pound is called a throw-back, 

 and should be returned to the water. P.ass weighing from three-quarters to 

 one and a half pounds are cookies, and may be fried and devoured with a little 

 butter and a great deal of pleasure. Bass weighing two pounds are corkers; 

 three pounds are thumpers; four pounds are busters; five pounds are snorters, 

 and any bass weighing more than that is an old He. 



The salmon is a game fish which may easily be captured in the Fulton 

 Market and in Canada, but he is the exclusive property of the Restigouche Club, 

 which has a patent onto him. 



A good salmon outfit will cost $135.64, and the railroad fares, board, guide 

 and pool cost about $737 more. Then, if you are in luck, you may catch a 

 16-pound salmon and ship it in ice to city persons who never eat fish, but who 

 will say "Thank you" in a manner worth fully 40 ecu our return, and then 



