106 BASS-FISHING IN SUNGAHNEETUK 



with spines, oflFensively with stout, sharp teeth set 

 in strong jaws, the black bass holds his own against 

 changed conditions and aquatic enemies, and owns 

 no fish of these waters his master, unless it be the 

 gar-pike, or bill-fish, a fish so invulnerably mailed 

 and murderously weaponed as to be assailed or 

 withstood by no other. 



Protection has done wonders for the bass, for 

 all they needed was to be let alone during spawn- 

 ing-time, and wherever the law has been enforced 

 they have greatly increased in numbers. Up to 

 the passage of a protective fish law, in 1874, it had 

 been the common practice here with all who angled, 

 either for pleasure or profit, to catch these fish on 

 their spawning-beds in June. Whoever had eyes 

 sharp enough to spy out the beds under the tangle 

 of ripples and knots of foam in the shallows or be- 

 neath the slow current of the translucent gray- 

 green depths had only to cast his hook, no matter 

 how unskillfuUy masked with a worm, and the 

 alert parent fish would rush to remove the intruder 

 from the sacred precincts, seizing it in her mouth 

 and dropping it well outside the bed, if left to have 

 her own way with it. But just in the nick of time 

 the angler came in, and, strikmg, fastened his fish, 

 which ten times to one was hauled forth at once by 

 stout pole and line, without a chance for life, to 

 spend her strength in useless threshing of the 

 daisies and clover. It was not always done in this 



