CASTING LURES 99 



water conditions; second, time of the year; third, 

 weather; fourth, moods and idiosyncrasies of bass 

 at the particular moment. Which qualification 

 destroys the force of the previous remark. If the 

 reader pursues this chapter to the end he will dis- 

 cover why I have made this loop-hole of escape. I 

 use under-water lures where I believe under-water 

 lures should be employed, because that class of 

 attractors are the most successful fish-getters under 

 certain conditions. 



The surface lure is the tyro's training school and 

 the old hand's saint's-rest. For practice, learning how 

 to handle the rod and thumb the reel, there is 

 nothing like the simon-pure surface plug, the lure 

 that will remain upon the surface even while the 

 exasperated rodster takes his reel apart to untangle 

 a bad back-lash, or hand-over-hand retrieves his line, 

 while he devoutly prays it may be attached to the 

 reel lying upon the lake-bed fathoms below, having 

 "somehow" escaped from the reel bands. The 

 angler using a surface or surface-underwater lure 

 need never worry over the whereabouts of his lure, 

 unless fishing a stream with a rapid current. One 

 can not say too much in favor of the type for the 

 foregoing reasons, and they are fish-getters, as will 

 hereinafter appear. To my mind, as I have else- 

 where pointed out in this work, the most efficacious 

 school for the would-be caster is actual casting with 

 surface lures over water inhabited by bass or other 



