CALICO BASS 183 



mottled with olive-green blotches, so regularly splashed on 

 as to suggest the pattern of a piece of calico. 



Take, if you please, a beautiful bay on the southern shore 

 of Lake Ontario, a sunny day in May, no hotels or cottages 

 in sight, with red-winged blackbirds singing il O-ka-lee" in 

 the cat-tails, and the Calico Bass becomes one of the prettiest 

 fish you can pull out of the water. Each time it gives a 

 firm and vigorous bite, and leaves the water with a swish 

 that once heard under proper conditions lives long in the 

 memory. 



I like the Calico Bass because it is so handsome, so well 

 set-up, so substantial on the string and so satisfactory on 

 the table. A large specimen measures only about 10 inches 

 in length, but by reason of its great depth of body, and its 

 thickness, too, it is a fish well worth having. Its weight never 

 exceeds 2 pounds, and usually is about 1 pound. Besides the 

 names given above, it is called the Grass Bass, Barfish, and 

 "Crappie"; but the latter name belongs to another species. 



The Calico Bass is at home throughout the whole region 

 of the Great Lakes, the valley of the Mississippi to Louisiana 

 and Texas, and along the Atlantic side down to the Carolinas 

 and Georgia. In the beautiful lakes and ponds of Michigan, 

 Wisconsin, and Minnesota it is abundant and highly valued. 

 It can be taken still-fishing with worms, minnows, and grass- 

 hoppers, and also with a small trolling spoon. 



It dislikes warm and muddy waters, it is a clean feeder, 

 not quarrelsome or destructive to weaker species, and is said 



to increase rapidly. In 1900 only 7,544 were distributed 



* 



by the United States Bureau of Fisheries, but by 1902 the 



