CHAPTER V 



THE BAIT-CASTER AND THE SWEET- 

 WATER BASSES 



SOME years ago Dr. James A. Henshall, whose 

 name is so intimately and favorably connected 

 with the sporting and natural history of the 

 sweet-water basses, stated that the black bass "inch 

 for inch and pound for pound the gamest fish that 



swims" would eventually become the 

 Bait-casting kadm fish of America> It ma be 



in General. , , . , , , , 



safely said that at the present time the 



truth of this statement is quite evident. Fly-fishing for 

 trout and casting for bass, barring stream fishing with 

 flies where the two methods are closely approximate, 

 are very different propositions; but comparisons 

 are always odious and we will not here argue 

 the case of the Brook Trout vs. the Black Bass. It is 

 probably a fact that an impartial jury of anglers im- 

 paneled from the country at large would bring in a 

 verdict in favor of the defendant the black bass. An 

 enthusiastic bass fisherman, whom the writer met one 

 day at his camp on the shore of a little lake in the 

 Berkshires, summed up the matter to the satisfaction of 



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