50 THE ART OF FISHING. 



from it. When the bass sto^DS he shifts the minnow in his mouth to 

 get it head downward, proceeds to swallow it, and then moves away. 

 At this moment the angler should give a quick jerk, not a "swishy" 

 pull of his line out of the water, and he can safely bet that his bass 

 is hooked. 



In fishing with cray-fish the bait must not be kept suspended in 

 the water like the minnow, because the cray-fish lives on the bot- 

 tom, and is there sought by the bass. A great annoyance in fishing 

 with cray-fish is their tendency to crawl under stones and logs. A 

 good plan to prevent this, in a measure, is to cripple the cray 

 fish by breaking off one of its claws A bass always swallows a 

 cray-fish tail first. The hook should be placed in under the bottom 

 of the tail, near the body, and brought through to the back. The 

 same precaution is necessary when the bass strikes a cray-fish as is 

 required with the minnow if the angler would be successful in hook- 

 ing his fish. If fishing from a boat, the angler should throw his 

 bait as far from him as possible, and the finer his tackle the more 

 likely he is to secure a good catch. With angle-worm, grasshopper, 

 or the other small baits, the bass in striking usually takes them en- 

 tire into his mouth at once, but even with them it is safer to wait 

 for the second moving away of the bass before the attempt to hook 

 him is made. The black bass angler should remember, also, that 

 from June until September the best fishing is in deep water or under 

 the shadow of dams or falls. In September and October they live 

 more in rapid deep currents, lying in eddies formed by bowlders, tree 

 roots, or half submerged logs. In lakes they lie where the shores 

 and bottoms are rocky, and among the weeds and lily-pads. In 

 trolling with a spoon the latter should be small and attractive. 



As a rule bass will not rise to the surface for the fly, and this is one 

 reason that fly fishermen, unacquainted with the customs of the fish, 

 and angling for it after the manner of casting for trout, have uni- 

 formly failed of success with bass, and voted bass fishing a humbug. 

 The brightest fly should be the highest on the leader, and the flies 

 should be sunk nearly to the bottom, and trolled upward. The bass 

 invariably darts for the bright fly, but, seeing the others on his way 

 up, takes one or the other of them. If it is one of the upper flies, 

 the chances are that before the fish is landed, another bass will have 

 taken one of the flies below it, and the angler will find his skill taxed 

 to the utmost by two of the hardest fighting fish in American 

 waters. If the first bass is hooked on the lower fly, however, there 



