THE BASSES: FRES H-W ATER AND MARINE 



trout-stream, as the black bass in rivers and brooks 

 have many habits identical with those of the brook- 

 trout east of the Alleghanies. They live upon the 

 same animal and insect food, and may be found 

 feeding, like trout, in the shallows and at the foot 

 of rifts, retiring to the deep pools for repose and 

 digestion. At such times, however, they are in one 

 respect like the trout: they will not take a lure, 

 either natural or artificial, although they have been 

 seen, under like conditions, to kill young fish of 

 alien species, seemingly from the love of destroying 

 life, tearing bits of flesh from the backs of sunfish 

 and then sculling away with what seemed like a 

 pleasurable flirt of the tail. Hence the name of 

 " tiger of the waters," applied to them in some of 

 the Western States. 



Trout will gorge themselves to the lips, taking an 

 artificial fly with the tail of a minnow sticking from 

 the mouth. Black bass will purr over and play with 

 the minnow bait, and sometimes suck it in tail first 

 and then spit it out with force, sending it spinning 

 three or four feet from them. It is practices like 

 these that perplex the bait-fishermen when fishing 

 for black bass in the large and relatively quiet pools 

 that occur in such rivers as tne upper Delaware and 

 Susquehanna, where, as I have stated in a previous 

 chapter, it has been found that the most effective 

 way of hooking them is by paying out fifty to a 

 hundred feet of line when the " draw " or gentle 



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