BLACK BASS AND TROUT COMPARED 



lation of the latter by their foraging congeners. 

 In their upper migrations they wait, like the salmon 

 and trout, until a freshet occurs before they start 

 up stream, and they have been known to loiter for 

 weeks in shallow pools rather than breast the shoaler 

 waters of the rifts. On the other hand, they have 

 been seen in schools of a dozen or more, swimming 

 toward the upper waters with their back fins stick- 

 ing out of the surface of the dark, saffron-colored 

 current when the stream was swollen to near high- 

 water mark. At such a season all lures were re- 

 jected, and very often the most unpropitious time 

 to visit an otherwise favorable and fruitful pool is 

 immediately after a freshet, for it has been deserted 

 by its old inhabitants and the incoming migration 

 has not reached it. A rain of even a few hours' 

 duration will sometimes affect the feeding-habits 

 of the black bass, either from their being surfeited 

 by the downpour of surface food washed out from 

 the banks, or by the fish leaving the lower for the 

 upper pools. Certainly a heavy freshet will render 

 barren a pool that has hitherto been fruitful, and 

 just here is found an additional similarity between 

 the habits of the black bass and the brook-trout. 

 Trout, particularly after the first of August, are 

 found only in diminished numbers in the lower pools 

 and reaches of the brooks; the greater number 

 have left for the upper waters, but not from the 

 same cause that induces the migration of the black 



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