CHAPTER XX. 



THE BLACK BASS AS A GAME FISH. 



" He is a fish that lurks close all winter ; but is very pleasant and jolly after 

 mid-April, and in May, and in the hot months." IZAAK WALTON. 



THOSE who have tasted the lotus of Salmon, or Trout 

 fishing, in that Utopian clime of far away while reveling 

 in its aesthetic atmosphere, and surrounded by a misty halo 

 of spray from the waterfall, or enveloped by the filmy 

 gauze and iridescent haze of the cascade have inscribed 

 tomes, sang idyls, chanted paeans, and poured out libations 

 in honor and praise of the silver-spangled Salmon, or the 

 ruby-studded Trout, while it is left to the vulgar horde of 

 Black Bass anglers^co stand upon the mountain of their 

 own doubt and presumption, and, with uplifted hands, 

 in admiration and awe, gaze with dazed eyes from afar 

 upon that forbidden land that terra incognita and then, 

 having lived in vain, die and leave no sign. 



It is, then, with a spirit of rank heresy in my heart ; 

 with smoked glass spectacles on my nose, to dim the glare 

 and glamour of the transcendent shore ; with the scales of 

 justice across my shoulder M. salmoides in one scoop and 

 M. dolomieu in the other I pass the barriers and confines 

 of the enchanted land, and toss them into a stream that 

 has been depopulated of even fingerlings, by the dilettanti 

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