BLACK BASSE ANGLING IN MICHIGAN. 299 



they are somewhat larger. In color, too, at times, the Black 

 Basse is like the Tautog ; but his color changes with the sea- 

 son, or from some other cause, from a dingy black to a dark 

 green. Perhaps these varieties of color are the result of age 

 or sex, though it is said that the same fish, kept in a vessel of 

 water, will change its color repeatedly in a short space of time. 

 The Black Basse makes his appearance in the Detroit River 

 about the latter part of May or first days of June, as the season 

 is early or late. He is then in fine condition, and at his feeding 

 time, which is from sunrise till half-past seven or eight o'clock 

 A. M., and from four p. M. to sunset, will give good sport till the 

 last of July. In August they are spawning ; and though the 

 bait be cast in the midst of " a crowd," as it sometimes may on 

 a gravelly bank over which the water, two or three feet deep, 

 runs rapidly into an eddy or pool, they will nose it about in 

 turn as disdainfully as though they were innocent of ever mas- 

 ticating a minnow. If you do succeed by artifice, as you flat- 

 ter yourself, in enticing one to take the hook, he gives but little 

 play, and comes out with scarcely a struggle. You will find 

 him hollow over the eyes, sharp on the back, thin and shrunk 

 and so woe-begone of look, suggestive of fishy fever and ague, 

 that his taking the hook, you are convinced, is mere desperation, 

 in fact a piscatory suicide. You throw him back into his native 

 element, and he swims languidly off with an air which plainly 

 says his destiny is a matter of indifference to him. You 

 may succeed during the month of August, even at mid-day, in 

 taking a few stout, frisky young fellows of a pound or a pound 

 and a half in weighty which the accomplished fishing corres- 

 pondent of the " Buffalo Commercial" calls " yearlings ;" but 

 there your sport will end. Reel up then, friend, and hie thee to 

 the edge of the sedge, to inveigle Yellow Perch or a stray Pick- 

 erel, and leave the " yearlings" to grow, and their emaciated 

 progenitors to recover their plumpness and vigor. 



