180 A.mericcui Fisheries Society. 



the Fishing Gazette (London), who furnished specifications, 

 descriptions and photographs of the little edifice, and with the 

 eminent services of Mr. Burnham, chief architect of the Ex- 

 position, a perfect reproduction of the Walton and Cotton Fish- 

 ing Lodge was erected on the bank of the Lagoon in the 

 grounds of the Fair White City, where it proved to be the 

 Shrine and Mecca for anglers from the world over. It was 

 the headquarters for many angling events and numerous cast- 

 ing tournaments. 



"The strangest part of the matter," said Mr. Marston 

 afterward in the Fishing Gazette, "was that notwithstanding 

 the hundreds of angling societies in England, and a number of 

 angling journals, mine among the rest, no one, evidently, 

 thought of so important an event as the tercentenary of 

 Walton's natal day, but it was left to an American angler and 

 an American angling club to celebrate and honor the occasion 

 in such a splendid and appropriate way." 



It is now thirty years since the Chicago World's Fair, but 

 it was twenty years before, in 1873, that I began the crusade 

 to give the black bass its proper place among game-fishes, 

 and to call attention to its possibilities both as a game-fish 

 and a food fish, and to make known the most suitable tackle 

 for its capture, in order to prove it "inch for inch and pound 

 for pound the gamest fish that swims," and to verify my pre- 

 diction that, eventually, it would become "The great American 

 game-fish." At that time, however, there was not a single 

 article of tackle made especially for black bass fishing except 

 the Kentucky reel. At that time the real art of black bass 

 angling was confined to a small zone of the middle west, of 

 which the "blue grass section" of Kentucky was the center. 

 Outside of that area black bass angling, as an art was un- 

 known. The earliest angling books by American authors, as 

 before mentioned were published during the sixties, namelj^ 

 those of Browne, Norris, Scott and Roosevelt. Evidently these 

 authors knew little or nothing of the black bass or black bass 

 angling, inasmuch as they were either silent on the subject or 

 dismissed it with a few words; Robert B. Roosevelt, however, 

 referred to several incidents of black bass fishing in Canada. 



Thirty years afterward, at the Chicago World's Fair, it 

 was demonstrated that in the Angling Exhibit there were more 

 diflferent articles of fishing tackle made especially for black 

 bass than for all other game-fishes combined. At that time 

 it may be said that black bass angling was never better, and 

 the species never more abundant. The inland streams were 

 comparatively pure and undefiled, and coastal waters uncon- 

 taminated. But, alas, the great popularity of black bass ang- 

 ling proved to be our undoing. LTnheard of and uncouth mul- 



