POTOMAC BASS. 
BY HENRY TALBOTT OF WASHINGTON, D. C. 
The first object of this Society is ** to promote the cause of 
Fish Culture.” 

Fish Culture has two groups of beneficiaries—the consumer, 
together with those who labor for his benefit—that is the com- 
mercial side 

and the Angler. 
It is from the standpoint of the latter that my little contri- 
bution is made, and it is fair to say that the term ‘tangler” is used 
not for the flyrod’s 400, but to include every one who catches 
fish for sport—from the barefooted boy’s elder pole to the 
bamboo whip. It is not inappropriate that you should hear what 
some of us think of you and besides you need us to supplement 
your work. All the fish you could put in would do no good if 
we did not take them out. 
It is peculiarly fitting that the Potomac should receive your 
attention, for to mention that river is to throw bouquets at Fish 
Culturists. The Black Bass is an alien to that stream, yet he has 
flourished in its waters as have our forebears on its banks, and 
as there is no country in the world lke our own nation of tmmi- 
grants, so is there no Black Bass river to compare with the 
Potomac. Rocky and rushing for three hundred miles of its 
length it is to the Small Mouth Black Bass as ideal a home 
as is the Nepigon for the trout or the Restigouche for the salmon. 
For three score miles below the Little Falls its coves and hundred 
creeks with the sluggish waters of the tide-water marshes and 
their wealth of food makes to brackish water, Large Mouth Bass, 
as suitable homes as do the lagoons and lakes of Florida. and he 
would grow to as great size even to match that mythical 23- 
pounder of southern fame 

if the fishermen and the anglers 
would but give him a chance. The latitude is not against him, 
for | have seen two bass from Peters’ Lake, Missouri, a latitude 
not lower than this, of about 12 pounds, and they have been 
found here of above nine, but overnetted fish grow small. 
It is said the average of shad in the the Potomac were long 
ago of 14 pounds weight and they do not now reach half that 
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