128 Thirty-fourth Annual Meeting. 
The Horse Mackeral is found around the world, but it is only 
at Sunny Catalina that he earns the title of the Leaping Tuna. 
To see the giant herring cleave the air you must go to the hot 
waters of the lower Gulf Stream, though these Tarpon have been 
caught in the Potomac. Even the Trout and Salmon are only 
lively in the summer months, and the Grayling further north 
succumbs to a hunk of pork for a lure. Now, if you will do the 
Large Mouth Black Bass justice to invite his attention when he 
is at his best, when the bugs are on the water, and the flies are 
in the air, he’ll surprise you with such ground and lofty tumbling 
as would put a trout to shame. He is not sluggish—he doesn’t 
quit—he’ll leave the water higher and oftener; stand on his tail 
and shake off every drop of water in his effort to void the hook 
and plays pranks to the boat where the trout would only be try- 
ing to bore through to the seat of war. 
Then, too, the unwise say he is not good to eat, and there is 
no better meat with bones, but ninety-nine men out of one hun- 
dred still string fish, and a water soaked fish that has died and 
bleached in the sun on a string in shallow water—such as one 
may see in any group of anglers—or such fish as the netters 
send to the markets in hot weather, are scarcely fit for food, and, 
of course, are not palatable. 
Tf, when you lift the Bass out of the water, you will bleed 
and draw him, you will find a greater difference over the fish you 
probably know than between a peach and a horse-chestnut. 
In my opinion, no man living can tell whether he has a 
Small Mouth Bass or a Large Mouth on his line or on his plate 
from the fight for flavor, if neither has a card, and, confidentially. 
I lean a “little” toward the one whose smile reaches to his ears. 
He is so satisfying, and gives such confidence when he comes up 
after your fly, whether splitting his Nelumbium umbrella in an 
[Illinois Lake, or turning sommersaults at midnight in the St. 
Francis, or racing a pike for your fly down the Potomac—he’s 
all there and when he gets it—which he’s sure to do—he’ll come 
again and again for it, rapture! 
But the object of all this is to invite your attention to the 
fact that for three years there has been no fishing in the Potomac, 
and to beg you to tell us why? To save you guessing, it may be 
as well to run over the reasons which have occurred to us: 
