54 Union Bay 



"This kind of fishing shows that it don't pay to lose your 

 temper/' 



"What do you mean?" 



"These bullfrogs want to run the whole show. They jump 

 at everything around their bailiwick. We like them to feel 

 that way about the red flannel on our hooks." 



There was a movement in the water, a splash toward one 

 of the red lures, a struggle, and then redshirt pulled out an 

 enormous frog whose yellow throat proved it to be a male. 



Bluechecks smiled. 



"I like to catch things whose meanness is the cause of be- 

 ing caught. And it's fine to eat their legs afterwards. .Noth- 

 ing's better." 



The men told me that they fished every late spring for 

 frogs and then fished for bass in summer. Frog fishing was 

 easy if you knew how but not many people went after them. 

 They thought they liked it because it took them back to the 

 time when they were boys and had fished for bullfrogs in 

 Indiana. I waited until they had pulled in another struggling 

 victim and then moved along. 



The next stretch of the grand tour was shallow, and from 

 a fishing standpoint, unproductive. But the trip was not un- 

 pleasant. I watched the tule wrens carrying food to their 

 nests, heard the singing of the blackbirds, and saw them 

 mob a heron which had been careless enough to fly over 

 their nesting territory. They hovered over the bird and 

 struck at it viciously. I could look down in the water and see 

 the aquatic growth, just beginning now, but which later 

 would block the area in places. Then I passed the curried 

 and polished part of the bay, with large houses in the back- 

 ground, lawns running down to the water, and piers and 

 power boats. There was little here to remind me of the marsh 

 other than the mallards which had been fed so regularlv that 

 they depended almost entirely on handouts. The shrubbery 

 was full of singing warblers, flycatchers, and fat robins, and 





