THE PERCH. 311 
Sussex county, New Jersey, and to some of the north 
eastern streams and ponds of Pennsylvania, I should say 
that late in the autumn— 
When the maple boughs are crimson, 
And the hickory shines like gold, 
And the noons are sultry hot, 
And the nights are frosty cold; 
They bite with greater freedom, show more sport, and 
are better on the table than at any other season of the 
year. 
The yellow perch isa bold, nay! a savage biter, and 
a gréedy feeder ; it is even recorded of him that he has 
been known to strike at his own eye, casually torn out 
by the point of the hook, which is to me by no means 
incredible. 
Securely weaponed by the sharp palisade of arrowy 
spines bristling along his back, and by the stout jagged 
thorns protruding in advance of his ventral anal fins, 
when of any considerable size, he fears neither the 
tremendous rush and shark-like jaws of the savage mas- 
calonge, nor the terrible agility and dauntless daring of 
the namaycush and siskawity, those vast lake trouts, but 
feeds himself, a lesser tyrant of the waters, on whatever 
crosses his path of havoc. 
A light, stiff, ten-foot rod, with a small reel, and 
twenty-five or thirty yards of line, with a small cork 
float, and a proper sinker for bottom fishing, is the best 
