5° 



RECREATION. 



Now I want to ask the gentleman, on his 

 honor: 



ist. Did you never catch fish during the 

 close season, and keep them? 



2d. Did you ever land a lady bass, just 

 after the close season, who had been de- 

 layed in getting her eggs to market, and 

 put her back into the water, even though 

 the law allowed you to keep her? 



I have been ridiculed more than once for 

 thus strictly construing the law, from its 

 moral standpoint, by so trying to preserve 

 the fish. 



I hope my friend, Mr. C. R. Marks, is as 

 little of a fish and game hog as my fisher- 

 man friends know me to be. 



C. C. Haskins. 



FISHING IN LOUISTOWN RESERVOIR, 

 OHIO. 

 We have some fine black bass fishing in 

 the Logan county reservoir, in Ohio. It is 

 2,7 miles from where I am located, but with 

 my Cleveland wheel the distance is noth- 

 ing to speak of. After the day's business is 

 over I make the run to Bellfountain, 25 

 miles, in 2 hours and stop for supper, and 

 then finish with a run of 12 miles to the 

 reservoir. One evening in November, '97, 

 I made this trip and was up and out fishing 

 by 6 a.m. the next morning. I drifted for 

 several miles, catching only 4 bass. About 

 9 o'clock I struck Indian lake, the deepest 

 body of water on Louistown reservoir and 

 about ^2 mile long and J4 mile wide. Then 

 the fun began. I set my rod in the boat 

 and got things in shape to fish. While 

 doing this my old automatic reel was click- 

 ing a tune and the rod was trying to get 

 overboard. When I raised the rod the reel 

 was almost empty and a bass was jumping, 

 45 yards away, trying to shake the hook out 

 of his mouth. It was no use. The Yawman 

 & Erbe automatic will not give a fish an 

 inch of slack line, so by "playing him for 

 some time I brought him to the net. He 

 weighed 3% pounds. I fished until 3 p.m. 

 taking 46 black bass, weighing in all 66 

 pounds. Then as the wind was rising I 

 returned to the hotel. 



O. H. Thorpe, D.D.S., Marysville, O. 



THE PENNSYLVANIA BREED. 



" Three fisherman went into the East " last week 

 —Rev. H. G. Hall, I. H. Borland and S. D. Mayes. 

 They returned last evening in triumph, carrying 

 with them 45 pounds of dressed trout, which they 

 caught in the wilds of Clinton and Potter counties. 



The total catch of the trio aggregated 1,255. The 

 writer accepts these details in full faith, for 2 

 reasons — first, because Rev. Hall kept the tally, 

 and, second, because he (the writer) is " outside " 

 of a section of Mr. Borland's big fish. 



— Franklin (Pa.) " Evening News." 



The old, old story. The fish hog calls 

 on the local editor and bribes him, with a 

 mess of fish, to tell the world what a great 

 hog he (the fisherman) is. Fortunately 

 there are some editors — at least one — who 

 is willing to say what he thinks of such 

 men without being fed up to it. 



It is bad enough for ordinary men to 

 pose as trout hogs; but when a minister 

 of the gospel can so disgrace himself it is 

 time for his clerical brethren to kick him 

 out of his pulpit. 



BAIT FOR WALL-EYED PIKE. 



In answer to Mr. Estabrook's query as 

 to bait for wall-eyed pike and the time to go 

 after them, will say the early fisherman gets 

 the pike during the torrid part of the year. 

 During the cooler fishing months, the mid- 

 dle of a sunshiny day, with a South wind, 

 has proved the most favorable time with us. 



The most effective lure, and the one I 

 use in nearly all my fishing, is a bull-head 

 or bull-pout, from one to 4 inches long. 

 Out of one deep hole in our river (the 

 Wapsipinicon) during the second 10 days 

 of last August, using this bait, I landed one 

 pike of 8^4, one of 6%, one of 5^>, 2 of 6 

 pounds and others running from this 

 weight down to 2 pounds. 



One evening during this time another 

 piscatorial artist landed 2 just at dusk, with 

 the same kind of bait, one weighing 7, the 

 other 8^2 pounds. 



In casting for black bass, bull-heads are 

 a good bait for 2 reasons; their tenacity of 

 life and the fact that the larger bass gen- 

 erally prefer them to a minnow. Last sea- 

 son I caught a 3 pound small mouthed bass 

 with an inch bull-head, and in the bass' gul- 

 let was a 6 inch bull-head, the tail of which 

 protfuded into the bass' throat. 



As this is nearing the season for fish 

 stories, will offer the following: Last sea- 

 son one of our local fishermen, while troll- 

 ing for pickerel, saw one whose weight he 

 estimated at 6 or 7 pounds take his bait. 

 He gave him plenty of time to swallow it 

 and then yanked. Something pulled hard 

 for a minute, then to his astonishment and 

 disgust there came to view a half digested 

 sucker, nearly 8 inches long, with his hook 

 sunk deep into the middle of it. 



I. C. Tabor, Independence, Io. 



BLACK BASS THROUGH THE ICE. 



I noticed an article in March Recrea- 

 tion, from Exeter, N. H., with the above 

 heading. Speaking of a bass caught 

 through the ice at Littlepond, Kingston, 

 the writer says: " So far as recorded, this 

 is the first black bass ever caught through 

 the ice, in winter, and scientists have de- 

 clared that the bass hibernates, burying in 

 the mud and there remaining dormant un- 

 til spring." I am not a scientist but I am 

 a chronic fisherman and, with all due re- 

 spect to learned authorities, I know the 

 above quoted statement to be nonsense. It 

 is a common thing here in Western Con- 

 necticut, to catch small mouth black bass 

 through the ice, on live bait. I have seen 

 them caught, too, in mid-winter, when we 

 had to cut through 15 inches of hard ice to 



