BASS-FISHING IN WISCONSIN 
Where Waters Are Clear and Skies Are Cool and Tackle 
Suffers Mightily 
BY DON CAMERON 
O THOSE who 
seek the ideal in 
bass-fishing, no 
better locality 
can be found 
than the lake 
regions of up- 
per Wisconsin. 
Hundreds and 
hundreds of 

) lakes of every 
~ size and de- 
SS ee w= scription are 
scattered over 
that fend land and almost every body of 
water is the home of the big-mouth bass. 
In all this broad land no more perfectly 
natural conditions exist. There the waters 
are as clear and cool as the skies of winter 
and only Nature’s fisher folk take toll. 
Northern Wisconsin is low, the prairies 
interspaced with small hills covered with 
choice timber, or scrub oak where the pine 
has been cut away. The fertile plains are 
but sparsely settled with foreigners. More 
than a-third of the land is covered with 
lakes, streams, swamps, or low, dank 
prairies, grown high with wild grass. The 
clear streams are highways for the trout 
family; the rivers abound with pickerel, 
bass, suckers and other small fish, while the 
lakes are literally alive with the biggest of 
black bass and mighty ’longe. 
Less than a year ago it was my pleasure 
to make one of a party that spent a little 
over three weeks fishing in this lake region, 
and never before had I seen such sport with 
rod and line as we enjoyed. Many of the 
lakes we fished bearno names. Others were 
known locally as Pine Lake, Bear Lake, 
Twin Lakes, Cedar Lake, Jay Pond, Big 
Bone Lake, Island Pond and a hundred and 
one other names. The abundance of game 
about these lakes testified that men seldom 
troubled the waters. Noisy waterfowl were 
exasperatingly plentiful, and squirrels bark- 
ed from the trees all day long. 
The greatest difficulty we encountered in 
our fishing was in securing suitable bait. 
While the bass would jump at a fly a little 
in the early morning or late evening and 
would strike a spoon when they felt like it, 
live bait was the only lure that could be 
depended upon to coax the big fellows upon 
the hook. It was by far harder work to get 
the bait than it was to catch the bass. The 
season was late and the small streams held 
no fish except trout, and every minnow had 
to be caught on the riffs of the big streams 
with hook and line. Often it took half a day 
to get enough bait to go fishing. But the 
sport we had after the bait-pail was stocked 
with restless minnows! 
While the weed-filled bays and mouths of 
small streams and the sunken logs always 
held a goodly fish, it was the sandbars that 
cropped out near the surface in some of the 
lakes, leaving deep water on either side, 
that afforded the best fishing. The biggest 
bass seemed to be lying in wait among the 
rocks in the deep water to seize the first min- 
now that ventured out along the shallow 
water of the bar. A lively minnow, properly 
impaled on the hook and gently handled, 
would no sooner swim out toward the deep 
water than a long shadow from the deeper 
green would pounce upon it, and the fisher- 
man had his hands full—probably a big bass 
or sometimes a ’longe. 
The fights we had, the big ones that got 
away before the gaff was improvised—all 
would make many interesting pages.-A 
peep into our tackle boxes after we reached 
camp every day would show that while we 
were victorious, it was not without sad loss 
to ourselves where tackle was scarce. 
The fish were plump and full of fighting 
strength. The hook seemed to awaken 

