Apb.il 29, 1886.] 



FOREST AND STREAM. 



267 



would be to lose him. But the hook failed to find a soft 

 spot to bury itself in and only turned htm up so I could see 

 the whole of his beautifully 'spotted side. For a wonder of 

 wonders the hook came up with a swish through that hole 

 without "ketchio' on to a root, ''but! was so "flustrated like" 

 and nervous that it was five minutes — it seemed an hour — 

 before I could feel steady enough to steer it safely through the 

 opening again. 



Tajk about "buck ague," I've had it, but it wasn't a 

 marker to what I went through that day, standing there in 

 the drizzle waiting for my heart to stop trying to "knock 

 the chaw tobacker out o'" luymouth" (old Dave Edwards). 

 But the nerves finally braced up to their accustomed relia- 

 bility, the heart ticked off its usual number of beats, and I 

 dropped bait and hook through the opening again without 

 a tremor. I scarcely dared hope he would rise again, but 

 with the same sudden dash the big fellow took it, and at the 

 same instant another one that looked almost as large, darted 

 alongside of him from somewhere under the bank and tried 

 to take the coveted worm from his mouth, but I gave them 

 no time to advance any views as to a proper division of the 

 morsel or to get into a wrangle over it. 



A quick upward stroke, and then "6ech thrashin' an' 

 twistin' an' wrigglin' an' cavortin'," and such furious plunges 

 and surges to free himself from the deadly barb, were never 

 seen, I have a notion, by mortal man. But in whatever 

 direction he plunged, the almost invisible thread of the finest 

 twisted silk pressed against a root r woven over the pool a 

 foot or more from the water, preventing him from getting 

 under the bank, and the very same old rod with which Jim 

 worked a five pound pickerel out from under the boat by 

 main strength in 1880, on Central Lake, was working at him 

 with the same tenacious, soul-harrowing pull, that wore the 

 life out of the longface on that memorable occasion. 



For what seemed a half hour, but in reality it was, perhap?, 

 not longer than a half minute, the untqual fight went on, 

 but there was no more buck ague, we were haviug it out in 

 deadly strife, and the least quiver or false move on either 

 side would quickly decide the battle. The warrior at the 

 tip end of the rod seemed utterly at a loss to understand how 

 a harmless looking red worm could cause, him such anxiety 

 of mind and make him hustle around at such a furious rate, 

 while he at the butt end stood firmly his ground, with nerves 

 as quiet and steady as a rock, but not over-confident of the 

 outcome. 



Once the old fellow took a turn around a slender root 

 hanging loosely down in the water, and I felt a chill of defeat 

 sweep up my spinal column, for I felt sure the frail thread 

 of a line would part, but the next contortion worked the line 

 clear and he came head up and open-mouthed to the top of 

 the water, materially assisted by the spring of the staunch 

 old rod. This instant that he forgot his wariness lost him 

 the battle, and his life. With a quick pull that must have 

 tested the little line to its utmost, 1 lifted him straight up 

 through the opening without touching a root and swung him 

 around over the grass back of me, where, with a violent 

 wriargle he freed the hook and fell with a splash into the rain 

 puddle near his mate. 



I say nothing about the unsportsmanlike manner of bis 

 taking, if it were unsportsmanlike, or of the "science and 

 skill" displayed in the struggle; let the brethren who read 

 this settle that to their own pleasement. I will only say that 

 after he was once fairly hooked I was dead bent on taking 

 him to camp or "bust the tackle." There was no time for 

 parleying ; no room to let the reel whiz off ten or fifteen yards 

 of line and then work him back with sundry flourishes of 

 "science," and over the landing net. There was no room to 

 use a net, besides I had none to use, and at no time during 

 the brief controversy was there three feet of line out from 

 the rod tip. It was a square country fisht from the start, 

 where main strength was the only factor to win, and I got 

 him out of the pool in just the only way he could have been 

 taken out. 



Considering the line and hook used— a JSIo. 10 salmon -trout 

 hook and a No. 1 twisted silk line — it was a famous achieve- 

 ment, and I felt more elated over it than if I had struck him 

 with a "killing fly" in fifty yards of open water, and led him 

 over the landing net with a $50 split bamboo. Had I been 

 using a limber fly-rod this tale of the big trout would never 

 have been written. And he was a glorious trout, too, for 

 such a tiny stream; just seventeen inches long as he lay on 

 the table at camp, and the most brilliantly colored fish T 

 have ever seen taken from any waters. Dark backed with 

 clean cut carmine spots dotting his sides, the whole belly, 

 and on a line as high as the base of the pectoral hns of the 

 very brightest vermillion, anal, ventral (not neutral, as the 

 types have made me say in a former number of these letters, 

 page 409, line 40 from bottom of page), and pectoral fins 

 broadly streaked with dazzling white, with a stripe of black 

 and red, he was indeed a living poem of glowing colors. 



Sitting here now writing of the splendid old fellow, with 

 the old "calamity box" within reach of my foot under the 

 table, and the same old rod, with three of its slenderer com- 

 panions standing in the corner under my eye, it comes back 

 to me that as I stood watching that trout, who with his mate 

 was beating the water of the little puddle into a foam, 1 felt 

 1 weighed within a few pounds of as much as I did after I 

 bad fought, conquered, gaffed and dragged the big maska- 

 longe over the side of the boat on Bower's Lake, and on that 

 occasion old Dan said I must have weighed upward of a 

 ton. 



But I spent short time in looking at the pair in the puddle, 

 for there was another big ooo in the pool, and possessed as 

 I must have been just then with the spirit of the trout hog, 

 I wanted him too. Pulling the hook down to put on a fresh 

 worm, I found it broken short off at the barb. Was ever 

 noble trout in such villainous luck? A judicious stroke of 

 his tail at ju?t the right time would have robbed me of a 

 year's glory. Since that day I am almost convinced there is 

 something in luck after all. 



Tying on another hook and baiting it carefully I dropped 

 it through the opening in the roots into the water, but the 

 other one was too much alarmed or too wary to heed any 

 of the most enticing twitches and bewildering flirts known 

 to the art of bait-fishing, and after trying awhile under the 

 mat of roots and again about the tree, I was fain to give 

 it up. 



I knew he was in there aDd not further away than I could 

 reach with the tip of the rod, for the whole pool might 

 have been covered by a pair of goat blankets, but the mys- 

 terious disappearance of his mates was doubtless connected 

 in fome fishy way in his mind with the squirming worm 

 and he was probably all the time peering at it from a secure 

 nook away under the bank with, figuratively, a grin of de- 

 rision on his usually pensive countenance at my blundering 

 efforts to lure him from his hiding. Ur he might have been 

 in a fit of the sulks and waiting for a little more artful coax- 



ing. But trout are much like some petulant beauties of our I am not quite sure that I have made any noticeable headway 

 own kind— when they won't they won't, and the more you The skin of the big trout was carefully taken off and pre- 

 coax 'em, the more they won't. 

 Wishing to take my prizes to camp alive, if possible, I took 



the lace cord from my overshirt, after searching all my 

 pockets in vaiu for a piece of string and with it tied them to 

 a twig overhanging the water and left them trailing in the 

 current while I fished the stream up through the tangle of 

 dripping woods for forty or fifty rods without, however, see- 

 ing or "feeling" another trout. 



It was near an hour before I got back to the pool, but the 

 coveted fish was still in the sulks, and would look at neilher 

 a fat worm nor a bright-colored fly that had fortunately not 

 been torn from its place in my bat band by the "bresk/'and 

 1 left the creek with the other two and took the road at a 

 brisk walk for the camp. As I lifted them from the water, 

 I could scarcely believe they were of the same family of fish. 

 The larger one was a dazzle of brilliant hues, while the 

 smaller one was a dirty blackish brown, even to the belly, 

 and only relieved by the carmine spots on the sides. The 

 fins, too, were of nearly the same color as the belly, with no 

 special marking of bright color like the other one", and was 

 withal an unattractive fish, except in plumpness and beauty 

 of form. Yet they were both taken from the same little pool 

 where they had been together, without a doubt, during the 

 entire season, feeding on the same kind of food, sheltered 

 and shaded by the same roots and banks and bushes— for it 

 was a place the sun would not reach only for a short time in 

 the morning— and passing their lives, from day to day, in 

 exactly the same manner, with all the conditions of exist- 

 ence alike. 



Writers tell us that the waters in which the trout live have 

 something to do with their color; that certain kinds of food 

 brighten their hues; that shaded pools and overhanging 

 banks give their markings a dull cast, and so on, but must it 

 be a condition that the dull, dirty colored fish pass all its life 

 away under the gloom of the bank, and feed on other diet 

 than his brighter colored brother, in order to be dull and 

 dirty? Must the other one— seemingly of the same spawn- 

 ing—select other food and stay out from under the shadows 

 and in the glare of the sun, that it may be clothed in 

 gorgeous colors? 



I confess it is a "category" that I can't see my way out of, 

 nor can I quite follow the "food and shade" theory that 

 seems to satisfy some of the better informed of the brethren. 

 Let us have a better reason for the different shades of color 

 and markings of trout of the same stream, for I am inclined 

 to think, with due deference to the "theory" that it has not 

 yet been found out why one trout's belly is a bright red and 

 another's a lusterless brown. And it may be that some of 

 the scientists who make life a burden to plain anglers by 

 hunting up new names (with "priority" to 'em) for old fish, 

 can tell why a black bass, which, when taken out of the 

 water, was a dirty cream-white all over, could change its 

 color within five minutes to a bright, beautifully mottled 

 green; the change so thorough and wonderful ' that one 

 might swear it was not the same fish. 



But these are things beyond my ken. I am content with 

 nature's handiwork as I find it, and see beauty and good in 

 it in whatever shape it comes to me. 



That's my creed for the woods, and I get large dividends 

 of sport and enjoyment and solid comfort out of it with a 

 very small investment of capital. 

 This may be charged up as another digression. 

 A lusty yell or two near where I had left Ben failed to get 

 a response, but I overtook him and the master at the little 

 stream near camp, in which the master said he had taken 

 nineteen fair-sized trout a few days before the storm, but 

 from the marks designated on his outstretched hand and 

 wrist as the lengths of some of them, I fear the greater num- 

 ber would have failed to fill the six-inch eye of the law. 



While we rested and freshened up the trout in the cold 

 water of the little brook, Ben related how, after we parted 

 near the school house, he had fished the stream clear down 

 into the swamp till he got mired, and back again up to 

 within a few yards of where I had tied my fish, "without a 

 durned solitary symptum," when, thinking I had eoneto the 

 headwaters of the stream, and becoming disgusted with his 

 poor luck, he had struck for camp, "cussin' the little one- 

 hoss crick fur a fraud." The master had just dismissed 

 school as he came by, and they had walked leisurely down 

 the road together. 



Tossing a half-burned match into the water after firing up 

 the briar root, he remarked, with a grave wink at the mas- 

 ter: "That's a hellrackin' fine sucker you've got there, Hick- 

 ory—that feller with the red belly— kind of a red bass, I 

 reckon. Te didn't ketch him in that little branch, did ye?" 

 When told where the pair had been taken and that they 

 were left tied in the stream a few feet from where he said 

 he had quit fishing it, his face was a study. "How I wish 

 I'd a kep' on a leetle furder to where them trout was tied," 

 and then he humped himself and laughed till his pipe went 

 out, and the master and I joined in from sheer inability to 



served for an angler friend at home; the peeled frame, with 

 the smaller one, went to the frying pan to furnish a taste 

 around for the girls at supper, while the others of the Jones 

 familylooked on with watering mouths, busy, however, in 

 satisfying the cravings of a camp appetite with fried slabs 

 from the side of a pickerel, side meat, eggs and other deli- 

 cacies usually found in a well regulated camp. 



Kingfisher, 



Cincinnati, Ohio. 



BLACK BASS RIG. 



HOW do we fish for bass?" That depends. 

 In the waters accessible, to Toledo we get three dis- 

 tinct kinds of black bass fishing, and the rig employed is 

 arran ge d accordingly. 



First— We have three streams, one of them of rapid cur- 

 rent, which is fished either from the shore or by wading. 

 Here we use a light rod and small sinker, generally but one 

 hook, and seldom any leader. These waters are scarcely 

 ever entirely clear, and leaders are superfluous. 



Second — The fishing in the channels on the St. Clair Flats 

 in August, September and October. Here the water is very 

 clear (too clear at times), with a depth of from eight to six- 

 teen feet, and a current of three to four miles per hour. The 

 rod used here is stiffer, but with spring enough to cast a 

 single minnow and an ounce sinker twenty-five to forty 

 yards from a multiplying reel. The line is the finest size of 

 sea grass or braided silk, and a leader almost indispensable. 

 The two hooks used are No. 1 or 1-0 sproat or sneck— the 

 latter has come into use a great deal in the last two years, 

 mainly because it is regarded as the easiest shape for the 

 mouth of a live minnow. 



Lastly, comes the fishing on the reefs in the open waters of 

 Lake Erie (May, September, October and November), where 

 the work is done over a rocky bottom from six to twenty- 

 five feet under the boat of the fisher, and, as a rule, most 

 successfully in a good strong swell. The rod for this lake 

 fishing must have backbone enough to carry a two-ounce 

 sinker all day, without weakening or sagging," with a No. 3 

 or 4 braided linen line, no leader, and two to three hooks 

 twice as large as are used on the flats. Any good multiply- 

 ing reel finishes the rig, but it ought to be large enough to 

 hold a hundred yards of line, although fifty yards are an 

 abundance to have on the spool. [Pardon me for saying 

 here that the man who makes an easy running quadruplex 

 multiplier, with simply and solely an adjustable click, will 

 meet the wants of some of the practical bass fishers in western 

 waters. A drag is a superfluity, a "stop" is an abomination, 

 and any long-handled contrivance for clogging the swift and 

 simple working of a wheel is little better.] 



We use two to three hooks in the lake because when the 

 fish are biting freely, double catches are common and triple 

 ones not infrequent. On the flats we fish with boat at anchor, 

 in clear, quiet running water, with the bait playiDg over a 

 smooth, sandy bottom, and from twenty-five to fifty yards 

 away. But on the open lake you are constantly drifting 

 over a rough and varying bottom, quartering back and forth 

 over countless acres (like a hunting dog) with your boat con- 

 stantly pitching in the swell. It takes strong, well made 

 tackle here, and when you strike a school of fish the fun is 

 fast and furious, and every second is worth a dollar. Bad 

 luck comes like an avalanche on the man who has a weak 

 spot in his tackle at this critical moment. Jay Bebe. 

 Toledo, O., April 17. 



keep from it, as Ben told how he would have worked off 

 another joke on "old Hickory" by stealing the trout and 

 "hiein' " back to camp, and claiming that he had caught 

 them himself. 



"But ye kin bet yer life," as he hunted a dry place on his 

 breeches and scraped another match, "that when I saw ye 

 a com in' I'd a hied off somewheres an' hid till ye got over 

 yer mad, fur it would hev bin a mighty onhealthy place to 

 be a lingerin' around,"' and then he chuckled again in an ab- 

 sent-minded sort of way till the burning match, which he 

 had forgotten to apply to the pipe, nipped his fingers, caus- 

 ing him to drop it with surprising celerity. 



"That reminds me," as he stooped and dipped the scorched 

 finger in the water to cool it, "that I didn't light my pipe at 

 jest the right time. " 



Rare and incomparable old Beu! may he live many years 

 yet to "hev his fun," even at the expense of old Hickory. 



With a wistful look at the trout, a look that 1 fancied 

 would read if put in print, "now there goes a fool for luck," 

 and a pleasant good day to u?. the master struck off in the 

 brush on his way home somewhere back iu the woods and 

 shortly after Ben and I stole quietly into camp and laid the 

 fruits of our wet tramp on the table before any of the happy 

 family were aware of our presence. 1 



Then we called them out to see "the biggest trout taken in 

 that neighborhood that season," so the master had said, and 

 Ben was soon tangled up in a graphic and side-splitting 

 description of his experience in "swamp fishin'" near the 

 mouth of the little branch, winding up with a solemn wink 

 at Kit and the query, asked with a most innocent and matter- 

 of-fact expression, "How much, James Mackerel, did you 

 say you paid that country boy for them two trout?" (I have 

 been at some pains since that day trying to convince little 

 Miss Top that I actually caught those two trout myself, but 



FLORIDA GAME AND FISH. 



Editor Forest and Stream: 



I left for Florida last October weighing about 126 pounds, 

 with little or no appetite, a severe cough, night sweats, etc. 

 After spending a month or more in different places without 

 much benefit to my health, and with very little hunting and 

 fishing, I wound up at Capt. J. F. Tucker's, about seven 

 miles northwest of Brooksville and a few hours' drive of the 

 Homasassa River. Here is the best fishing I have ever had 

 the pleasure to indulge in. I had a couple of 11-ounce 

 rods and an automatic reel with 135 feet of line, and I do not 

 recollect of having to wait over ten seconds at any time for 

 a strike. Never have I seen such fishing. Two gentlemen, 

 neighbors of Capt. Tucker, in one hour caught more fish 

 with hooks and line than they could carry home. Our fish- 

 ing grounds were where the salt and fresh waters meet, and 

 this was the best place to study the habits of the different 

 species of fish that I have ever seen. The water is as clear 

 as crystal and you can see your bait distinctly at a distance 

 of 20 feet in 10 feet of water. The fish are so numerous 

 that they do not appear to notice you, and if they should 

 their fright is soon over. Our catch consisted of blaek bass, 

 red snapper, sheepshead, channel bass, sea trout and whiting. 

 We found the sheepshead of the gulf coast to be hard fighters, 

 and enjoyed catching them more than any other. A 5 pound 

 sheepshead in these waters will fight as long and hard as an 

 8-pound black bass. They bite so rapidly that you soon tire 

 of catching them. 



On our way to the river I have seen as many as twelve 

 deer at one sight. This was on the Sand Hills pine growth 

 where they can be seen at a long distance. 



Captain T.'s residence was on the border of the famous 

 Aunuttaliga Hammock, a large portion of which he owns. 

 It is very productive and is covered with a heavy growth of 

 oak and hickory, and it abounds with deer, wild turkeys, 

 ducks, squirrels, wild hogs, and a few panthers and black 

 b; ars. We killed quite a number of wild turkeys, deer 

 ducks, and hundreds of squirrels. Willie T. killed two fine 

 deer in one morning— one weighing 180 pounds minus the 

 entrails. I shall not go into details as to my deer shooting, 

 for I disgraced myself by my numerous misses. Willie t! 

 offered to accompany ils in the hammock with a well-loaded 

 shotgun, to prevent, as he expressed it, my being hurt by 

 those horned animals. I had killed a number of deer, and 

 certainly did not have the "buck fever," though I made no 

 defense on that line, for circumstantial evidence was against 

 me. I carried my setter Duke with me and had all the quail 

 shooting I cared for. When I left Captain T.'s for home I 

 weighed 146 pounds, had a splendid appetite and little or no 

 cough. 1 expect to make the same trip again the first oppor- 

 tunity. Sheepshead. 

 Macon, Ga , April 14. 



The First Salmok.— Ottawa, Cm.— Editor Forest and 

 Stream: First salmon taken on La Have River, Lunenburg 

 county, Nova Scotia, with fly. was March 18. Several 

 have been taken since. Early for fly-fishing. — F. H. D V 



