414 
FOREST AND 
STREAM 
August, 1919 
HOW I FOOLED THE BIG BASS 
To the Editor of Forest and Stream: 
W HEN I was about nine years old I 
lived in a small village in Con- 
necticut. There was a small stream 
which flowed through that section, a 
branch of the Connecticut river. In the 
spring of the year small fish would run 
up to spawn and many would stay there, 
so it w'as well stocked. 
We caught pickerel, yellow perch, sun 
fish, bullheads, and dace, as we used to 
call them, and occasionally a small- 
mouthed black bass, but up to the time 
of this narrative it hadn’t been my good 
luck to land one. If any one wanted to 
find me after school hours or Saturdays 
and should stop at the house for me, they 
would be told that I was off down the 
river. 
It was quite a usual thing for our local 
fishermen, including my uncle or cousins, 
to be waiting after school for me to go 
fishing with them, for they knew I was 
familiar with the best places and if they 
took me along they would be more likely 
to have fish for breakfast. 
Now it so happened that I called at 
my uncle’s house to see if he would go 
one day and I was told that he and my 
cousin were down the river, and had 
their poles with them. My feelings were 
hurt because they hadn’t stopped for me. 
1 met them when they came back and 
saw that they had no fish. I thought 
that W’as very funny but I didn’t ask 
them why. 
A few days later I saw them going 
down through the lots with their poles 
and, boy-like, I began to get inquisitive 
and wanted to know where they were go- 
ing and what they were after, so I fol- 
lowed them. They stopped at a bend 
in the river where the current had 
washed the bank away under a large 
elm tree, and the water was very deep 
and very clear. That was one of my 
favorite places to fish. I noticed they 
had on a different bait than I had ever 
seen before. It looked like feathers and 
they threw it in by standing away back 
from the water. 'They cast a few times 
and then w’ent home. Now they had me 
guessing. I thought to myself: What 
are they after? So I crawled on my 
hands and knees, without making much 
n^ise, and laid flat on my stomach where 
I could get a good view down into that 
deep place and watched. Finally the 
thought came to me: There must be a 
bass in there. I remembered one time 
I had fished there that something had 
taken my hooks off and had broken my 
line several times. I thought it had been 
an eel but now I had it all figured out 
it must have been a bass. My uncle 
wanted to catch him and then to tell 
me 1 didn’t know how to fish. After I 
had been there watching for a long time 
I thought I might coax the bass out, if 
there was one there, so I began throw- 
ing worms in up stream, thinking they 
would float down and he might go out 
for one, but the other fish got them and 
finally two little sunfish got hold of the 
same worm and as they were tugging 
to get it away from each other, there 
was a streak and I saw the largest bass 
that I had ever seen before go back un- 
der the bank. He must have taken the 
little fish and the worm with him, for I 
couldn’t see them anywhere, but I 
thought the bass knew. I tried to catch 
him with good, lively nightwalkers but 
he was too foxy, but I made up my mind 
I would get him somehow. 
Well, I had found out why my uncle 
hadn’t asked me to go; they didn’t want 
me to know the bass was there. That 
night my uncle came in and I said : 
“Uncle Hen, I saw a big bass today 
down the river and I am going to catch 
him.” He began to laugh and said he 
didn’t think I would and he named over 
about a dozen men who had been trying 
for two years to get him, but he was 
still there. Every few days I would try 
some new scheme and every time any 
of the men who went fishing saw me they 
would say: “I heard you were going 
to catch a big bass that is down the 
river.” I told them that I would fool 
them yet. 
One Saturday morning as I was start- 
ing from the house with my pole, two 
men came along all dressed up with 
corduroy clothes and caps. They had 
beautiful rods with reels on them, a 
basket on their backs and each had a 
little net. I had never seen any fish- 
ermen quite so sporty before. They 
called me and said they heard there were 
black bass in the river and if I would 
show them where the best places were 
they would pay me. I thought I would 
go with them for I might learn some 
new trick, but I thought to myself that 
they might find the big bass, so I took 
them in the other direction. 
Well, they still-fished and cast and 
used many kinds of bait and finally sat 
down to eat their lunch. After they 
had finished they showed me their fancy 
baits and told me that most of them came 
from England. They certainly inter- 
ested me especially the gut leaders and 
hooks with gut on them; something I 
had never seen before. Then they 
showed me some live bugs which they 
called dobson and told me they were 
fine bass bait and that I could find them 
in most of the brooks by lifting up the 
stones in the water. They fished until 
almost sundown without getting a fish 
and said they didn’t think there was one 
in the river and gave it up. When they 
took their rods apart they gave me the 
leaders and hooks they had been using 
and then offered to pay me for my 
trouble. I wouldn’t take their money; 
the leaders and hooks paid me. I think 
I was the happiest boy in Connecticut, to 
have that tackle. 
I didn’t say anything at home about 
what they had given me, nor did I sleep 
much that night. When I did I dreamed 
about tackle, nor did I want much break- 
fast in the morning. I was in a hurry 
to get to the river. As I was starting 
to go my uncle and cousin came along 
and said; “I suppose you are going to 
catch that big bass today?” I told them 
I would bring him back with me when I 
came. When I got almost down to where 
the deep place was, I waded down close 
to shore so the bass wouldn’t hear me 
coming. After I had put on my new 
leader and fine hook I took out a dobson 
or hellgramite, as most fishermen call 
them. The hellgramite had hold of a 
big nightwalker and the worm was 
squirming for dear life to get loose. 
Now the idea came to me that if I put 
them both on the hook it would make a 
good, lively bait. I laid the bait on a 
big leaf from an oak tree and let it float 
down towards the deep pool, but it didn’t 
get far, for out of the water went that 
big bass and at the same time I swung 
my pole around with all my might and 
when he landed he was back in the 
bushes. 
That is how I fooled the big bass. We 
weighed him when I got home, on the 
Stilliard scales, and he weighed three 
and a half pounds. 
There was quite a little talk about my 
exploit and some envy, but they said I 
outwitted them and they always called 
me captain after that. 
H. A. Driscole, New York. 
Some of our readers may have recog- 
nized in the author of the above letter 
the artist whose paintings of fish have 
been reproduced from time to time on 
the covers of Forest and Stream. His 
letter is a very good description of the 
New England country boy. It is inter- 
esting to learn that Mr. Driscole started 
his observations of fish at an early age 
and the ingenious manner in which he 
brought about the bass’s undoing shows 
that he had given thought to the habits 
of the fish he sought to capture. We 
might add that some grenon-up anglers 
wo^dd do well to emulate this. — [Editors.) 
