206 
FOREST AND STREAM 
Aug. 16, 1913. 
Black Bass Fishing at West Port 
A BOUT sixty miles from Whitehall, on Lake 
Champlain, upon a bluff shore, stands the 
village of West Port. Nestled in the palm of 
surrounding mountains with the lake outspreading 
at its feet, the quiet loveliness of its situation 
has a fertile charm for us “poor fellows’’ who 
are ahunt after “broad fields and babbling 
brooks.” Such, at least, was its effect upon the 
writer, as our party sat upon the hotel porch 
awaiting a private conveyance to take us twenty 
miles due west into the Adirondacks pure. Acci¬ 
dent had delayed the team, and the wait became 
tedious, when we heard, incidentally, that a trout 
stream was dashing down the rocks within a 
hundred yards of the hotel. In fifteen minutes 
I had jointed rod, adjusted reel, pocketed fly- 
book, postponed visit west for twenty-four 
hours, and was making lively casts right and 
left over the waters of the brook. For an hour 
without reward I patiently whipped the stream, 
until a spot was reached where it poured over 
its rocky bed into the lake. The brook at this 
point was only two or three feet deep and about 
seventeen feet wide, with a broad meadow on 
either side. Standing back upon the right bank 
By W. C. HARRIS 
(From issue cf July 23, 1874.) 
I made a cast into the center of the stream, 
allowing, from negligence due to a long want 
of success, my flies to sink below the surface. 
In an instant a heavy bite was felt, and upon 
quickly withdrawing the line from the water I 
found that the leader just below the second 
dropper was carried away. Big trout these, 
thought I! The two flies lost were a white 
miller and red hackle. Hastily adjusting a new 
leader (double gut) with single fly (white 
miller), it being nearly dusk, a cast was made 
and the response was immediate. A heavy thud, 
a surging dash, then three feet into the air, and 
to my astonishment I found in lieu of a trout 
a three-pound black bass had been hooked. An 
active play of ten minutes landed him upon the 
meadow. In about thirty minutes eight black 
bass were basketed, running from three-quarter 
to three and one-half pounds each, with a single 
fly on a light trout rod. It was glorious sport. 
Thus did I go a-fishing for trout and brought 
home black bass. 
I have been minute and dotfbtless tedious 
in description, yet the excuse lies in the fact that 
my short half hour’s bass experience on that 
summer evening has opened for this section a 
new delight—to wit: black bass fly-fishing. The 
minnow has been used here exclusively, and deep 
water fishing only followed, and the lively in¬ 
terest and thorough astonishment of the resident 
fishermen at the sight of my fine string of fish 
was only equaled by their looks of incredulity 
when informed that they were caught with said 
white miller and the rod before them. Of course 
these remarks apply exclusively to the waters 
adjacent to West Port, where a fly has never 
been used, and a brace of bass was considered 
good luck in a morning’s fishing. 
The waters abound in pickerel and perch, 
as well as black bass, and afford most excellent 
sport for the general fishermen, but it is espe¬ 
cially virgin ground to the fly-caster for black 
bass, and as such he may expect noble sport, not 
forgetting bodily comforts at a good hotel, the 
landlord of which, Mr. Nichols, will extend a 
cordial greeting and every facility to the sports¬ 
men who visit this section. 
The route to West Port from New York is via 
Albany and Saratoga to Whitehall, thence steamer 
to West Port. Time, fourteen hours; fare, $8. 
Two Weeks with the Bass and Pickerel 
At Intermediate Lake, Antrim County, Michigan 
By KINGFISHER 
D EAR D.—We went a-fishin’ up to Northern 
Michigan in July last, as agreed upon in 
May, with many regrets that you could not 
join us as expected; and I will say to you—and 
you can apply it to yourself as a scourge—that you 
missed two weeks of as glorious sport as ever 
fell to the lot of “ye honest angler.” We con¬ 
cluded not to fill your place with an unknown 
quantity, so the party contained only two of the 
old “Kingfishers,” W. (the scribe) and the 
writer. An editor friend from Hamilton, Ohio, 
Mr. B., a half-fledged “anguliar,” and a mighty 
good fellow, made up the party—not large, but 
two of us at least, chock full of love for the 
gentle art. We shipped the camp outfit ten 
days ahead to Mancelona, a station forty miles 
south of Petoskey, on the G. R. and I. R. R., 
at which point we were to take wagon for Inter¬ 
mediate Lake, our objective point. By corres¬ 
pondence, everything was arranged and ready 
(From issue of June 30, 1881.) 
for us—wagon chartered, camp boy hired and 
two boats engaged of Postmaster Cutler, of Lake 
Shore P. O. (at lower end of lake), who was 
to meet us with the boats at Bellaire, the new 
county seat of Antrim county. I left Cincinnati 
at 7:15 Thursday morning, July 15, and arrived 
at Mancelona next morning at 6:04, the other 
two having left the night before, in order to 
see the upper end of the road by daylight, and 
have things ready for an early start on my 
arrival. We left the station shortly after 7 a. m., 
the scribe and editor in the hack, while the camp 
boy and I went with the baggage on, or rather 
with, another wagon. That hack is a delusion 
and a snare for the unwary. It was simply an 
old lumber wagon, without a cover, with two 
spring seats hung on to the bed, and was drawn 
by a pair of ponies a size and a half larger than 
jack rabbits. It is a mail hack, and if the mail 
pouch happens to contain two letters more than 
usual, the passengers have to walk and help to 
push up the sand hills. It makes two trips a 
week to Bellaire, and up the country as far as 
Central Lake P. O. at the head of Intermediate 
Lake. It leaves Mancelona on Tuesday and 
Friday. 
The road to Bellaire, as a wagon road, is 
frightfully jolty, full of roots, and highly un¬ 
satisfactory as a highway generally, but we 
found the walking to be fair to middlin’, and 
several little cold streams on the way furnished 
as much comfort on that hot July day. After 
being on the railroad a day and night, I was 
well fagged out and needed rest; so I rode on 
the wagon all the way down except about twelve 
miles. Bellaire is twelve and a half miles from 
Mancelona; no great effort to figure up the dis¬ 
tance walked, and walking on an average July 
day is not strictly a pastime for a person whose 
waist-band measures in the near vicinity of fifty 
