Forest and Stream 
Six Months, $1 50. 
$3 a Year, 10 Cts. a Copy. 
NEW YORK, SATURDAY, AUGUST 30, 1913. 
VOL. LXXXI.-No. 9. 
127 Franklin St., New York. 
Two Weeks with the Bass and Pickerel 
At Intermediate Lake, Antrim County, Michigan 
A CCORDING to all best received and well- 
worn signs as honored and cherished by the 
craft, the next morning promised a fine day 
for sport. The rain had ceased falling, the clouds 
were drifting in just the right direction, and 
everything looked fresh and bright. A light 
breeze ruffled the lake, just enough to make the 
waters laugh, and we left the island, eager to 
try conclusions with anything that had fins. 
We fished over about the same water I had 
prospected the day before, the Scribe and Jim 
(the editor’s camp name) in one boat, and I in 
the smaller one alone. The Scribe had brought 
with him a new hornbeam (ironwood) eleven- 
ounce rod, and he decided this would be a good 
day to test its temper and capabilities. During 
the forenoon he took with it a 5)/;-pound small¬ 
mouthed bass, the largest one he had ever taken 
in a twenty-five years’ experience as a bass fisher, 
and as a consequence he was the most intensely 
pleased disciple of the lamented Izaak in all 
Michigan. He just swelled up with pride and 
importance till his clothes wouldn't fit him, and 
it was positively unsafe for him to turn around 
in the little boat or try to stand up in it. Of 
course Jim had to do all the rowing, now and 
then casting a furtive glance at that bass, and 
pinching himself at intervals to see if there was 
any of him left. 
The crucial test of the rod took place, how¬ 
ever, later in the day, on a bass of perhaps a 
pound less in weight, but a vigorous, powerful 
fellow and a fish of much suddenness. He had 
played him till well in hand with about four 
yards of line out from the tip of the rod, when 
the fish took a sudden fancy to go under the 
boat. At this critical juncture the Old Nick 
got into the reel, and it refused to budge an 
inch, or any part of an inch either way. Here 
was a fix. It was all done so quickly that he 
did not have time to lead the line around the 
stern of the boat, and as he could not turn 
around, not having recovered from the effects 
of the sJ^-pounder, the situation began to grow 
serious, and the fish was all this time in plain 
sight on the opposite side of the boat, tugging 
the rod into something the shape of the letter 
U. Then, the breeze setting in my direction, I 
could make out at forty rods away that the 
Scribe was desperately in earnest and making 
vehement remarks about that reel. 
At last he shouted, “Swing her ’round to 
By KINGFISHER 
(Continued from page 232.) 
the left; quick!” Jim yanked her to the left, 
from his standpoint, which was wrong from the 
Scribe’s, as they sat facing each other, and lie 
yelled, “Great fish-hooks! Jim, to the right; to 
the right! or that infernal fish will burst the 
rod into flinders.” 
The boat was finally brought around to suit 
him, and the fish fought into submission and 
brought to the landing net, the reel still firmly 
locked. 
And then he ventured to his feet and gave a 
mighty yell that waked the echoes for two miles 
A FIVE-POUNDER. 
up and down the lake and scared into sudden 
flight a sleepy bald eagle that sat perched on the 
top branch of a dead cedar back in the swamp. 
It is not probable that a rod would be called 
on twice in five years’ fishing to stand the strain 
that this one did, and barely possible that one in 
a hundred would come out of the test as well. 
Ironwood as a material for bass rods at once 
stepped to the front. I took the cap off the reel, 
but did not discover the difficulty at the time, 
and it cut up the same shine on two or three 
other “reely” trying occasions. Afterward it 
was found that a little wedge-shaped metal click 
was too long, and would stick fast between cer¬ 
tain cogs of the smaller wheel, preventing the 
spool from turning either way. A few strokes 
of the file and the trouble ended. 
A smart rain set in late in the afternoon, 
which drove us into camp, happy and hungry, 
with two strings of bass and long faces that 
were just good for the eye to linger on. This 
catch filled our live box so full that the next 
morning two-thirds of them were dead from 
overcrowding. After this we tied the larger 
ones separately to stakes driven into the lake 
bottom thirty to forty feet from shore, in six 
or eight feet of water, but only the more hardy 
of them would live more than four or five days. 
The mortality among them we attributed, 
whether rightly or not, to the change from the 
cooler depths of the lake to the much warmer 
surface water and the confinement. However, 
we kept a bountiful supply of fresh live ones 
on hand, which were free to such of our neigh¬ 
bors as would take the trouble to come after a 
back load. One of them, living about three miles 
back from the swamps, came paddling over in 
an old boat from the mainland one day with a 
peck of new potatoes, which he wanted to “swop 
fur a mess o’ fish.” He said he would have 
brought a half bushel, “only it was so hot, and 
it was too fur to tote ’em.” New potatoes were 
just what we were longing for, and he was made 
happy with a load of fish much heavier to “tote” 
than his potatoes. 
A pair of bald eagles, which were bringing 
up a young family over in the swamp, would, 
contrary to our preconceived notions of the high- 
toned independence of the bird, frequently 
swoop down and carry off to the nest a dead 
“floater” that the wind had blown away from 
the island; so very few of our fish went to 
actual waste. And then we ate fish—boiled, 
broiled, baked, fried and roasted, until we felt 
scaly, and toward the last Jim’s face got so long 
we dubbed him “Old Pickerel.” 
That night it cleared up, and we had fine 
weather the rest of our stay, with the exception 
of a foggy morning or two and an occasional 
puff of wind that made the lake a little rough 
for comfortable fishing. 
We had agreed to devote at least one day 
to a trip to Central Lake, a village at the head 
of Intermediate, distant about seven miles from 
camp. As the next morning was bright and 
pleasant, we took the largest boat, a minnow 
bucket, half a dozen different patterns of spoons 
and trollers, a single piece Japanese cane rod 
each, and started, leaving Johnny to look after 
