Forest and Stream 
Vol. LXXXII. 
June 6, 1914 
No. 23 
JUN 
Real Bass Fishing Near Boston 
Wherein are Shared With the Great Fraternity of Good Fellows Some Remarkable racism 
Sport to be had Close to a Big City 
S&soman 
V 
I 1914 1 
T HE best sportsman that I have ever 
known!" What an honor roll that 
conjures up in the mind of every 
thoughtful lover of the wild places! What 
strange contrasts of breed and birth and brain 
it brings into one great fellowship. How strange 
a thing is thought, since, as we sit here in a 
little den in the suburbs of a great city, we 
reach out over the leagues that separate these 
men we have learned to respect and love, and 
gather them to us again in that silent communion 
known to every sharer of the camp fire. 
Startling, indeed, are the contrasts. There 
comes up in the memory of this man who is 
writing the exquisite incident on board a little 
steamer in the St. Lawrence, when a much-writ- 
ten-about millionaire learned through a chance 
conversation that one of the travelers was en 
route to a noted fishing place from which the 
millionaire had just returned; that the new¬ 
comer had utterly unsuitable tackle for the 
sport: disappearance of the millionaire for a 
moment and his return to the deck loaded down 
with the correct rods and reels and flies and 
leaders which he insisted the total stranger 
should borrow. “Just leave them in my office 
as you pass though New York on your way 
home. Here’s my card. Good luck to you!’’ 
he said. Over against that put the strange, si¬ 
lent, bronze men of the far north, who have 
shared your innermost life for months; what 
innate gentlemen many of them were, what fine 
spirit they showed toward the creatures of the 
woods and the waters, what unfailing courage 
and faithfulness, what unfeigned regret as they 
waved adieu at the little station! Here’s a toast 
to them all! 
I think the best sportsman I have ever known 
is a Boston printer. We are prone to think that 
the best sportsmen are those who have the larg¬ 
est number of guns or fishing rods or who have 
made the longest or hardest trips. We are a 
nation of folks who think in terms of size first 
and always. But when we reflect upon the rich¬ 
ness of a life which is complete rather than dif¬ 
fuse, thorough rather than superficial, and satis¬ 
fied to find the beauty which is close at hand 
rather than pine for the unattainable in the en¬ 
chanted distance, then we begin to find ourselves 
•n tune with some of the grandest characters 
By James A. Cruikshank. 
of history. Nowadays it is almost rare to come 
upon any man who has even begun to know, 
much less to appreciate, the splendid privileges 
of nature study and sport with the wild crea¬ 
tures which his own immediate environment 
affords. The Californians come east for moose 
and the easterners go west for tuna; and gen¬ 
erally it is found that they who travel farthest 
are least familiar with the sport close at home. 
The ideal sportsman, then, knows and loves his 
own locality. He is a gentleman in his attitude 
toward the size of the bag. He is kind to his 
dog, and treats the creatures which he takes in 
of little rivers winding through meadows to the 
sea, no sharp bark of fox at night or flash of 
pheasant through the brush, this place to which 
we journey would be worth the trip even if one 
had to do it on foot. And by the way, that is 
the finest of all methods, for every inch of it 
is redolent of the days when our pioneering an¬ 
cestors founded this nation, when brave men de¬ 
fended their right to liberty, when great think¬ 
ers launched great ideas, in prose and verse, and 
rocked a great republic in its cradle. 
Take the trolley from Boston to Arlington 
Heights. There take a trolley which runs 
Concord River Big Mouth Bass—Some Catch. 
sport humanely. He is a real student of the 
things of nature, however insignificant they may 
be. He does not require a crowd. He is civil 
to the girls. His friendship will stand the test 
of sharing even the choicest thing he owns— 
which is his pet fishing ground. Therefore, you 
fraternity of fine fellows who read this little 
yarn, believe me that in telling you these facts 
you are debtor to my friend, “Brandy,” which 
is abbreviation of his name and contradiction of 
his beverages, for he uses it not. 
As becomes a Boston story, this one is sat¬ 
urated with historic flavor and literary interest. 
There are few places on this continent where a 
man may cast his lure or float his canoe in such 
sacred territory. Were there no sport, no charm 
through Lexington to Concord. “Concord ?” you 
ask. “The place of the Minute Man, and the 
Old Manse and Emerson and Hawthorne and 
Thoreau?” Precisely. And, to-day, the same 
little river which flows close by the Minute 
Man monument and under the Old North bridge 
and laves the shore of the Old Manse backyard, 
is one of the finest bass fishing places on this 
North American continent. I know, for I have 
fished them all. from Belgrade to Upper Michi¬ 
gan and from the Highlands of Ontario to the 
sloughs of the Everglades. 
Of course, you can take the train right from 
Boston to the river. But the trolley ride is so 
interesting and so full of historic reminiscence 
that it is a shame to hustle through this coun- 
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