754 
try at top speed. The joy of travel is in in¬ 
verse ratio to its speed, said Ruskin. He must 
have been thinking of the fifteen miles between 
Boston and the Concord. Every half mile you 
will see fine monuments telling the story of 
great episodes in our early life. Along this road 
over which your trolley car is speeding rode 
Paul Revere on the night when he warned 
“every Middlesex village and farm.” At Lex¬ 
ington you will glance at the big granite boul¬ 
der hacked with that stirring command of Cap¬ 
tain Parker’s, “Stand your ground. Don’t fire 
unless fired upon; but if they mean to have a 
war let it begin here.” Houses all about the 
village green are relics of the days of the fight 
which followed. 
Away off to the northeast you have glimpsed 
from the cars the winding stream of the Con¬ 
cord river. At a lane on the right, there is a 
big white sign telling of Rand’s fine boathouse, 
half a mile away through the fragrant fields, 
where boats may be rented and, occasionally, 
bait can be had. Here, in an emergency, this 
clever sportsman believer in the future of the 
locality will even put you up overnight, in a 
comfortable New England sort of way, which 
in no wise warrants the apologies he offers. 
If you really want to explore the river and get 
a fair impression of the best reaches of it, this 
is an excellent place to start. Here the stream 
is sometimes a hundred feet wide, and gives 
the impression of a real river, which is hard¬ 
ly the case on the upper reaches of the same 
stream, above the confluence of the Assabet and 
the Concord. 
Perchance you have stayed in the car with 
the view to becoming acquainted with the truly 
wonderful little town of Concord. You have 
been wise if you have done this, although you 
will be delayed in your fishing, since there are 
no boats to be rented in the heart of the town 
or along the banks of the river as it passes 
through the center of the town proper. But 
you will pay yourself the compliment of spend¬ 
ing a few hours in the inspection of the fas¬ 
cinating historical, literary and scenic places in 
this rare little community. 
The village green, in the center of which your 
car has set you, is surrounded by places of in¬ 
terest. The most remarkable is Wright’s Tav¬ 
ern, where Major Pitcairn, stirring his toddv 
with his finger, remarked that “he would stir 
the blood of the Yankees before nightfall.” The 
fine old relic is in superb state of preservation 
and is still maintained as a tavern of excellent 
repute; here, if one feels historically inclined, 
one may even sleep in the very rooms occupied 
by the invading officers. There is another good 
hotel across the green. Close by is the famous 
Sleepy Hollow burying ground, where repose 
Emerson, Thoreau and Hawthorne. 
Five minutes’ walk from the old green brings 
the sportsman-traveler to the street which leads 
down to the Old North bridge, across which is 
seen the Minute Man monument, and nearer, 
the monument and the graves marking the spot 
where fell the first British soldiers. Under this 
new concrete bridge, which has replaced the 
rustic one restored from time to time, flows the 
slow-moving Concord River. Under this bridge 
I have taken many a fine black bass! And some¬ 
times to the amazement of the crowds of vis¬ 
itors who line this bridge every pleasant summer 
FOREST AND STREAM 
day, for Concord is one of the most popular 
historical meccas in all these United States. 
To get a boat, one must follow the trolley 
tracks leading toward Maynard until they come 
to the river, a distance of about half a mile. 
Here a new boat-house with a splendid supply 
of boats and canoes now meets a need which 
had existed in this locality for years. Very 
many of the visitors who come to Concord wish 
to make excursions on the river; in fact, only 
in that manner can the real spirit of the place 
be felt. And the anglers have long wanted some 
public supply of boats, for not all of them are 
sufficiently regular in their visitation of the place 
to care to own membership in any of the local 
canoe clubs along the stream. 
There is twenty miles of black bass fishing, 
up and down stream fom Concord, which would 
satisfy the most exacting angler. The bass are 
all of the large-mouth variety, and they have not 
yet heard that any considerable number of an¬ 
glers say that they are inferior to their small- 
mouth cousins in fighting quality. This is fight¬ 
ing territory, it must be remembered, and it 
may be there is some sort of fighting microbe 
in the very soil or the water or the air. Certain 
it is there are no gamier bass to be taken any¬ 
where in the Eastern States. This is the testi¬ 
mony of some of my sportsmen friends who 
have taken them there, and who have been un¬ 
able to distinguish any difference between the 
fighting quality of these fish and the small- 
mouth bass taken elsewhere. 
On any stream or any water which is fre¬ 
quented by many canoes and some motor boats 
it is a well-known fact that the game fish be¬ 
come harder to lure every year. This is the 
case on the Concord. But when one man can 
take as many as the law permits him to take 
without moving his canoe more than a half- 
mile, and within two hours, he has found very 
remarkable sport near a great city. Some of 
the records which have been made in this river 
would really sound too fishy to be believed, and 
it is not worth straining one’s reputation to 
quote them. There have been several bass taken 
here in the past three years weighing over six 
pounds apiece. The record fish, so far as my 
knowledge goes, is seven pounds four ounces. 
This fish was taken up in the Wayland meadows, 
where the stream is narrow and hard to fish. 
There is but little current in the river until 
one reaches the upper waters. In fact, Thoreau, 
who was the first prophet and chronicler of the 
little stream, says in one of his books that the 
only bridge ever carried away on the Concord 
River was blown upstream by the wind! The 
bridges of to-day are far different, and are 
notable examples of grace and strength in the 
handling of stone and concrete. Practically all 
of the stream for twenty miles can be fished to 
both edges of the water by any good caster 
making his way up the middle of the river. 
Casting is the preferred and the most effective 
method of taking the bass here, although many 
good fish are taken by trolling with spoon and 
fly, or with a bit of pork rind. The presence of 
great quantities of lily pads and small brush 
along the banks of the river makes casting dif¬ 
ficult; it rewards the good caster and penalizes 
the poor one. It also renders the use of weed¬ 
less baits worth cultivating. Some of the queer¬ 
est and most odd-looking baits which have been 
offered during the past ten years have been 
carefully tried out by “Brandy” on this little 
private preserve of his, and some of them have 
been remarkably successful in taking fish as well 
as in avoiding weeds. 
The stream is comparatively shallow, and in 
general less than ten feet deep. In some places 
it is hardly a foot deep for a mile or so. When 
it is clear, which it usually is, and the bass are 
nesting, there is no better place I have ever 
visited where their curious habits may so plain¬ 
ly be observed. The jealousy with which the 
male guards the nest, even dashing out to at¬ 
tack small sticks which are sent floating down 
to test his feelings, is a study in family defense. 
The wonderful manner in which even large 
stones are removed, by both male and female, 
so that a nest may be shaped, is a unique fea¬ 
ture of this fish’s habits. 
Pickerel are very abundant in the river, and 
great numbers of yellow perch. The former 
grow to a record weight of three pounds, and 
the latter are sometimes taken to a weight of a 
pound. The average angler seen along the river 
is usually engaged in getting “a mess of fish,” 
and cares not very much what particular breed 
they be; fine summer nights there are quite a 
few Boston and nearby men who go fishing 
for bullheads on the upper reaches of the 
stream. 
There are occasional beautiful little trout 
brooks found running through the farms and 
meadows and emptying into the river. Many of 
these brooks used to be public, but of recent 
years there has been a tendency to completely 
shut off the visiting angler. But at the mouth 
of these brooks, where they debouch into the 
river, an unusually fine brook trout is taken 
every once in a while. Two-pound brook trout 
have been taken in this manner at several of 
the brooks. “They don’t grow many to a hill,” 
as “Brandy” says, and then he adds, with that 
patient view characteristic of the true angler, 
“but they’re worth waiting for.” 
It is hard fishing, is this little river. If it 
had not been it would have been empty of every¬ 
thing but water long years ago. These waters 
close to metropolitan centers have either to be 
hard to fish or practically unknown, to retain any 
considerable amount of sport through the years. 
This fine stream is both. A man must know 
his business to get good fishing here. He must 
know what sort of water game fish prefer, espe¬ 
cially large-mouth black bass in slow-moving 
current. And there are peculiarities of this 
stream which one could hardly find out for him¬ 
self except after years of patient experiment¬ 
ing. For instance, during the early season, the 
bass are in the shallow water; in mid-summer 
they are in the deep pools at the bends of the 
stream, and in the late season they are again 
taken in the shallow water. One of the most 
thrilling things I know of is the sight of a big 
four-pound bass, with his dorsal fin clear out of 
water, making a wake like a steamboat through 
lily pads and rushes, for a big flying bait which 
is about to land somewhere near him. Rarely 
have I been anywhere that such an act could 
be so clearly observed. 
The banks of the river are lined with many 
beautiful homes. Along the upper reaches of 
the river there are a number of small camps 
or cabins which formerly were rented out by the 
