788 
often reach six pounds, while the big mouth is 
said to attain the enormous weight of fourteen to 
fifteen pounds in Florida. Now can any fair- 
minded angler say it is not as much sport to 
hook, play and bring to net a fourteen-pound big 
mouth as a six-pounder? Be what may, the cal¬ 
culated energy or calories or whatever you call 
the get-up-and-kick in the fish per pound, there 
is no excuse for any man saying that the condi¬ 
tion of the water anywhere on the face of the 
earth can put more of these calories into a fish 
weighing six pounds than one weighing fourteen 
pounds. 
You say the size is no fair comparison; that 
you should take six-pound fish in both waters. 
This, I know, is the orthodox method in the 
stove-league. It isn’t my method, though, nor do 
I think it is the method of any unprejudiced an¬ 
gler. My method is to bet the limits against each 
other. It is not how small a fish he can catch 
that interests the angler; it is how large. And, 
since I gave the north the benefit of their largest 
fish, it is fair to allow the south the same handi¬ 
cap. Hook on to the south’s limit in bass with 
the same tackle with which the north’s limit has 
been held, and, whether the calories are twenty- 
five, fifty, seventy-five or one hundred per cent, 
greater in the northern fish, you are going to 
have a tussle to keep the tackle together. This 
is the voice of experience speaking, so far as it 
has gone, although I cannot say I have to date 
caught bass weighing fourteen pounds down 
south; nor can I say I caught six-pounders up 
north either, so one balances the other. 
It is true that the small mouth is not as plenti¬ 
ful down south. Further, in cold, clear water 
the small mouth develops much more horse¬ 
power per pound weight than big mouth in warm, 
sluggish water. Which gives rise to further alle¬ 
gations of the stove-league that small mouth are 
superior game fish. My view is that neither 
would be superior in the same kind of water. 
But they do not habitually dwell in same water, 
and therefore the small mouth can, to a degree, 
be rated higher. 
In the land of Johnny Reb the small mouth 
seldom ventures out of the mountainous parts 
©f the Virginias, North Carolina, South Carolina, 
Kentucky and Tennessee. But in rivers and large 
creeks of these sections it is certainly equal to 
any northern small mouth. The head-waters of 
the New River, through Virginia and West Vir¬ 
ginia, are fine small mouth water, as is also the 
same part of the James. These streams have the 
advantage for the angler of being open nearly all 
the year round, while northern streams are usu¬ 
ally “frez” in winter. 
There are not so many natural lakes, for some 
peculiar reason which nobody seems to know, in 
this part of the south. What “lakes” you do 
find are mostly artificial, mill ponds, and, lately, 
reservoirs of power plants. There are many 
such springing up all through the south. One 
huge lake recently constructed in Alabama is said 
to be one of the largest power projects in the 
east. The Alabama Power Company built it, 
and over 200,000 yards of concrete are said to 
have been used in the dam. 
But in all these ponds and lakes, whether nat¬ 
ural or man-made, small mouth is seldom found. 
Indeed, my experience has been that the small 
mouth is nowhere widely distributed in lakes, pre¬ 
ferring the “cold, clear waters” of streams. Big 
FOREST AND STREAM 
mouth is thoroughly at home in all these lakes 
and ponds, and his larger size makes him fully 
equal, as a game fish, to his northern brethren. 
In the south bass fishing methods are not the 
same as those followed up north. Nor is there 
much protection given to the fish by law. This 
may have been a justifiable condition years ago, 
as all fish were then extremely plentiful. But 
now, as with game, the south’s vast natural re¬ 
source of fish is rapidly being destroyed. One 
method of killing these fish is especially pernic¬ 
ious. Bass do not bite a hook much during 
spawning time. At this season they make nests 
in suitable places along shore. They select a 
gravelly bank, then deftly, and with what must 
be infinite patience, hollow out a dish-like excava¬ 
tion in the bottom. They do this by slowly swim¬ 
ming around and around in a narrow circle, and 
washing the gravel and sand out of the hole by 
the current thus created. At times they root 
up a little with their noses, if a hard bunch of 
gravel or some other obstruction is encountered. 
Having made their nest (they call them “play- 
holes’ down south), the bass like to lie in them, 
motionless but for a gentle play of fins and an 
occasional motion of the head as some stranger 
comes near. While in this state the ingenious 
southerner who goes after the fish without re¬ 
gard to a conservation of the supply, creeps up 
along the shore with a huge blunderbus of a gun, 
and takes a pot shot at the unsuspecting fish. 
Usually the weapon used is one of the ex-military 
rifles sold by curio dealers for $2.88 and up. 
Sometimes the fish is secured; more often it is 
mortally injured, but somehow slips away to die 
unretrieved. You see, the fish shot in this way 
does not fall on land as game does. To obtain 
it the shooter must either fish it out, after kill¬ 
ing, with a long stick, or get into the water 
after it. Many do not like to get into the water, 
seemingly, and use the stick method. Unless the 
fish has been instantly killed the stick is of no 
value in stopping it from swimming off, though 
mortally wounded. Were all the fish shot se¬ 
cured by the hunter (they can hardly be called 
fishermen) it might not be so sorry a practice. 
But it’s like shooting otters in the same region— 
only a minute part of those shot are gotten. The 
rest are merely killed to feed eels. Further, the 
fish so killed are invariably very large ones, capa¬ 
ble of laying a huge number of eggs. 
Another rascally bit of ingenuity used to catch 
them in the nests is to take a little block of wood, 
or an artificial minnow of some sort well studded 
with hooks. Attach this to a strong line and 
fit a sinker on the “bait,” to sink it to the bot¬ 
tom. Then put this in the middle of the nest. 
The fish on returning to the nest will find this 
interloper there, and as is its habit, proceed to 
firmly eject it. Sometimes it may butt the ob¬ 
struction out with the nose. Usually it picks the 
thing up in the mouth and carries it out. Whence, 
if the block is plentifully equipped with hooks, one 
or more of same may get hung into the fish dur¬ 
ing the eviction. 
In the south they don’t use much artificial bait 
for bass. At times a spoon is used for pickerel, 
and now and then one of the more advanced 
sportsmen in Dixie invests in some of the new 
fangled articles which are represented as bass 
bait in the price lists of sporting goods dealers. 
Very frequently they are well pleased with their 
purchases, showing that, after all, the southern 
bass is close kin to the northern, whatever may 
be the difference in temperature of their homes. 
Indeed, I have often suspected that a good, 
lively, artificial bait did more for me than nat¬ 
ural bait in the south, for the reason that these 
waters are generally well stocked with minnows 
and small fish of all kinds, much more plenti¬ 
fully, in fact, than most northern waters. The 
fish generally are well fed. They do not, for this 
reason, occasionlly, take natural baits. However, 
the bass is an unusually pugnacious creature, and 
the glittering artificial bait sputtering around his 
lair seems to excite his animosity, and he strikes 
at it, for the same reason that a red-headed 
Irishman generally follows a crowd bent on 
“starting something.” 
Among the artificial baits I have found good 
for bass in this section are those whose mission 
is to disturb the surface. I very seldom have 
caught bass on artificial baits swimming much 
below the surface. If, however, you take the 
same bait, and either pull off the sinkers or drag 
it swiftly so it runs to the top, making a sput- 
tery noise as it progresses over the surface, the 
chances are Friend Bass will shoot out of his 
quiescence and at least strike at the bait. Some¬ 
times they do not get hooked. I believe they 
strike in this way as often with the butt of the 
snout as they do the open mouth. At any rate, I 
have seen them smash into a bait with the hard, 
bony ridge just above the mouth and between the 
eyes. Whether this was accident or design I 
have no way of knowing. They seldom hook 
when striking in this way, as a rule. This is an 
indication of being mad rather than hungry. If 
the angler adroitly fosters this tempestuous mood 
the fish will strike several times and may, in 
time, open his mouth for the purpose. 
The best hours for bass fishing are much the 
same down south as in the north. However, in 
my experience bass strike artificial bait most any 
time, whereas they bite natural bait only when 
feeding—from dawn till nine or ten A. M., and 
from two or three to dark. Yet only an angler 
knows how fickle fish appetites may be, and how 
foolish to attempt the expression of “rules” for 
fishing. As to kinds of natural bait I should say 
the frog is mighty good for the big ones, though 
of no account for the small bass—say under two 
pounds. For such the best natural bait is the 
small minnow, of the genus “silver-fin.” It is 
a bright silvery color, and very active in the 
water. Any of the bass tribe, from sunfish to 
black, take it as readily as any bait I know. On 
the other hand, this minnow is almost wholly a 
resident of small creeks, and prefers the swifter, 
colder ones of those. It can best be caught with 
a seine. One man can very easily handle such a 
tool by staking one end to the shore and swing¬ 
ing the other end out through the hole which the 
minnows are supposed to inhabit. In swift water 
let the haul be made with the current. Two men 
generally make better headway hauling a minnow 
seine, however. 
For the larger bass, ordinary white chub, fall 
fish, sand rollers, horny-heads, or even suckers 
make good bait. More efficient still, in the south, 
is a small sunfish, or maybe yellow perch. Such 
baits should be nicely adjusted to the size of bass 
sought, as they are broad for the length. Unless 
the bass can get the bait into his mouth easily 
the chances are against hooking. 
Another method of catching bass which is now 
