Forest and Stream 
Terms, |3 a Year, 10 Cts. a Copy, 
Six Months, $1.50. 
Copyright, 1912, by Forest and Stream 
NEW YORK, SATURDAY, JANUARY 6 
Publishing Company. 
I VOL. LXXVIII.—No. 1. 
I No. 127 Franklin St., New York. 
Entered as second-class matter at the Post-Office, New York, N. Y. 
1912. 
BASS FISHING IN MAYNARD BAYOU. 
Oklahoma Bass Pioneering 
T he joys of pioneering are mostly retrospect. 
The performance shows mostly the shadows, 
while the high lights are developed after¬ 
ward in the telling. If mental pictures failed in 
the soft tones, Boone and Crocket could not have 
injected that large element of humor in the re¬ 
cital of their wonderful adventures. A modern 
pioeer, a fish pioneer, I might say, may get an 
impression of this truth by assiduously devoting 
himself to seeking waters where fish are rumored 
to be. Fish means bass and black perch, but 
mostly bass. I say “rumored” advisedly, which 
By PAUL H. BYRD 
reminds me, why is the word rumor of the femi¬ 
nine gender, it or “she” being referred to as a 
dame? Do not answer me; I know the facts 
in the case. With me it is axiomatic, and I do 
not want an argument. Besides, as regards the 
gender, readers of Forest and Stream are not 
discriminated against. Also besides, this copy 
will receive an unofficial, pre-editorial perusal, 
and let us avoid these short-range arguments. 
But let me cite a relevant case wherein this 
unreliable dame brought to me a report con¬ 
cerning a Cloud Creek, which is near Boynton, 
Okla. A sense of the appropriate dictated the 
name Cloud, I found later. I repeated the rumor 
to my friend Adams: Clear running stream; 
six-pound bass caught two weeks previous y. 
Arrived on the scene I realized that even Davy 
could not have found humor in the situation. 
True, there was a likely looking place for a 
creek, but the farmers, mostly Creek Indians 
and Creek negro freedmen, had displayed their 
confidence in the indefinite continuance of the 
then protracted drouth by grading in places the 
dry bed, thereby converting it into an e.xcellent 
