49 8 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
[March 30, 1907. 
Severe Straits. 
’Neath the sunken rock by the waterside 
The old black bass and his children hide. 
Just as the day fades into night 
An angler throws a tinsel fly. 
The cast is true, the drop is light, 
A young bass lifts a hungry eye. 
But the hook-scarred veteran bars the way, 
With a wave of his tail, “Back, quick, I say! 
You’ll see if you look 
There’s quite a sharp hook; 
Swim free of the fly that is hatched in a book.” 
“ ’Tis a knowing hand at the rod up there; 
Lie low and mock at his gaudy snare.” 
A Seth-Green next the angler tried; 
A Henshall with a peacock tail; 
Lure after lure he deftly tied, 
And cast and cast without avail. 
Those bubbles that break betoken no rise; 
A bass laughs below with tears in his eyes: 
“My friend out of sight, 
You throw them all right, 
But we’re not dining out, we thank you, to-night.” 
’Neath the sunken rock, bass little and big, 
On their tails are joyously dancing a jig. 
“And now we’ll eat,” the old bass cries, 
“See what draws near with tempting squirms. 
This is indeed a glad surprise.” 
He bolts a bunch of juicy worms. 
While orphaned bass are mourning for their sire, , 
An angler takes a drink and builds a fire. 
“Though some may claim 
It’s not in the game, 
There’s no flies on the taste of this bass, just the same.” 
Norman Jefferies. 
A Morning with the Casting Rod. 
Day—S aturday. 
Month—July. 
Time-—6:30 A. M. 
Location—A little lake nestled like a jewel 
among the wood-covered hills of Oakland 
county, Michigan. 
My. friend and I were bent on finding out 
whether a certain party of the previous week 
had left any bass in the lake and to bring home 
a few if possible, via the bait-casting route. 
When you go bait-casting get a friend like A. 
to go with you, one who can row and likes 
to; one whose unbounded good nature is not 
ruffled by such little things as being asked to 
row backward every time you have the mis¬ 
fortune to catch your hooks in some strong 
rush and who even refuses to get mad when 
you plant the three sets of trebles of your bait 
in the small of his back. 
Well, we were off, and I proceeded to rig up 
the tackle, a little five-foot double-gripped lance- 
wood casting rod, equipped with a sixty-yard 
multiplier loaded with medium raw silk casting 
line. As for bait, it was all in the tackle box, 
all artificial, as I use no other in this kind of 
fishing. 
As soon as we were clear of the bushes that 
fringed the shore I made the first cast over 
toward a bunch of lilypads that grow at the 
edge of deep water. 
Oh, the possibilities of each cast! What will 
it bring? The bait may fall near an old grand¬ 
father big-mouth lying in the shadow of some 
weeds. If he decides to take it and makes up 
his mind at once, a trout leaping for a fly is no 
quicker than he; in fact, he seems to be waiting 
at the exact spot at which the bait falls. If, on 
the other hand, it is seen by the watchful eye 
of that fresh-water tiger, the pike, he will fol¬ 
low it ten or fifteen feet before he strikes and 
then you will have a good fight, a fairly good 
fish, and a pair of sore thumbs, received from 
taking the bait from between the teeth that 
line his jaws. 
The first cast proved a blank, but that was 
nothing. If one gets one fish in thirty casts, he 
is lucky, and beside he has the fun of casting, 
which is no small part of the enjoyment of this 
kind of fishing. The next one was more lucky, 
and as the bait settled near a certain leaf at 
which I aimed, there was a big swirl and I 
felt that peculiar sensation that told me he was 
on. Into the weeds he started, but as I had de¬ 
cided otherwise, he made for the boat with all 
speed. Suddenly he saw us, and the fight was 
on in earnest. Up and down he raged, under 
the boat, then straight away. Slowly I reeled 
him in, and fighting for each inch of line, he 
at last came up to the boat on his side, thor¬ 
oughly exhausted. A noble warrior, but con¬ 
quered. A. slipped the landing net under him 
and it was all over. 
It is A.’s turn now, so I took the oars, and 
it was not long before he had a fight on his 
hands similar to mine. His fish, however, got 
to the weeds and there was nothing to do but 
try again. We always keep to the shallow water 
and cast toward the shore. I have repeatedly 
caught bass and good ones in less than three 
feet of water, and they were not on the spawn¬ 
ing beds, either. I always make it a point to 
aim at something and cast as near to the 
mark as possible and find that the medium 
length casts, that place the bait just where I 
want it, are far more productive of fish than the 
haphazard variety that send the bait half-way 
across the lake. \ 
Bait-casting is easy. All any one needs is 
practice and to follow the rules. First learn 
to thumb the reel correctly, then to spool it 
evenly in recovering. After these rules are 
mastered almost any kind of a motion will 
send the bait as far as is necessary in ordinary 
fishing. The third rule is to always give the rod 
a slight upward twitch at the moment the bait 
hits the water. This has the effect of straighten¬ 
ing the line and starting the bait toward you, 
and gives you a second in which to start reeling 
before the bait settles and becomes entangled 
in the weeds. In this way one can fish in 
water that would otherwise be impossible, on 
account of the weeds coming so near the 
surface. 
The great mistake by beginners is in using 
too much force. I have noticed a novice, after 
a mighty preliminary swing, send the bait glid¬ 
ing over the water for at least ten feet, look at 
the reel, and solemnly inform me that the reel 
works too easy. It is surprising how free the 
poorest and cheapest reel will run when you 
forget to thumb it. 
On we went, following the irregularities of 
the shore line, sometimes creeping up into little 
coves, where later in the season the water was 
covered with fragrant white lilies, sometimes 
coasting along a sandy beach, where we stopped 
to have a swim and often gliding over shallows, 
where the close lying bottom weeds give the 
appearance of a soft velvet carpet. Along to¬ 
ward noon A. discovered that he was hungry. 
We pulled for the shore, and under an old 
thorn apple tree, tackled a certain basket that 
had lain unremembered under the boat seat all 
morning. 
Dinner done and no dishes to wash, we lay 
back for a while to watch the fleecy white clouds 
drifting lazily across the blue sky. Gradually 
the rustling of the leaves overhead and the soft 
wash of the waves against the . bank induced 
drowsiness and we fell into a sleep to dream of 
a big bass with a mouth as big as our dinner 
basket. Fred C. Leggett. 
Bass and Wooden Minnows. 
Hot Springs, Ark., March 12.— Editor Forest 
and Stream: I went to camp last Saturday and 
stayed four days. Spring has started very early 
this year, but the fish are not yet very wide 
awake so we did not get many, and those we 
did catch were unable to put up much of a fight. 
But if this warm weather continues I expect the 
fishing to improve rapidly. I am going back 
to camp in a day or two and will take my canoe 
along this time. 
I enjoyed “In the Angler’s Workroom.” It 
contains many hints that I value and much that 
is news to me. The remarks on the wooden 
minnow were delightful. Those nine and fifteen- 
hook outfits are little short of infernal machines. 
And what a fine mess they make when they get 
tangled in a landing net. And it would seem 
that their glass eyes help them to get snagged in 
the very meanest places. I do 1 not assert that 
they can see, but I could present a lot of cir¬ 
cumstantial evidence that would arouse suspicion. 
However, the wooden minnow, with all its 
faults, has been the means of my meeting many 
a jolly old bass that should have had more sense; 
therefore I am not disposed to show it up in a 
very bad light. It is a good lure and is practi¬ 
cal enough without the army of hooks so often 
attached to it by the manufacturer. 
Frank Connelly. 
Color or Shape—Which? 
Annapolis Roy’AL, N. S., March 6.— Editor 
Forest and Stream: Upon this perennial question of 
colorists vs. formalists, recently resuscitated lay Mr. 
Gordon, we are all such struggling empiricists 
that it seems impossible to take sides without 
immodesty. I would like, however, to call at¬ 
tention to the following facts, both probably well 
known to Mr. Gordon. The first is the experi¬ 
ment of Sir Herbert Maxwell, who, amid the 
scoffing of the dry-fly purists, offered to the 
highly educated trout of an English chalk stream 
a number of flies colored plain blue and red 
instead of the natural tints, and the trout took 
them with avidity, to the dismay of the guild 
(See The Field of June 19, 1897.) 
The other fact is a chromatic one. It is that 
the color of an object changes, and changes very 
radically sometimes, when it is moved so that the 
sun’s rays strike it at a different angle or throng! 
a medium of different opaqueness. Place a small 
cube painted blue upon the table and observe the 
changes in tint as you gradually revolve it. Is 
it not possible that any given fly may look like 
many different ones in the water, according tc 
light and movement, and that this is more pos¬ 
sible with the sober-tinted flies than the brilliant 
ones? And is not shape less susceptible of 
change? Edward Breck. 
Maryland Trout. 
Baltimore, Md., March 19.— Editor Fores\ 
and Stream: Mr. Chas. F. Brooke, the Stan] 
Fish Commissioner, recently called to see Gov¬ 
ernor Warfield and stated he had for distribu-i 
tion about 600,000 brook trout. The fish were 
produced at the Druid Hill Park Hatchery. The 
little fish are strong and healthy and the Com¬ 
missioner is anxious to dispose of them. _ HO 
is readv to fill applications of those desiring 
them. Mr. Brooke says that brook trout flouriT 
best in cold streams and that Baltimore, Carroll 
and other western Maryland counties furnish the 
best waters. Mr. Brooke desires each applicant 
to state in his application the character of the 
stream for which the fish are intended. 
W. J. Reed. 
