June 4, 1910.] 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
899 
Bass Fishing. 
Minneapolis, Minn., May 7.— Editor Forest 
and Stream: Now that spring has come, the 
latent blood of the fisherman quickens and his 
eye rests lovingly on the rod and reel, and eager 
hands crave to grip the cork handle and once 
more whip the stream or lake where abides the 
trout and the black bass. Qf an evening, over 
his pipe, his memory turns to the past wherein 
many an hour of keen sport has been had. 
These evenings of quiet reveries are some of 
the happiest ones of his life. 
Seated, perhaps, some stormy evening by the 
fire alone, or with an old fishing partner, he 
lives again in imagination some keen, breathless 
fight with a lusty black bass. 
Bass fishing is truly great sport, for the un¬ 
certainty of what one is to capture sends the hot 
blood streaming through the veins. The black 
bass puts up a fight in the most credible style and 
will not allow himself to be brought to the net 
until he is exhausted. 
With fly, artificial minnow or live bait these 
fish may be taken successfully if the fisher will 
have the patience to bide his time. Some do not 
fancy the wooden minnow and stubbornly stick 
to live bait, believing nothing is quite equal to it. 
The wooden minnow may be used with success 
when the fish are in the humor to take bait. 
Bass will not bite at every hour during the day. 
Again, a bass will eagerly snap up a frog and 
at another time shun it and take the artificial 
minnow. It all depends upon the mood the bass 
is in at the time. I believe a bass will take a 
wooden minnow at times when he has gotten 
angry at seeing it passing back and forth. He 
will then snap it up with a swirl usually at the 
fourth or fifth cast, sometimes before. 
I have used the pork rind bait with success; 
and frogs, minnows and worms in turn. Pork 
rind bait may be purchased at the sporting goods 
stores, or if not it may be sent for at some of 
the large concerns in New York or Chicago. I 
have often cut pork rind to represent a frog 
and have found it to work as good as that which 
is bought ready made. 
Fly-fishing for bass is superior to other 
methods, yet it takes a practical man to pursue 
this branch of the pastime with any degree of 
success, for in fly-casting there is necessity of 
keen judgment and manipulation. One fish 
caught by the fly will bring more satisfaction 
than a score or more taken by aid of the frog 
or wooden minnow. The class of anglers who 
succeed in this line are close students of fish 
and their ways, and know when and where to go 
for them. 
The best bait-casting rod for bass is the split 
bamboo. There are also steel rods of many 
kinds that are excellent for bait-casting. These 
and solid wood one-piece rods find favor among 
the fishermen for the reason that they are able 
to stand hard usage and are capable of holding 
out against a large bass. 
Perhaps the most exasperating thing that ac¬ 
companies casting is the backlash caused by 
incorrect thumbing of the spool, but the novice 
will in time be able to throw a minnow carefully. 
To obviate this backlash the fisherman in cast¬ 
ing should keep his thumb lightly on the line 
when it is running out, and when the bait is 
about to fall he should press his thumb down 
gradually so as not to jerk the bait back. Some 
of the easy running reels are the most exasper¬ 
ating things going at first. 
As far as the line is concerned a braided raw 
si.k line is the best and should be. waterproof, 
but not enameled. Those prefering the non- 
waterproofed line must take the best of care of 
it or it will become frayed and will be worth¬ 
less at the end of the year. After the day’s fish¬ 
ing the water-soaked line should be dried in the 
air. By inserting the hook in a tree and walking 
away, unreeling all the wet line and holding it 
m the breeze for a few minutes, it.will become 
dry. 
Concerning the weight of the bait the weather 
conditions must be reckoned with. On a tran¬ 
quil day with but a slight wind a light bait may 
be cast most effectively. When there is a high 
wind a heavy bait is better. Bass fishers often 
make a mistake in quitting when the whitecaps 
roll shoreward. Bass are at. best uncertain 
creatures. I have landed five bass in one spot 
during a high wind. Bass generally make for 
deep water when the waves come up or seek 
sheltered nooks alongside of snags and large 
stones. 
In the early spring when the bass are in the 
shallows, a floating bait rightly manipulated will 
bring them to the creel. As the weather becomes 
warmer they move into the depths and then the 
artificial minnow and the frog are best. 
1 he season for pickerel, sunfish and perch 
opened May 1. According to the tackle dealers 
there has been a phenomenal sale this spring 
and they look forward to a good season. Trout 
fishing opened on April 15 and a number of 
anglers visited the streams of this State and 
Wisconsin with more or less luck. May 29 the 
season for black bass and wall-eyed pike opens. 
Following the summer-like weather of March 
came two heavy frosts and several snow storms. 
Carlos Avery, who retired in January as ex¬ 
ecutive agent of the fish and game commission, 
has been employed by the commission at a salary 
of $10 a day to superintendent the gathering of 
fish spawn this spring. Mr. Avery’s term ex¬ 
pired this year so the Governor retired him and 
appointed A. Rider, of Little Falls, executive 
agent. The board has a superintendent of fish¬ 
eries, R. C. Cobb, formerly with the United 
States Bureau of Fisheries. Mr. Avery is a 
competent man. During his term he attended 
to his duties in a most admirable way and 
through him much good was done. 
Arrangements have been made for the State 
drainage board to visit Lake Osakis. The lake 
is six inches below normal. Fishing is, however, 
not damaged, for there is 150 feet of water yet 
in places. The people of Osakis want the lake 
kept at its normal level. On account of a county 
ditch draining some land into the lake, an out¬ 
let ditch was dug and that has washed deeper 
and lowered the level. 
At present only a decision of the United States 
Supreme Court can settle the question as to 
whether Wisconsin fishermen must have licenses 
to fish on the Minnesota side of Lake Pepin. 
There has been much argument over this ques¬ 
tion, and it is unlikely to be settled unless the 
higher court hands in a decision. 
Robert Page Lincoln. 
All the dsh lazvs of the United States and 
Canada, revised to date and now in force, are 
given in the Game Laws in Brief. See adv. 
Concerning Fly-Books. 
Old practical fly-fishers’ notions of the ideal 
fly-book vary vastly, but they are all pretty well 
agreed that it is not the ordinary fly-book of 
commerce. One philosophical veteran put it to 
me thus from his particular point of view: 
“The fact is that the common or garden fly- 
book you purchase from the tackle dealer is 
specially designed to provide a first-rate amount 
of the wrong sort of internal accommodation. 
If you’ll give the matter a thought, you’ll see 
that the average modern fly-book and the aver¬ 
age modern dwelling-house are tarred with the 
same brush of inadequacy. Take the case of 
the house, and it will help you to a thorough 
grip on the fly-book difficulty. Domestic felic¬ 
ity hovers round the family cupboard. ‘Give us 
cupboards!’ is the bitter cry of the experienced 
householder, and the architect and builder say, 
‘Humph! Well, we don’t exactly see our way to 
giving you cupboards, but we’ll put you in a 
Queen Anne lath-and-plaster front instead, and 
you can keep your spare boots on the drawing¬ 
room mantel-piece and your firewood and best 
dinner-service in the bath.’ ( If I were wanting 
tc build the exact sort of residence that tenants 
would fight for, I’d just get a first-rate architect 
to design me a complete range of commodious 
cupboards, and then I’d build a house round 
'em. Read ‘pockets’ for ‘cupboards,’ and you 
have the case of the fly-book failing in a nut¬ 
shell. 
“The average modern fly-book is sadly short 
of pockets, and has too many fly-leaves. At 
first sight this failing appears to the novice in 
the light of a glorious opportunity, and he fills 
the pages with an artificial entomological 
museum that, if it suddenly went into the moult, 
would shed enough material to stuff a feather¬ 
bed, and ninety per cent, of the flies stocked 
will never be of the slightest practical use—ex¬ 
cept to provide their owner with the means of 
forgetting what they call them. It is not out 
of flies which anglers buy and use that fly- 
dressers make their fortunes; it is on the whole¬ 
sale feathered menageries that anglers buy and 
never use that they scoop in the shekels. By 
and by, however, when maturer judgment comes 
along, the angler’s eyes are gradually opened 
to the great practical possibilities of a fly-book 
designed on utilitarian principles, which include 
a maximum of pockets and a minimum of fly- 
pages. If you are buying a new fly-book, take 
care of the pockets and let the fly-pages take 
care of themselves; pockets are the real use of 
a fly-book. What is wanted is plenty of ac¬ 
commodation for etceteras—a pocket in the 
book for three or four half-hanks of gut of 
various grades, another pocket for spare casts, 
another for spare hooks and split shot, another 
for natural minnow traces and tackle, another 
for a couple of quill minnows and a small brass 
Devon, another for two or three made-up fly- 
casts, ahother for a few feathers and tying silk, 
another for worm tackle, and half a dozen 
more for odds and ends. That is the ideal fly- 
book, and, of course, the six or seven flies 
you are likely to use you can most conveniently 
carry stuck in your cap.” 
I have heard of a lady angler who had hooked 
a glorious salmon and was fighting it in fine 
style, when, spying a stranger coming along the 
bank at the most thrilling moment of the pal- 
