Spring Along the Great Miami. 
What pleasant memories are conjured up in 
the mind at the first appearance of spring 
weather, when the long wintry days have re¬ 
luctantly yielded their iron-clad grasp on nature 
and give way to the warm gentle rays of sun¬ 
shine! True, winter has charms which cannot 
be denied, but still there is something sad and 
melancholy about it all which can only be dis¬ 
pelled entirely when the snow is gone and the 
ice melted away, and the blossoming again into 
life of the long dormant woods and meadows. 
Tiny wild flowers begin to appear, and the 
forest trees are bursting into leaf with mar¬ 
velous rapidity. Charlemagne very fittingly 
called the month of April the grass month, and 
the people of the Netherlands still call it grass- 
maand. The brown fields, no longer brown, are 
filled with the perfume of the flowers, and the 
busy little bee is already abroad prospecting for 
sweets. The birds, appreciating the change of 
temperature, have returned from the Southland 
and are everywhere. Robins are flitting about on 
lawn and in orchard, seeking a location for their 
nest; bluebirds are similarly engaged. The busy 
bluejay is seen darting from bush to bush, noisy 
and boastful always. Redbirds, orioles and hun¬ 
dreds of others once more enliven the lanes and 
hedge rows, so long silent and deserted. Away 
down among the willows along the creek a flock 
of crows are scolding away with all their might, 
and now and then the clear call of the bobwhite 
comes to your ear, recalling memories of sport 
during the crisp days of last October. 
The farmer boy, busy with his spring work of 
plowing, fence building, etc., whistles cheerfully, 
but his heart is not with his work. He would 
much rather stroll alone in the woods, watching 
the birds, gathering flowers and mushrooms or 
better yet would he enjoy going after fish at 
the river. Long days ago he had hunted up his 
fishing tackle, and if he does not happen to own 
a rod, has cut himself a pole in the swamp. His 
outfit complete is modest and inexpensive in the 
extreme. A bit of line, a couple of hooks and 
a chunk of lead are all he need purchase. Reels 
are a luxury he knows little about, and the mean¬ 
ing of the word creel is as Greek to him. Any 
sort of stout cord makes him a stringer, and an 
old tin can a splendid receptacle for angleworms 
or grubs. If he wants minnows or crawfish, he 
catches them in his hands, placing the former 
in some little pool, carefully, walled up with 
stones to prevent their escaping. The crawfish 
he places in the crown of his straw hat and then 
puts it on his head in order to have them handy 
—it makes my head itch yet to think of it. En¬ 
vied above all other boys was the chap who was 
lucky enough to own a dip net. 
How well I remember the joy experienced 
when my father used to announce that we were 
to take a day’s fishing at the Great Miami River 
in Ohio. My boyhood home was three miles or 
more from the river and a trip to it was an 
event of some consequence to be excelled only 
by a visit to my grand parents who lived in the 
city of Dayton, twelve miles away. The ride 
to the river in the spring wagon was a journey 
full of joys and anticipations to me, and if you 
know how long it takes to drive a heavy farm 
horse, hitched to a big spring wagon, three miles, 
and how many questions the average small boy 
can ask to the minute, you can have some idea 
of what father was “up against,” 1 as the saying goes. 
Arrived at the river the first thing was to rig 
up the fishing outfit and find some cool, shady 
place to tie the horse, after which we were free 
to try all our arts on the finny denizens of the 
river. There was a small creek emptying into 
the river where I usually fished which had a 
log dam built across it years before to furnish 
power for a sawmill. The mill was gone and 
the dam nearly so, but a small portion of it re¬ 
mained jutting out into the water, and from my 
perch on this, many a fine string of yellow belly 
catfish have I caught. I remember on one occas¬ 
ion when wading waist deep in this stream with 
a minnow net I scooped it up full of nice fish. 
Another favorite fishing place was at the 
Franklin dam. On its broad sloping planks I 
have sat by the hour, chilled to the marrow in 
the damp air of early morning, and literally 
stewed later on as the sun neared the zenith, 
but one will endure much to catch fish. About 
the middle of this dam a large piece of timber 
projected out much further than the rest, and 
just above it a leak had sprung in the planking 
through which the water spouted with such force 
that it was difficult to keep your footing on the 
narrow platform below. Here my father and 
brother used to take their stand, and many a 
fine lot of channel cats did they pull out. Bass 
often bit well at this point as did eels also. 
One time father sent me to shore with several 
big channel cats, and as I was stepping gingerly 
along over the rough stones and sharp mussel 
shells which lined the bank and made walking 
with bare feet unpleasant in the extreme, I met 
several fashionable well-dressed women and men 
—“big guns” I called them then—who were 
strolling leisurely along, seemingly endeavoring 
to see which could use the largest and most in¬ 
tricate words to convey their meaning to each 
other. Seeing my big fish, one of the fair ones, 
thinking them to be trophies of my own skill, 
heaped unstinted praise upon my young head 
until I felt much as Alexander must have felt 
when he realized that there were no more worlds 
to conquer. She called me a good boy, a brave 
lad and other names equally as flattering, and 
at last, when her store of compliments was ex¬ 
hausted, wound up by asking, “Where in the 
world did you catch them?” Did I remember 
my mother’s oft-repeated admonition not to tell 
stories and truthfully tell the woman that not I 
but another had caught those fine fish? Not a 
bit of it! Big reputations have not been made 
by being truthful at all times since the days of 
George Washington, and so I answered, “I 
caught them up there at the dam,” looked her 
straight in the eye, and smiled as only a tow¬ 
headed, freckle-faced country boy can, and went 
on my way. 
Down below the dam a big stone reared its 
head above the waters, and it was beside this 
stone that I caught my very first fish. I do not 
remember what species it belonged to—might 
have been a common sucker for all I know—but 
I do remember how proud I was of it and how 
carefully I kept it separated from the rest of 
our catch so I could eat it myself. 
With my father and a neighbor boy I rowed 
up the river one day to Shepherd’s Point, a syca¬ 
more-studded peninsula which extended out into 
the river a short distance, and anchored near 
shore. We used crawfish for bait and soon had 
some eighty yellow bellies in the bottom of the 
boat. The bait becoming exhausted, one of the 
men shot some frogs alongshore with his re¬ 
volver, but at this juncture two men came along 
in a boat and gave us some balls of dough which 
they were using as bait for carp, and we re¬ 
sumed fishing. I caught one big fellow, but 
had no further success that day. 
Carp even then were a nuisance in the river, 
and now they are about the only denizens of its 
waters. The paper mills are now casting their 
poisonous waste matter into the stream, and the 
year 1895 saw the last of the good fishing. The 
last day’s fishing I had in this river was in com¬ 
pany with an old schoolboy friend, and we 
caught carp so fast for a time that we were kept 
quite busy, but as it took a brave man to eat the 
first oyster, nothing short of a hero should tackle 
a big mud-flavored carp, so we threw them 
away. 
There is a charm aside from fishing in being 
along a Northern river in the spring time. The 
kingfisher, perched on the dead limb of a tree, 
is noisily and tirelessly winding up his reel, and 
as you walk easily along the shady bank you 
surprise many a duck which has stopped to rest 
for a few days longer than his fellows on the 
northern flight. Out from almost under your 
feet a pair of snipe leap into flight with their 
peculiar little cry which startles you for an in¬ 
stant, and plunk, plunk, into the water go sev¬ 
eral water snakes which had been taking a 
siesta on some overhanging branch, for even the 
humblest of creatures are enjoying the return 
of the spring sunshine. C. A. V. 
Coachman for Bass. 
East Orange, N. J., March 1 .—Editor Forest 
and Stream: Have been very much interested 
in Mr. Plumley’s article on the coachman and 
also Mr. Ewbank’s corroboration with his royal 
coachman. What they say applies to trout, and 
yet I can add a trifle to the coachman wight by 
my experience with the Delaware black bass. 
In fishing for them I have always had my best 
luck with the royal coachman; not as a dropper 
or a middle fly, but always the tail fly. 
I can also add that in my short experience 
with trout, the coachman, either one, applies 
when they will take no other fly. 
Whoever tied the first coachman, I certainly 
take my hat off to. A. Jay Marsh. 
