FOREST AND STREAM 
109 
OUR BEST BASS DAY 
HOW THE QUARTET HIT A BIT 
OF JUST RIGHT BAIT FISHING 
By Will C. Parsons. 
B EFORE me there is a photograph. 
From the high lights and the shadows 
of this record in brown and white, 
steal memories, vivid even now, as the 
leaves of a frost-nipped maple. 
Through the needles of the big pine trees, 
whose sighs one almost hears; whose de¬ 
lightful, tangy odor one almost smells, 
comes the glint of crystal waters ruffled 
by a gentle breeze. 
Again one sees the line of silk slink 
out, then grow taut; sees the reel handle 
increase its pace from a slow and stately 
revolution, faster and faster, until after 
the “second run” it whirls like a Dervish, 
and becomes but a silvery blurred circle. 
One hears the drone of the reel grow 
to a shriek; sees the tip bend in a danger¬ 
ous curve while the line cuts the water in 
circles of ever-lessening diameter. 
Now comes a splash, with its myriads of 
water drops scintillating in the afternoon’s 
sunlight, and from his element an angry 
bass with mouth agape leaps and shakes 
his head in vain endeavor to rid himself of 
that barb of steel. 
Fighting every inch, rushing under the 
boat and dangerously close to the anchor 
rope, he swerves, and makes for the shelter 
of the underwater weed beds, or perhaps 
calls upon the stems of the pond lilies for 
aid in his extremity. 
W EAKER and weaker is the strain 
on the willing lancewood; shorter 
and shorter are the mad rushes. 
At last, belly up, he floats into the landing 
net, is boated and his spinal cord severed 
—for it is not in the books to cause need¬ 
less suffering. 
But he is yours: won in honest fight. 
He gave battle, and met defeat. Again 
gazing over the vistas of time, I picture 
my three comrades and myself, as we were 
the afternoon of our “best day.” 
Like a bulletin board closely writ with 
war news, the photograph tells the mor¬ 
tality side of the Battle of the Bass. There 
are the three rods; and there the two min¬ 
now buckets, and the pair of anchors, 
while on a rack made of birch are sus¬ 
pended fifty-seven fish. Twenty-eight of 
these are small mouths, nine weighing over 
four pounds each. None is under a pound 
and a half, and no fish that was not fatal¬ 
ly hooked was boated. How many were 
put back into the lake, I do not know. 
There was no time for arithmetic that 
afternoon. 
A sign painted by the camp jack-o’- 
trades reads: 
4 Rods—2 hrs. catch. 
105 Pounds. 
Behind this example of fish butchery I 
see a bit of looking-glass hanging against 
the pole of the tent. Just why it is there 
is mysterious to me. We never shaved in 
camp, and the majority being bald-headed, 
there was no need for a comb. Certainly 
a man in the woods is not so handsome 
an object that he need look at himself in 
the glass! 
Of the four men who fished that after¬ 
noon, two have passed over the Divide; 
one is going blind, and I—I am writing 
this. 
In looking at that picture I wonder if 
any of the four, if chance or fate provided, 
would do the same again. ’Tis true, that 
by a rare bit of good fortune we were able 
to ice the fish and send them to a chari¬ 
table institution in Milwaukee, where they 
were greatly needed and appreciated. But 
that is not the point. Would we do it 
again? I seem to hear the answer in the 
negative. 
H OWEVER damning that picture, 
with its direct evidence, it is price¬ 
less to me. It conjures up both 
pleasure and pain. It calls up mirth and 
misery, hardship and ease and sometimes 
casts sunbeams into the crannies of a 
brain where dark shadows lurked before. 
Now for the fish: 
Up ' on the Wisconsin-Michigan, and 
starting in west from State Line station, 
they called it fourteen miles to the lake 
where our headquarters camp was to be 
located. 
Being wise to the roads (?) of that part 
of the country, and to the absence of 
springs on the wagons containing the bag¬ 
gage of our big party (for there were 
fourteen men including the cook in the out¬ 
fit) most of us elected to walk! 
In one hand I carried a pail of good old 
Columbus, Ohio, home cooking; in the 
other, a bundle of rods. What pockets 
there were in the few clothes I wore con¬ 
tained reels, lines and the like. I never 
depend on the wagon for my chances ta 
fish! 
That fourteen miles was anything but a 
joyful ramble. The mosquitoes left a path 
of gore about one’s neck; the “nosee’ems” 
crawled in where the legs of the mosquitoes 
were thinnest; the deer flies pinched their 
“pound of flesh” at random and—we had 
forgotten our canteen. Why is it that a 
