JULY, 1917 
SPORT FOR THE BAIT CASTER 
SIMPLICITY IN CHOICE OF TACKLE AND THE SATISFACTION 
THAT COMES OF “THROWING ’EM BACK” WILL PROVIDE IT 
By GEORGE S. BROWN 
Worlds 
I F you are an enthusiast and like to go 
fishing but cannot afford to buy an 
expensive outfit, don’t let that keep you 
away from the water. Get the best outfit you 
can afford and go to it. If your heart is in 
it and you play fair, you can have worlds 
of good sport with a 50-cent rod, a 25-cent 
line and any kind of hooks. When the 
scrap is over and you glance at the gamy 
little warrior, don’t make it thumbs down 
every time. Just say to yourself: “There’s 
one less fish in this lake; one less chance 
of a strike. He gave me a 
lot of sport. Do I really 
need him?” There’s where 
the real sportsman shows 
himself. It’s the man that 
counts, not the tackle. 
I have a weakness for ar¬ 
tificial bait casting. I like 
artificial lures because they 
are always ready at any 
moment and also because 
the black bass like or dislike 
them so thoroughly that 
many an old bronzeback has 
come to grief from biting 
them. I never liked to wait 
for a fish to come along and 
find my bait—the chances of 
being overlooked seemed 
too great—so I just natural¬ 
ly took to artificial bait 
casting, in which you go 
looking for the fish. And 
I like to cast so well that I 
really believe I could enjoy fishing that 
way in a lake containing no fish at 
all! 
The artificial bait caster is always ready 
to go fishing at a moment’s notice. All of 
you know what a disagreeable feature live 
bait is—bass bait: things that crawleth, 
wriggleth, jumpeth and some that pincheth. 
Good bait those, every one; but frequent¬ 
ly hard to get and always hard to keep. 
You have to dig, scoop, grab, buy or 
steal this bait, and you generally do this 
the day before you go out to wrestle with 
the bass. This day before is just the kind 
of a day that you would like to go after 
bass—the day feels like it, you feel like it, 
that’s why you thought of it. The next 
day, the day that you do go, things may 
be different. 
How often when we find that we have 
a few hours of unexpected leisure do we 
say to ourselves: “Gee! but I’d like to go 
fishin’. I’d go too, only I haven’t any 
bait.” 
Haven’t you ever been in that very same 
situation? I have. Artificial bait solved 
the difficulty. Now when I am going fish¬ 
ing for a few hours, I take just three 
packages: rod, landing net and a small 
tin tackle box. If I am off for the day, 
I take the same three packages and in ad¬ 
dition a lunch kit. 
Perhaps you would like to have me open 
I am al- 
my outfit for your inspection? 
ways pleased to do so. 
Here’s the rod. It is a two-piece short- 
butt long-tip split bamboo, five and a half 
feet in length. Such a rod can be pur¬ 
chased for five dollars at any first-class 
sporting goods store. I have a rod of a 
better grade than this one but its length 
is five feet, and although it casts well, after 
having used the longer one I would never 
be satisfied with a five-foot rod. The short 
one lacks that resilience, that life, that 
—a 50 ct. Rod 
I have a small scale... While 
it does not help me catch 
fish, it comes in handy to 
weigh the three-pound bass 
that other people catch. 
elasticity an extra six inches would put 
into it. Jim Heddon's Sons made them 
both. 
Now we will look into the tackle box. 
There is nothing fancy about this box. 
It is what the hardware dealers call a deed 
box and it has no • partitions—which are 
usually in the wrong place. It measures 
gy 2 inches long by 5 inches wide by 3 
inches high. In this box, packed in card¬ 
board boxes I carry my reel and lures: 
the little cardboard boxes are light and 
do not rattle. 
Mine is a free-spool reel, with a tubular 
frame, quadruple multiplying, 100-yard 
size. You can take it apart with your 
fingers; no tools are needed. The tubular 
frame means rigidity, and also that there 
are no crossbars fastened in place by 
minute screws that are forever getting 
loose. I paid six dollars for this reel and 
it is worth it. I have another one with 
sapphire bearings that cost ten dollars, but 
the cheaper one is good enough for any¬ 
body. 
Let me tip you off on oiling a reel. 
Don’t oil a casting reel with a very thin 
light-bodied lubricant. If you do, you will 
notice that you have to apply oil frequently 
while casting. You will see spots of oil 
spreading on the water about the boat and 
you will wonder where they come from. 
They are caused by the light oil flying out 
or running off the bearings when you cast. 
Use a light-bodied automobile cylinder 
oil: Mobiloil Arctic is what I use and find 
satisfactory. I can cast all day without 
any extra oiling. Oil your reel after 
every trip and always wipe off the old 
lubricant before applying fresh.—Meis- 
selbach made this reel. 
That line is a Number 5 square- 
braided silk, with a breaking weight 
of about 14 pounds, white in color 
with a fine black check, and 100 yards 
long. I always use a hundred-yard 
length because it very nearly fills the 
spool, and the larger the diameter of 
the spooled line, the less pull the lure 
has to exert to draw out the line when 
casting; when reeling in, a turn of 
the handle will bring in more line 
than it would if the spool was nearly 
empty. 
Did you ever have a three-pound 
bass on a twenty-yard line 
with about nineteen and 
three-quarters yards of line 
off the reel? You had a 
feeing all right, didn’t you ? 
You won’t have any such 
feeling with a hundred 
yards on your reel. If by 
some accident, you should 
lose 35 or 40 yards of line, 
you will still be in the game 
with the 60 or 65 yards 
left. Use this line one 
season, and then the next season re¬ 
verse it end for end and use it that way. 
Every time you go fishing break off two 
or three inches of the line, for it becomes 
tender close to where the lure is attached. 
This is caused by the friction and strain 
put on the line when starting the bait from 
the rod tip. Breaking off three inches is 
not extravagance; it will take about a thou¬ 
sand trips to use up the line that way. I 
pay the modest sum of $1.30 for 100 yards 
of this line. Any good sporting goods 
house can get it for you. Remember, 
you want the Number 5. Don’t get Num¬ 
ber 4; it’s too coarse. 
The other small boxes contain my ran¬ 
som from bait troubles: three underwaters 
