354 
FOREST AND STREAM 
AUGUST, 1917 
few. This is the people’s river. It can not 
be impounded, set apart for club uses.— 
He comes to net at last, a 12-incher! ' 
Below the rift is a pool, deep, mysteri¬ 
ous ; one side of it shelving toward the 
right bank to a gentle gravel spit, the 
other side a rock wall against which the 
swirl of the stream is like that of the 
Boardman fretting against a giant log jam 
in its lower reaches. (I said “the Board- 
man,” Michiganders.) Below the pool the 
little river spreads out; almost still, con¬ 
tent to loiter for a space before it takes 
the next plunge. Up here the Tioughnioga 
carries not more than twice the water of 
the Beaverkill. 
S ELECT the largest bait and cast easily 
without a splash into that last riffle 
before the stream enters the pool. 
The undertow takes the line out almost as 
would the tow of a fish. Midway of the 
pool the bait stops. Under a stone? 
caught on a snag? No stone or snag ever 
sent up a line such delicious thrills, such 
pulsating happiness, to an angler’s soul. 
Zing! A big one, for a baby river, that! 
He wastes no time on fine-spun theories, 
but breaks the water throwing glittering 
drops all about him. In vain he tries to 
cast the hook from him. Down he comes, 
with a resounding splash! and up again, 
and again. These bass of the headwarters 
are not the sluggish.loggy fish of the lower 
reaches or of the lakes. They are wild fish 
when hooked. No man can tell what they 
will do next, or how long they will fight. 
The water, tumbling, aerated well, gives 
them the true zest of life. 
Suddenly my beauty goes for the foot 
of the pool evidently intent upon running 
through it into the rifts below. I humor 
him. If he wants to go he must be per¬ 
mitted to have his head. No part of my 
light tackle will hold against a deliberate 
attempt to snub him in full career. But 
he comes back to fight it out, face to face 
almost. It is fifteen minutes later that I 
am able to slip the net under him and creel 
him: twenty minutes of real fight, and 
every second of it the fish had a chance. 
But the possibilities of the pool are not 
exhausted. Another twenty-minute fight, 
which ends three pools below, places an¬ 
other bass beside the first two. The two 
from the pool together weigh five pounds 
four ounces, the largest a shade over three 
pounds. 
Not monsters? Of course not. Yet I 
have held and creeled, with such tackle, 
fishing in this fashion in one of the swiftest 
rapids in the Susquehanna—at Red Rock, 
Pennsylvania—a four-pounder. Some of 
my friends have done better; I am not 
fifty per cent efficient yet. But patience, 
skill and experience will raise the figure. 
So I go down, pool by pool and rift by 
rift, to Marathon mill pond, at the head of 
which the fishing up here—our sort—ends. 
What is there new about this way of 
fishing for black bass? Nothing, really; 
it is simply an improvement on other ways, 
according to our notion. For first you get 
rid of a boat and the monotony of fishing 
from one. You go with the stream. You 
are free: even with two fishing together, 
they are not bound inseparably ’twixt gun¬ 
wales. And you give the fish a chance: 
you are apt to lose as many as you creel, 
and the lost ones are not hurt seriously. 
In such fishing you strike early and are apt 
to set the hook into the fish’s lips, not 
down in his gullet where it is sure death 
whether he tears it out or you do. 
Your surroundings are ideal. You have 
all the poetry and glamor of trout fishing 
without its many disappointments. You 
have more sport than you can get out of 
catching trout except those you find in the 
more distant streams. You are fishing in 
waters that no one can preserve. Your 
expenses are moderate. The fish you get 
are fine in flavor; not muddy, coarse, sod¬ 
den, as bass are apt to be, caught from 
lakes or dull stretches of river water. 
And then, if the bass offer one of their 
surprises, in the anglers’ golden hour be¬ 
tween sunset and dark—when the song 
sparrows sing their good night refrain and 
the night hawks fly low and the swallows 
skim the waters and the stream seems to 
babble a little plaintively as streams will 
at twilight—you may achieve the triumph 
of catching half a dozen fat fellows on 
the flies. Oh, sneer not; it can be done. 
It has been done. And when done, it is 
the pinnacle of the sport. 
Fish ybu catch this way are the finest 
gamiest best conditioned of all black bass 
that swim. 
You can fish alone or have a companion 
to take the opposite side of the stream— 
fifty-fifty. You can fish in comfort. You 
can fish at peace with the world: when you 
go home you do not have to go up the 
back alley. 
Of course in this fishing there is a spice 
of danger at times. It is no light thing 
to wade through Tarpaulic rapids on the 
upper Delaware and come out without hav¬ 
ing had to swim for it. There are rifts 
between Susquehanna and Owego that will 
try any man’s powers if he wades them in 
such a way as to get the fish—I do not 
mean wade the edges, but boldly quarters 
the stream to hit the pool at the bottom 
of the slide at the right point. But who 
cares for a little spill in the warm waters 
of mid-June, or in July or August—up to 
mid-September? With waders, by taking 
care to avoid the holes that go over them, 
you can fish thus on balmy days in Autumn 
up to the last, if the weather gods be kind 
with a last dash of Indian Summer. But 
remember, if you would fish with live bait 
on a trout rod everything in your kit must 
be of the best. For briefly it is to black 
bass fishing, what dry-fly fishing is to 
angling for trout. It combines all the 
thrills trout angling can afford, and adds 
to them many others that the trout crank 
can never feel. 
The higher critics may fire when they 
are ready, Gridley. 
PERCH, PUMPK1NSEED AND ROCK BASS 
THEY ARE GAME LITTLE FELLOWS AND FISHING FOR THEM 
IS MIGHTY GOOD SPORT, IF YOU WANT TO MAKE IT THAT 
1 MIGHT begin this article by bemoan¬ 
ing the increasing scarcity of trout in 
eastern waters. I could proceed in my 
complaint, and lament the disappearance 
of the salmon—king of goodfellows—from 
the piscatorial horizon of the ordinary an¬ 
gler. And then, with a disgruntled ex¬ 
pression, I might say: “Yes, you can fish 
for bass; but half the time when you can 
find them they hang out the sign, ‘This 
office closed for the day: Nothin’ doin’.’ 
But just because I’ve got to have fish, I’ll 
try to get a mess of perch and pumpkin- 
seeds.” 
I might do that, but I won’t. Instead, 
I’ll say: “My fun depends on the applica¬ 
tion of means to the end to be secured. 
A Chinaman gets recreation by fishing for 
minnows with a whalebone rod three or 
four feet long. I’ll be as philosophical, and 
By EDWIN T. WHIFFEN 
BEST WAYS TO HOOK SMALL BAIT 
1. Minows: Through throat and up; or 
2. Down through upper lip, between eyes. 
3. Helgramite: Through shoulders and up. 
4. Grasshopper: Between shoulders. 
5. Frog: Always through both lips. 
6. Crawfish: Up, clear through neck. 
7. Small eel: Through side of shoulder. 
8. Angle worm: Never “thread” them on. 
9. Chub: In mouth, up through head. 
10. Small mouse: In mouth, up between ears. 
as scientific. Here goes: perch, pumpkin- 
seeds and rock bass. Light tackle and 
bait—or fly.” 
A very light trout rig will do. Bamboo, 
steel, or wood? Bamboo, by all means, if 
you can either beg, borrow, buy, make, or 
steal it. There’s no other material quite 
so good when it is good, in my opinion.— 
My fishing partner, on the other hand, 
who catches as many fish as I do, is just 
as keen over the merits of the steel rod 
as I am over my homemade bamboo. So 
after all, it’s a matter of taste. 
A two to four-ounce split bamboo rod 
then, or heavier if you really are not a 
sportsman and don’t want to give the fish 
any chance. A light enamelled silk line for 
fly casting (size F) and the same, or a 
small stiffish linen line, for still fishing or 
trolling. A reel, of course, if you play 
