356 
FOREST AND STREAM 
AUGUST, 1917 
MINNOWS AS BAIT FOR BASS AND TROUT 
THE ARTIFICIALS ARE AS M ECESSARY-AND AS DEADLY—TO LURE THE BIG 
ONES ON CERTAIN OCCASIONS AS DRY FLYS ARE 
By LOUIS RHEAD 
I F you really do want to capture big bass 
and brown trout, use minnows. “Caught 
on the fly” is, to put it mildly, a poetical 
fancy—a fairy tale. And I find, getting 
down to bedrock truth, that anglers rarely 
if ever do get the finny Goliaths on a fly 
except in their dreams—or in reciting a 
recent trip to gullible friends. No matter 
whether with dry or wet, large or small 
flies; I have found by experience it is all 
the same. 
This sweeping assertion may be quali¬ 
fied by a few isolated cases and localities. 
But I speak of the average, the general 
run of things throughout the season, for 
really large bass and brown trout, in either 
lakes or rivers. 
Before detailing some truths as to the 
best efforts to make under certain con¬ 
ditions, I will describe briefly one of the 
many similar experiences with large fish 
I have had during this and other seasons. 
So far (June 15) it has not been a good 
fly season for trout in any section of the 
temperate zone, East or West. Insects 
have been scarce, kept down almost con¬ 
stantly by cold, w'et and wind. And the 
waters have been nearly always flooded 
and off color. 
On the 3rd of June, during my third 
trip to the Catskill region after trout, I 
started in to fish a splendid river pool 
which I was sure contained many large 
fish. I vainly cast for over an hour— 
with a single dry fly, two and three flies 
on the leader; at the surface, under water, 
in every conceivable way—without getting 
a single rise. True, insects were scarce. 
Some were on the wing, but not dropping 
on the surface. Other fishermen had the 
same experience as mine, and native an¬ 
glers gave up trying 'til more congenial 
conditions prevailed. 
As a last resort, I put on the artificial 
minnow pictured on this page, and let it 
run down the rushing water at the middle 
of the pool. A strike, all unexpected, in¬ 
stantly occurred, just at the spot where I 
had on previous seasons hooked large fish. 
I soon captured three fish of a fair size— 
over fourteen inches—rainbow, brown 
trout and black bass. 
After my fish were safely landed and 
sport slackened, I split open each fish to 
find out what food, if any, they were tak¬ 
ing at the time of capture. The stomach 
of the brown trout contained two fish 
three and four inches long; the rainbow 
had but a small mass of flies, and the bass 
a mixture of creepers, with one helgramite 
in perfect condition—evidently just swal¬ 
lowed. The fact is apparent that these fish 
took a minnow, or rather an imitation of 
It is not intended for small fish 
one, in preference to insects or artificial 
flies. 
If trout and bass will insist upon select¬ 
ing as their food minnows (which include 
the young of trout, chub, dace, catfish and 
suckers) and you use for bait an artificial 
minnow that they will accept, why—both 
the sport and the fish are yours. 
The dryfly expert will sit at the riverside 
patiently awaiting the hoped-for rise to 
insects, and the inexperienced yet deter¬ 
mined angler will go on furiously casting 
his flies to the surface all the way down 
the river without any response. The 
thoughtful angler, however, will use his 
wits. He will have more than one string 
to his bow, and meet the astute sense 
of the fish with his own craft and skill. 
Years ago I was conceited enough to fancy 
I had learned all there was in trout fish¬ 
ing, simply because I could cast a dry fly 
and net a trout. I conceived that nothing 
more was necessary—in short, that I had 
reached the apex of skill. But after suc¬ 
ceeding years of hard study of the subject, 
I now feel that my knowledge is vague 
and scant, merely being improved little by 
little as I gain in real experience of the 
game. 
T HE new artificial minnow illustrated, 
which other anglers as well as my¬ 
self have found to be deadly bait, is 
a combination of the “shiny devil” and 
“feather minnow” types. But it is longer 
and much slimmer, and is not intended for 
AT OTHER TIMES 
small fish—under 10 inches. To the casual 
observer, it will appear at first sight that 
this combination of three small hooks is 
somewhat barbarous, and that one or at 
least two hooks would suffice. But they 
would not suffice, for this reason. Such 
small hooks, to hook fast and effectively in 
the mouth of a large fish, must have the 
tension distributed along the minnow, so 
that all three hooks will take hold. With 
a treble hook only one barb holds—very 
often not that. 
In the past I have lost many large fish, 
and often hear the same of other anglers, 
good and poor. The truth is that large 
brown trout are exceedingly clever in evad¬ 
ing capture; and I believe they do it most 
often by pushing the barb from their skin 
with the two rows of large curved teeth 
on their tongues whenever the line is at all 
slack. That is a trick they can play easily 
on either a large or a small barb. In a 
situation quite different is the bass whose 
mouth is big; his chances of getting free 
from either a large or small hook are slim, 
if the single hook once takes hold. As a 
general rule—in my own experience—the 
bass rarely does get away if once properly 
hooked. 
It must not be concluded that I advocate 
any diminution in the practice of fly fish¬ 
ing. I fish with flies in preference to any 
other method, whenever chance occurs for 
me to get either sport or fish. But when 
you cannot possibly get them on the fly, 
but you know certain large fish are there 
and that they are better caught than al¬ 
lowed to stay in the water and devour 
many of their own kind, then by all means 
use artificial minnows, if they seem to be 
more tempting to the fish than flies. It is 
a perfectly natural thing for the most skill¬ 
ful angler to have a certain pride—even a 
little “concealed vanity”—in displaying a 
big fish, though its resistance may not have 
been half so vigorous or prolonged as that 
of a medium-sized fish caught on the fly. 
What I am aiming at is to get something 
not before attained, viz.: a fair method 
for safely capturing the wise old guys who 
so often get the best of us—at least of me. 
He who first makes an absolutely deadly 
artificial minnow, a sure catch for both 
bass and big trout, will confer an ever¬ 
lasting benefit upon anglers. I’m trying my 
best to do it; so are others. And the ex¬ 
clusive use of artificial baits will leave 
the live minnows as food to make fish 
grow big while if we consume all the live 
minnows as bait, few of the game fish ever 
will live to attain good size. 
The Terror,” a Rhead minnow. 
