July, 1918 
FORES T AND S T REA M 
409 
These minnows (as to hue of body) are 
furnished in many colors. I have a par¬ 
ticular taste and desire for the rainbow- 
hued creations in the small-bodied form; 
some are spotted artistically, others of sev¬ 
eral colors merging or blending. These 
have always won for me many good bass 
as would satisfy my sportsmanlike wants. 
Red is very attractive to the preying fishes. 
The red bucktail is to be given preference 
over the bucktail stained yellow, or the 
one which is in its natural tone of white. 
White is always a winner by the way, but 
if I were to choose between the colors 
I would say that the spotted creations and 
the color-merged creations lead. 
N ATURALLY the best fishing of the 
year occurs when the season first 
opens. One would do well to be 
early on the grounds therefore. Right 
after the breeding season is over the fish 
are exceptionally hungry and take the lure 
with a dash and sprightliness that is sin¬ 
gular to behold. Experience has taught me 
after so many years of fishing that the 
first three weeks in June and the first 
two weeks in October are the best sea¬ 
sons for bass. 
Much of the poor success that attends 
many in their bass fishing is not that the 
fish are not there, but that they go about 
their fishing incorrectly and ill prepared. 
Many a time in Forest and Stream I have 
spoken of the supreme need of exerting 
cautiousness while pursuing your fishing- 
operations. The cautious, careful, well- 
selecting and methodical fisherman attains 
success where the blundering brother slips 
a cog and comes home without his regula¬ 
tion five or six bass. After long study 
I have come to think, as I have previously 
pointed out in this excellent journal, that 
cautiousness is the one prime requisite in 
all fishing. Move along with ease, keep 
hidden as much as possible. Cast care¬ 
fully, studying the places that seem the 
most productive of possibilities. Suppose 
you have a likely spot lined out. Do not 
plump your bait right into it, but cast up 
beyond the fish and reel it by him. If a 
fish happens to be in that pocket, and if 
he rushes the bait and hits it but does not 
get caught do not frantically cast back 
again, as nine out of ten will, because he 
will be frightened. When the minnow 
comes by him again he will look on it 
with suspicion, and the more you cast it 
into that place the more safe and certain 
will he be in his reflections that that thing 
is all wrong, all wrong, James. Rather 
move upon your way, whether along the 
shore or in your boat, and in due course 
of time come back again and make another 
cast in that place. By that time he will 
have debated with himself and have for¬ 
gotten the incident, and will be cool and 
pugnacious again, perhaps hitting it sav¬ 
agely. This is the scientific part of it, not 
supposition, but clearly condensed, and 
carefully ascertained facts. 
In boat fishing I have found that it is 
the better part of wisdom and logic to sit 
down and cast than stand up. Your liabil¬ 
ity of being seen is then vastly minimized. 
The universal manner of casting a bait is 
by means of the under-hand cast, or the 
side swipe. Nine use the side swipe where 
one uses the overhead cast. Yet the over¬ 
head cast is on all points the wisest, the 
method that assures of accuracy when you 
want to put a bait in a pocket and actually 
hit the spot you are aiming for. Care and 
consideration, balance and judgment are 
the demands necessary to attainment in 
overhead casting. Simply your rod is 
thrown up straight over the shoulder, back¬ 
ward to an angle of approximately 45 0 
and then cast forward. I will admit that 
it taftes a little time and patience to learn 
the trick of it, but when once learned you 
will be powerfully surprised by the results 
you attain. A millionaire once offered to 
pay me well for teaching him the process. 
I did it free of charge. He told me that 
the overhead cast is the only method worth 
using. I corrected him by saying that it 
was one by which more general accuracy 
could be gained. 
You can make an artificial minnow in the 
water nothing more or less than a lifeless 
chunk of wood, or you can make it an 
animated thing. The average fisherman 
casts intemperately and automatically, reels 
as though life depended upon getting the 
minnow in as soon as possible, and throws 
The best of good bass waters 
it out again with a splash that would rock 
a motor boat. Why cannot more bass 
fishermen cast with judgment and with 
ease? It is possible if you know how to 
put a bait down without a splash. This 
is nothing remarkable or new. Another 
thing: I notice in my fishing trips over 
many and varied lakes here and there 
throughout the north that bass fishermen 
will cast into a likely pocket, reel in, cast 
back into that same place—as high as five 
or six times. This is useless waste of 
time and line—take it from an old hand. 
Row along, cast into a pocket, row oil, cast 
into another, only one cast to a likely place. 
After you have cast up a shore, come 
back again. That is the system—one cast 
tcx a pocket. If there is a bass there and 
he would not take it the first cast I assure 
you that, as a general rule, he will not 
take it the second, or third, or fourth 
time; and each cast will frighten him 
the more. Be moderate, use judgment. 
B ASS, needless to relate, are very odd 
in their notions which is evidenced by 
the fact that they will take well one 
day, and the next day apparently lay off. 
This has been laid down as gross eccen¬ 
tricity, but the scientific conclusions is 
quite more revealing. Bass feed well one' 
day, and lay off the next day, like the 
boa constrictor, to digest their food. Many 
fishermen owe their ill results to being 
out. always on the days when the fish are 
digesting food taken the day before. An¬ 
other thing: You complain that while you 
get bass in one locality well one day, the 
next day, the day after and the day after 
that they are not there. More eccentric 
notions you believe. Here is the scientific 
solution of it. Preying fishes follow the 
minnow schools. As the minnow schools 
move, so move the preying fishes who 
make them their daily fare. Another 
pointer that experience has taught me, not 
books: The bass will be found in the most 
numbers close up on shore, sometimes two 
or three feet from shore. One angler in 
a hundred casts up that far, and yet when 
they are feeding there they are and not 
along side the outer edge of the pads. 
Why should they be there? The minnows 
are not there. Simple, friend; why it’s 
so simple, and yet so accurate that it is 
laughable. I’ll tell you why you get bass 
at the outer edge of the pads. Having fed 
to repletion, or at least to such an extent 
that they need no more for the time being, 
then they go through the pad-parks and 
take a stand under a nice big leaf at the 
outer edge and lie there, reflecting and 
taking in the air. The outer edge of the 
pads is to them the promenade place, sight¬ 
seeing grounds, recreative adjuncts—or 
plain, common resting places. When the 
fish are feeding along the shores about 
seven or eight o’clock in the morning, or 
from four to six in the evening dig out 
that weedless hook, with its not to stiff- 
wired weed guards, hook on a frog and 
cast it close up there on shore. And use 
caution. Why? When fish are feeding all 
their senses are on the alert and sharpened 
as never before. They seem quicker to ap¬ 
preciate a disturbance and take fright. It 
stands to reason if you frighten a fish 
he will not stay long to investigate. 
(continued on page 428) 
