1906. | 
JUNE 2, 
FOREST AND STREAM. 

=E 
floor, which we spread upon the rubber blankets 
and over the cheesecloth sod-cloth of fly-tent 
before we lay our bedding down. This is a great 
‘help in keeping midges from coming up from the 
boughs you will have under your rubber blankets. 
Enter and leave tent by diving under the full- 
ness at the bottom of the front wall. 
While midges apparently could go through the 
meshes of this Olcott netting, they do not seem 
to do so, and a tent made as-herein described 
has proven a perfect protection, even when the 
insects of all sorts were most plentiful and san- 
en ee eee ek 
—_—— 
yo, 

guinary. You will soon learn the very obvious 
precaution of killing such of the pests as enter 
with you, upon your clothes or person, and a 
moment or two so spent when you first go inside, 
will insure you peace. The mosquitoes fly every- 
where, and must be watched and killed, but the 
black flies will gather in the upper part of the 
tent, while the midges will be found on the front 
wall, where it is lightest, and always at the 
bottom. 
I have written this description in the hope of 
helping some of my fellow sportsmen to the same 
freedom from insect annoyances while living in 
the woods in fly time that I have enjoyed, and 
shall be more than glad if I am of assistance to 
any. Though the description may seem com- 
plex, and the way devious, yet the actual con- 
struction is really simple and the end sure. 
IT can only add that if, in my desire to avoid 
prolixity, I have omitted any necessary detail, or 
if there is any lack of clearness in my explana- 
tions, I am cheerfully at the service of anyone 
who cares enough for information to write me 
for it. H. W. VAN WAGENEN. 
Forest AND STREAM furnishes wholesome, 
healthy reading not only for the sportsman, but 
_to all the lovers of good reading —Oroville (Cal.) 
Register. 

DIAGRAMS OF MIDGE-PROOF TENT. 
Notes on the Black Bass. 
Tue black bass has, in many sections, invaded 
the haunts of the trout, and is energetically and 
constantly seeking new fields. He is the em- 
bodiment of independence, and wherever he finds 
a home he locates to stay, provided the murder- 
ous netter and the worse spawning-bed thief 
leave him unmolested, for he fears no fish that 
swims, and is the only one of our so-called game 
fish that guards and cares for its young. He is 
pre-eminently the game fish of the people. The 
trout streams—greatly diminished in volume— 
still run or trickle through the farm lands of our 
sires or grandsires, but the trout took their’ de- 
parture soon after the “wood lot” was cleared, 
or remain only in story. Trout and progress 
are, im a measure, incompatible. Naturally se- 
cluded in their habits, the constant hacking of the 
lumberman’s ax and the screech of the locomo- 
tive whistle jar upon their sensitive nerves, and 
they retreat before civilization, and the modern 
savage—he of the net and spear—and are now 
only found, or mostly found, in places that are 
inaccessible to the mass of the people, either by 
reason of the distance to the favored location, or 
the expense necessary for comfortable sojourn in 
these remote haunts, or lack of knowledge of the 
comparatively few profitable fishing waters, or 
want of time for an extended journey, or all 
combined. 
The black bass, on the contrary, fears only the 
net and spear, for he is progressive himself, and 
the steamers and sailing craft on our lakes and 
rivers are his familiars, and he is on good terms 
with the mule-propelled vessels in the great 
yclept canals, He is a game fish, whether found 
in the great lakes and rivers or small ponds and 
streams, for he is equally at home in the still 
waters of one and the rapid current of the other. 
The latter, however, heightens his game qualities, 
so that therein he is seen at his very best. But 
a species of fish that produces young in still 
water that will, when two and one-quarter inches 
long, impale themselves on the hooks of a trolling 
spoon in their efforts to swallow it, requires very 
little heightening of game qualities. 
As there are two species of this dusky fish, it 
may be well to separate them, and I briefly note 
a few of the marked differences between the 
small-mouthed black bass—the Micropterus dolo- 
mieu—and the large-mouthed black bass—the 
Micropterus salmoides—the adjective in each case 
fitly describes -the mouth. In the former the 
maxillary bone or mouth does not extend back 
to a vertical line drawn through the posterior part 
of the eye; while in the latter it reaches to and 
passes such a vertical line. The small-mouth has 
also smaller scales, there being eleven rows of 
scales between the lateral line and the dorsal fin, 
while the large-mouth has but eight rows of 
scales between the same points. The former again 
has seventy-five to eighty scales along the me- 
dian line, and the latter sixty-five to seventy. 
The scales 6f the small-mouth are much smaller 
on the opercle, breast and back of neck than on 
the sides of the fish, and on the cheeks they are 
A ae 
minute. The scales of the large-mouth are little, 
if any, smaller on the breast, back of neck and 
gill covers than on the sides of the body. The 
notch between the spinus and soft-rayed dorsal 
is deeper in the Jarge-mouth than in the small- 
mouth. 
As to the game qualities of the two species 
there is a difference of opinion. Some anglers 
hold that pound for pound there is no difference 
in their activity when on the hook. Others con- 
tend that the large-mouth is not for a moment to 
be compared to the small- mouth as a game fish. 
Of those who hold the latter view are two mem- 
bers of the medical profession, well known as 
angling writers, each having an experience with 
rod and line of more than half a century. One 
Says, in a personal letter: “The big-mouth smells 
and tastes of the muck, and we do not fish for 
them.” The other writes: “I do not bother with 
the big-mouth, for they will not fight. When 
hooked they give a flirt, open their mouths and 
come in like a log of wood.” The author of “The 
Book of the Black Bass” champions the cause of 
the big-mouth, and considers him the peer of the 
small-mouth. Some years ago a prominent fish- 
culturist, in writing me about the black bass of 
certain waters, said it was barely possible that 
they were a cross between the large and small- 
mouth, but I have never been able to gather any 
evidence that the two fish would cross; on the 
contrary, there is every reason to believe they 
will not, even when the two varieties are con- 
fined in circumscribed waters... 
The large-mouth thrives in waters with mud 
bottom, wherein are rushes, reeds and flags; but 
the small-mouth delights in clear, cold water, 
with a.bottom of rocks, gravel and clean sand, or 
resorts, during the heat of August, to the long, 
fine grass in deep water. The large-mouth, if 
surrounded by as favorable conditions as to habi- 
tat as the small-mouth, might be a more vigorous 
fighter than he is by manwv supposed to be, but 
I shall hereafter speak only of the small-mouth. 
In coloring, the black bass varies from a pale 
green to almost black, growing lighter from the 
dark back to the dusky white belly, and they are 
spotted, mottled and barred, transversely or long- 
tudinally. I have also seen them when they ap- 
peared almost white in the sun as they leaped 
from the water. Color, however, is a very falla- 
cious guide. If a number of black bass of vari- 
ous colors, or shades of color, are confined to- 
gether alive, they will all become, in a short time, 
of the same hue, and the color will be like that 
of their surroundings. This change takes place 
evidently at the will of the fish, and it is part 
of a wise provision of nature that enables them 
to thus cloak themselves by assuming a line in 
harmony with their abode for the time being. 
_ They spawn in running water earlier than in 
the still waters of a Jake. In rivers they gener- 
ally spawn in May or early in June; but in lakes 
or ponds they are on or near their nests with 
their young far into July. The spawn of the 
black bass is surrounded by a gelatinous fluid 
that causes it to adhere to the stones or gravel 
of the spawning beds in ribbon-like strings; and 
