874 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
1906. 
[JUNE 2, 


for this reason the bass cannot be spawned with 
profit artificially, and there is no necessity for 
attempting it. They only require to be left un- 
molested at the breeding season to thrive and 
multiply. At this season they refuse all food, 
but they keep their beds swept and dusted, and 
quickly remove any foreign substance that may 
fall upon them. The pot-fisher avails himself: of 
his knowledge of their cleanly habits: and drops 
a bare hook or hooks into the nest; at once the 
bass takes it into its mouth to carry it from the 
bed and is ruthlessly snatched out of the Water. 
It is this nefarious practice that does more to 
destroy our black bass than any other means used 
by those who have no fear before their eyes of 
the law or an hereafter. Thousands of fish are 
destroyed, while a few mature bass, unfit for 
food, are thus cruelly killed. I have always to 
curb my pen when writing of this vile murder 
and those who do it. A fish that affords such 
grand sport will be allowed by all honorable men 
a bare month, or such a matter of time, in which 
to produce their young in peace. 
The spawning of a pair of black bass extends 
over two or three days, and the parent fish re- 
main with their young until they are ten days or 
two weeks old, and the fry prey upon each other 
until they are two or three weeks old. Their 
cannibalistic proclivities cease when they have 
gained a little discretion, but their pugnacious 
qualities grow with their growth. A black bass 
will vanquish a pike of a much larger size than 
himself by swimming swiftly under the enemy 
and cutting him across the belly with a rigidly 
erect dorsal fin. The black bass grows rapidly 
under favorable conditions of water and food, 
and reaches maturity at three years of age. Only 
a few years ago a black bass of six pounds was 
considered to have attained the maximum weight, 
but more recently small-mouthed bass have been 
caught of eight pounds in weight for a single fish. 
The larger fish—small-mouth—are so extremely 
fat, however, that they do not display the activ-' 
ity of a two and one-half or three-pound fish. 
These weights are, as a general thing, the size of 
fish that gives the angler the most sport when on 
the rod. 
Judging from personal experience, the largest 
bass are caught at an early hour in the morning 
—the earlier the hour, if it be daylight, the better 
the fishing or catching. When the black bass 
have spawned in the shallow of a river, they 
move seemingly in a body to swift water on the 
foot of a fall, if such there be, and are there 
caught in numbers in the down-pour or boil of 
the rapids. After a few days in this rough water, 
which perhaps reinvigorates them, after the ex- 
haustion attendant upon spawning, they fall back 
and disperse, to be found just at the foot of the 
rapids, behind some boulder in mid-stream that 
forms a little eddy, and along the shores, just in 
the edge of deep water. When the season ad- 
vances and the water becomes warmer, they rest 
in deep pools and eddies, and with the approach 
of winter, they retire to broken rocks or sub- 
merged logs in deep, still water, there to become 
torpid and hibernate, until released by the warm 
sun of spring. After severe cold weather in the 
fall, a few days of warm sun will awaken them 
so that they will take the hook, if it is let down 
upon their winter quarters. During the fishing 
season they lie in wait for small fish just off the 
rocky shores, or near a weedy or sandy point, 
where the water deepens rapidly, or near a weedy 
shoal shore that harbors bait fish. 
rush into the shoal shore water or weeds, and 
grasp their prey and return to deep water only to 
repeat the operation as often as hunger demands. 
Rocky shoals in midwinter are also favorite 
places for black bass in June and early July, and 
there they may be found nearly the whole day, 
as the water is comparatively shallow. These are 
the places and this is the time for fly-fishing in 
lakes and deep rivers. Nevertheless, the bass 
will come on to the shoals to get food at morning 
and evening during the entire summer, so that a 
little fly-fishing may be had at feeding time, al- 
though one must be prepared for many disap- 
pointments. In September and October the bass 
are moving about in an aimless sort of a fashion, 
and may be on the shoals, shores, off the sand 
points, or in deep water, or in all of these places. 
They make a 
This is the time to catch the largest fish, and they 
are in prime condition. Let one catch a black 
bass in a cold, clear lake, and he thinks it about 
the most vigorous fish to be found in fresh water, 
but when he catches one of the same fish in the 
current of a rapid river, he discovers his mistake, 
for river bass afford the finer sport. This is ow- 
ing, in a measure, to the fact that the swift water, 
sunken boulders and possible snags add to the 
chances of the bass to escane. Therefore, the 
angler’s satisfaction is greater if he succeeds in 
saving his fish after a closely contested fight in 
which the chances are nearly equal. A pound 
bass may afford more pleasure in the catching 
than one of twice the weight. To quote my own 
words, used when writing of the black bass on 
another occasion: 
“Tt is the play that the fish affords that warms 
the cockles of an angler’s heart, not the fish itself; 
and as one looks back over other days, it is the 
gamy, hard-fighting fish that rise up in one’s mem- 
ory like mile stones along a pathway. Greater 
fish there may be between, but they live only like 
so many pounds and ounces, and occasion no 
thrill, no tremor of the muscles, no increased 
beating of the heart, no particular joy or ex- 
hilaration at the retrospect, except that they may 
have beaten some other fellow’s fish. If the mere 
pounds and ounces lived, there can be no thrill 
of pleasure at the remembrance, for there never 
was one; nothing—but pounds and ounces.” 
I have had excellent sport catching black bass 
in the autumn when the water was covered at an 
early hour in the morning with a dense fog, and 
in no single instance has such a morning failed 
of good results. But one has to choose, T am 
informed by a female member of my family, be- 
tween the danger of malaria and a good score, I 
can say that to date I have not suffered from 
malaria because of exposure in fishing. 
At the season when the bass are roving I have 
had splendid returns from baiting certain fishing 
places. For instance, I save all crayfish that die 
on the hook during an afternoon’s fishing; and 
just before leaving the lake or river I throw them 
into the water at the best fishing places; the next 
morning I fish these points and again bait them 
for evening. 
The baits used for bass are many, including the 
artificial fly for casting and for trolling, the troll- 
ing spoon or spinning bait, the minnow gangs, 
with live minnow and the artificial trolling min- 
now; the live bait, including all small fish which 
are classified as minnows, and small perch which 
are best of all, partic: ularly for large bass; the 
grasshopper and cricket, live frogs, crawfish or 
crayfish, dobsons or helgramite, in both the black 
and white state, and the common earth worm. In 
still-fishing, a dead bait is useless, and the sooner 
it is taken from the hook, and a fresh, lively bait 
substituted, the better. Dobsons and _ crayfish, 
both excellent bait when native to bass waters, 
are indifferent or worthless in waters where the 
bass are not accustomed to feeding on them. In 
two large lakes, for instance, in which the bass 
fishing is good, in one the grasshopper is a prime 
bait, and the cricket is of second importance; and 
in the other the reverse is the case. Around the 
first lake "hoppers are more plenty than crickets, 
and around the second crickets are more plenty 
than “hoppers. 
I think the greatest pleasure is derived from 
casting the artificial fly, and perhaps the next best 
mode is casting the minnow. Trolling or still- 
fishing is much, if not most, generally practiced. 
In trolling with artificial flies, two, three or four 
flies of a large, gaudy pattern, are used on a 
single leader that terminates in a small fluted 
trolling spoon on a small minnow gang, baited 
with a minnow. Black bass are very capricious, 
in some waters taking a certain bait with avidity 
one day, and refusing it utterly the next. Of 
live baits, the minnow is the standard for the 
season through, although at times in the autumn 
the crayfish or frog is better. In trolling with 
flies it is necessary to weight the leader and sink 
the flies when the bass are in deep water in Au- 
gust. By deep water I mean thirty or forty feet, 
for bass are rarely found in water of greater 
depth. The largest bass I ever caught in a lake 
where I have fished more or less for twenty-five 
years, I took on a pike gang that was trolling 
in forty feet of water, with an eight-ounce sinker, 
for pike—E. lucius, 
One great wrong to the bass fishing is the troll- 
ing of the shores of lakes and rivers for pike with 
gangs at a time when the bass.are either on or 
leaving their beds, and are still about the shores 
with their fry. Many bass are thus caught and 
the gang injures the fish, so that if they are re- 
turned to the water but few can recover. The 
truth is, the bass are not often returned to the 
water when so taken; the fisherman argues that 
the bass will die anyway, and he may as well keep 
them. Another wrong is done in retaining small 
bass, The law should make the limit a pound, 
for bass are so voracious that little ones of an 
ounce or two will bite a hook, and many of less 
than half a pound are necessarily injured in tak- 
ing them from the hook, and in hundreds of 
cases there is no pretense of returning under-sized 
bass to the water. If the limit in weight was one 
pound, there would be less excuse for a person 
to keep a two-ounce bass, thinking it weighed 
eight ounces. Many anglers now refuse to bas- 
ket black bass that weigh less than sixteen ounces. 
The example is good, but the trouble is that 
these gentlemen do not fish with the people who 
keep the fingerlings. CG. 
Sullivan County Notes. 
NEVERSINK, Sullivan Co,, N. Y., May 24.— 
Editor Forest and Stream: I had "the pleasure 
yesterday of seeing one of the really large brown 
trout, whose race, I feared, was almost extinct 
in the Neversink, at least in this neighborhood. 
It was a male fish twenty-three inches long and 
weighed 4% pounds on the butcher’s scales at 
Neversink. I was told that the fish weighed 5 
pounds, but knew that it would not go that when 
I saw it. In these mountain streams a trout must 
be full two feet long to weigh 5 pounds. One is 
always disappointed in the weight for length of 
these fish. It was a noble trout, taken with bait. 
What magnificent sport he would have given on 
fly tackle. 
The weather has been very cool and bright for 
the last three days, and I enjoyed my half day 
on the river greatly. A good many small yellow 
caddis flies were hatching, but these were not 
greatly favored by the trout. A very few duns 
were on the water, and I killed my trout on a 
blue quill. I was told that the trout were taking 
the yellow higher up the stream, but think my 
informant was mistaken. I read somewhere, I 
think in Francis Francis, that the trout did not 
care for a fly called the yellow Sally, because it 
was bitter. I did not try chewing the little yel- 
low fly yesterday, as I fancy that raw fly could 
not agree with the human interior. The water 
was simply perfect, as clear as the air, bright 
and sparkling, little or no sawdust. 
Most of my trout were got in places that had 
evidently been passed over, because they were 
troublesome to fish, on account of bushes, trees, 
etc. I landed a fine pair to begin with, and, hav- 
ing only seen one trout rise, was considerably 
puzzled for a time by the resistance I encoun- 
tered. These brown, or yellow trout, fight like 
mad things when the water is cold. One fish of 
about a pound put up a most extraordinary. fight 
for his inches, and finally got off by hitching the 
tail fly in a rough stone. The trout wanted the 
dropper skimmed or dropped in the water, and 
I had this fly at least four feet from the point. 
The fish did not care for a dry fly yesterday, and 
only an occasional one rose at the stretcher. 
I have made a great discovery in wading gear 
this spring. namely, snag-proof arctics. They are 
the most comfortable things on the feet I have 
ever worn, Some way must be found of insert- 
ing hob nails securely and they will then be per- 
fect. The nails in heels and roughing of sole 
have worn off mine and they are now slippery, 
but even so I prefer them to the heavy canvas 
and leather affairs that always take the skin off 
one’s ankle bones. I paid $2.10 for my pair at a 
country store, They are solid rubber lined with 
strong cloth of some description. 
This is the season of rapid development on all 
sides, the trees have rushed into leaf during the 
past ‘few days. I think that if one had sat pa- 
tiently down in the grass he might have seen 
