The Newtown bee., 1909-08-20
ENIGMAs OF THE BLACK BASS.
A Gamy Fish and Some of A.s Eccen.
 tricitles.
CLARENCE DEFINING IN GOLFERS
 WEEKLY,

The small mouth black bass, hard ly to be distinguished, save by his intensive game quality, from his larse-mouthed brother, is the sphinx of the goodly company of game fish of fresh waters, Mystery is his key note of life and living, the prime factor that runs throughh his nae ture and habit. He has been written about uy the volume, studied by keen and obseryant anglers through season after season !n the various waters, theory after theory has been tried out on him in vain. It iq said te have been old pr Samuel Johnson who. visit!rg Rome, de- clared he knew much about the Holy City, at the end of a fortnight deemed he knew 1t all, at the end of six weeks confessed that he knew nothing. So with the black bass. The more we study him the less we positively know.
 Why the black bass bites on one day and refuses every bait the next; why he takes helgamites, and only helgamites. on Monday, grasshoppers on Tuesday, and frogs cn Wednes- day; why he bites only on dark days fer q fortnight and then shifts his biting humor to days bright and breezy; why you find him to-day on sandy bottom, tomorrow on mud. and the day after on the rocks, are bafIling traits of the bass that relate merely tc his sporting relations with the angler. But there are other mysteries that puzzles the natural ist an6 bear or the orgs nic life of The fish
 Up in Maine are two bass rivers not far apart. In one the fish run often to four, even to five, pounds; in the other rarely above pound and half. In one of the largest lakes in New Hampshire the writer's score for a whole season once ran up to 39S fish. Food was evidently abun- dant, for the bass were "chunKy," and the viscera thick with fatty tis- sues. Yet the post-mortem showed in the stomach only glutinous, un- recognizable white matter; and the largest bass of the whole season only drew the scales at pound and -hree-quarters. What did those bass i've on and why didn't they grow
 bigger? Again, in the uplands of Connecticut are two large lakes
 some eight miles apart. In the one
 bass are often caught in winter fish
 ing; in the other laAe almost never in winter, though in it's open sum,
 mer waters bass fishing is the better
 Remembering that the bass are sup
 posed to hibernte, and in fairly deer
 waters. would not that fact argue in
 the late season darker outward hues
 and deeper bronzes? Yet the head o1 !, large bass hatchery has observed silvery change of the bass at the ap
 preach of winter when his habit ant
 habitat would imply the exact re } verse. Such are few of the anato ) mical enigmas of the black bass tha make him and his paradoxes an in teresting study for that open-minde( ] angler who blends the naturalis 5 with the sportsman.
 Out of almost half a century of ex } 9erierces with the black prince O. f fresh-water fish come a few basil
 rules for the angler, but they ar'
 rules of the broadest generalization fitting the season rather than tn l single day, for which no rule can b. framed to fit the caprices of tn strange but winsome fish. Lool D sharply to the tackle, testing to tn
 farthest point of safety, line, leade I and the winding of the hook.
 Bait, fresh bait, every kind o f bait, means a hard contract for tn
 bass fisher to fill, but of high i'm V port, for every old bass fisher know I what a genius the whimsical fish ha
 for striking the anglers short suit
 of bait and quickly running it out n Use ever the double gut leader of tn 9 best quality, tipped by the No. e Sproat hook, which is the hook facil
 princeps for the average bass-sma
 enough to be swallowed readil!
 strong enough to hold. Play the bas
 steadily on taut line and tense TO t held pretty nigh, rejecting the ol e flake" theory ol dropping the TO O to the leap-for the direct pressur 1T of the hook, often loosened by tn ,r strain, should never be relaxed; an e net the fish as deep as possible in th n water at the end of the struggle