The Waterbury Democrat., 1933-05-22
I5sf |Nezc York
ay PAUL HARRISON


 Nesv york.-striped bass are reovine down. the Hudson. Black arh are taking fiddler crabs. Ang- lers are casting in the surf for 6ounder. and whipping the trout strearns Of Connecticut and New
 Tersav. Fleets of fishing boats
 move daily out of Peconic bays once the port of whaling vessels.
 Dozens of others, among them the old Vanderbilt yacht Au Revoirs
 ply from Sheepshead Bay. But before they go. many Of the anglers drop. in to see Albert Brunner at his stall in the wash inrton market, Brunner sells bait -ail manner of unpleasant-look- ing things like hellgrammttes, bIoodworms. crawfish and night crawlers. Brunner bait has been soid at the same stand since 1861, when Albert's father, a famous fisherman himself, started 1t.
 With regular clientele of sew
 erai hundred sportsmen, Brunner naturally comes into a lot of fn- formation about choice fishing spots. Thus he is able to tell his customers where best to try for certain kinds of fish, and what
 bait to use. He speaks familiarity of many famous figures in busi- ness and finance; says that, being fishermen, they're all fine, demo- cratic fellows. Vanderbilts and vanderiips, F. c. Doremus, the in- surance man, Henry L. Doherty. the utilities magnate, and Captain T, M, Patterson, the publisher, are customers. Colonel IT. H. Rogers. the flnancier, orders regularly from his estate at Southampton. And Harry Sinclair wires in to send him bait by parcel post. Honest Anglers
 Brunner does a big mail-order business, even sending hellgrant- mites to trout fishermen in Maine. and bloodworms to Florida for the tarpon and barracuda season. There are scores of clients whom he never. has seen, but he declares he never has lost Q nickel by trust. ing Q fisherman.
 Professional bait diggcrs in the salt marshes of New England, along salty sea shores, and in the hellgrammite regions of Pennsyl- vania, supply Brunner with crawly creatures.
 There's . great increase in in- terest in fishing, Brunner says. and he considers this a healthy sign. He is also cheered that many women are taking the sport seri- ousiy now, and don't mind batting
 their own hooks. Lots of them
 drop in every Friday and Saturday to shop for bait, measuring hell.
 grammites and haggling over tho length of the bloodworms. Brun- ner's shop is closed on Sundays.
 That's. when he goes fishing him. self.
 Fish Fashion Hints
 Not only is fishing more popular.
 but so is the keeping of fish. Es- pecialy the small, vari-colored
 tropicals; and even more particu-
 larly the viviparous tropicals-the
 fish which, like the guppy, bear
 live young. Goldfish are definitely
 out of fashion now, at least ten tropicals being sold to every one
 of them. However, some of tho fantastic varieties of goldfish C. veloped by the Japanese still are
 the most costly. Five hundred dol- lars e perfectly matched pair is not an unusual price.
 When they first went off the goldfish standard, New Workers took up. supplies. But guppies are
 90 hardly and prolific that they soon were filling bath tubs and dishpans. So now the vogue is for Siamese fighting fish, properly called Bettas. Not only are they
 beautiful, in iridescent pinks and
 purples, but they're high spirited. Anyone who has too many Bettas need only put the males together in one tank, and tAen sit back and watch what the Siamese call great sport. The ensuing fracas looks something like the explosion of . paint factory.