The Indianapolis times. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1922-1965, 1934-05-12
CONSERVATION
MILT WYSONC
AVOIDS HURRY
IN HIS FISHING
Promoter of Conservation
Makes Catches When
Others Don't.
BY WILLIAM r. COLLINS
Times Special Writer

sonnet of the present state con-
servation department. If any of you
can engage the services of Milt Wy
song, employed to promote the es-
tabliShment of conservation clubs
in the state, have him relate to you
out of the fullness of his fishing
knowledge the details of the capture
Of game fish.
He is an outstanding example of
the desire on the part of Virgil Sim
mons, conservation director, to pro-
cure for the sportsman men versed
in the business who have callouSes
on their hands from actual work in
the field instead of shiny spots on
the seats of their trousers from fol-
lowing office theory.
Milt likens the taking of any game
fish to the art of hunting fox squir-
relS. I'll not attempt to quote him
verbatim; I'll just relate his story
with a few personal observations
to round it out.
Let us take the black bass to start
with. If any fish is foxy, he is. In
the confines of our state hatcheries,
you will see him travelling in small
schools, on the alert for wind blown
grasshoppers or luckless frogs. Take
a bucket of crawfish with shells so
hard they are black and covered
with horns. Throw one in. Bango!
The nearest fish has him by the
thoraX, quick flick of the head
and he is downed tail first, the
movement of reversal is too quick
for the eye. Throw in several; all
disappear as if by magic.
Fish Wariness Shown
Now tie string to the claw of
one and throw it in. Not so fast
this time. Something is funny in
the fishes mind about this string
business. They may not take it at
all or only after the string has set
tied into the moss or mud and is
partly concealed.
Now take a fly with a barbless
hook. The fish still are timid about
anything with a string tied on it,
but finally one rises and is hooked
After af hurry of activity he is re-
leased. Try again. You may hook
another, but that is about the last
out of that school.
Go out into the timber and find
family of fox squirrels. When you
have shot two or three, it's almighty
hard to take any more in that area.
They know what you are there for;
you are there to kill them.
I have sat in a hickory SlaShing
along the st. Francis river, where
there are more squirrels to the
square mile than there is to the
square county in Indiana and have
seen fifty squirrels in view at one
time cutting the young hickory
nuts. Two shots, two squirrels and
for an hour there will not be a
squirrel in view.
If your shots are simply fired into
the air and no squirrels are killed.
in few moments after the noise
dies away out they come. These
long waits between fish can be &C
counted for partly by the fact that
within one pool the first fish caught
constitutes a piScatorial advertise
ment that all is not quiet along the
Potomac.
Uses Simple System
Mr.. Wysong catches fish in Wa
vase when the mine run of fisher
men give up in disgust. His is SIM
pie if rather prolonged system.
When you are out squirrel hunt
ing, you don't hunt the willows; you
hunt the oak ridges. Then you find
the hollow trees where they den.
With that combination, there must
be squirrels.
He has applied this to fishing
First find the food. He takes a treble
hook and carefully investigates the
bottom. When his hook brings up
grass or moss that has shippers on
it, that is the food of blue gills. But
you don't find bluegills every place
where shippers abound just as you
do not find squirrel in every oak
tree.
Milt then looks for the dens He
anchors in spot over the skip
pers'. A casting rod is his explora-
tory wand An ounce wight, a
dropper hook baited, long cast out
on the radii of the hub where he
sits, gradually Keeling in and stop
ping for long intervals finally To-
Gates the den tree of the bluegills,
deeply hidden in some messy
crevice.
1t Takes Time
When one is hooked, that means
more in the neighborhood as they
invariably travel in schools. In
midsummer, this practice takes as
long as three hours in forty feet of
water, but the final results are what
counts in fishing.
The same procedure applies to
bass excepting that the food is of
another kind and bass prefer deep
dens in tobacco weed rather than
moss.
A study of the habits of game
fish at any one of the state hatch
cries will enable you to inject lot
OF your own personality into the
sport Of fishing and the time spent
at it will be more than repaid when
the season opens if you happen to
be the only man on the lake that
has taken a fish that day.
There is more time spent by the
average fisherman casting over
barren ground or fishing over food
less and denleSs bottom than would
pay off the national debt if a fish
erman's time was worth only 10