From a color sketch by Sherman F. Denton.
Large Mouth Black Bass. (Micropterus salmoides.)
And then to an appreciative audience he relates, in a graphic manner, how this one seized a minnow, and that one a crawfish, and the other one a hellgramite—and how often each one leaped from the water, and how high it jumped—and how the "ellum" rod bent and twisted as the large one tried to regain the hole under the big rock—and how the good line cut the water in curving reaches and straight lines as another one forged toward the sunken roots of the old sycamore. And then came the climax, as, with pride and regret struggling for mastery, and "suiting the action to the word and the word to the action," he tells again the old, old story of how the biggest of all, a regular "snolligoster," shook out the hook and got away!
In the years to come, will that lad exult over the capture of a mighty tuna or giant tarpon with as much genuine joy and enthusiasm as over that string of bass? Well, hardly. And as the boy is father to the man, and as we are all but children of larger growth, the black-bass angler never outlives that love and enthusiasm of his younger days—younger only as reckoned by the lapse of years.
In Olden Time
Although the black bass, as a game fish, has come into his own only during the last two or three decades, black-bass fishing is older than the Federal Union. The quaint old naturalist, William Bartram, the "grandfather of American ornithology," in 1764, described, minutely, "bobbing" for black bass in Florida, there, as in all the Southern States, called "trout"—a name bestowed by the English colonists owing to its gameness. While black-bass fishing is comparatively a recent sport in the Eastern States, it was practiced in Kentucky, Tennessee and southern Ohio before the end of the eighteenth century. In 1805 George Snyder, the inventor of the Kentucky reel, was president of the Bourbon County Angling Club at Paris, Kentucky. Fly-fishing was practiced as early as 1840 on the Elkhorn and Kentucky rivers by Mr. J. L. Sage and others. His click reel, made by himself, is now in my possession; and George Snyder's own reel, made in 1810, a small brass multiplying reel running on garnet jewels, is still in the possession of his grandson at Louisville.
Appearance and Habits
The black bass is now an acknowledged peer among game fishes, and taking him by and large excels them all, weight for weight. The generic term black bass, as here used, includes both the large-mouth bass and the small-mouth bass. The two species are as much alike as two peas in a pod, the most striking difference between them being that one has a larger mouth and larger scales than the other. When subject to the same conditions and environment, they are equal in game qualities. The habits of the two species are similar, though the large-mouth bass is more at home in ponds and weedy waters than the small-mouth bass, which prefers running streams and clear lakes. Their natural food is crawfish, for which their wide mouths and brush-like teeth are well adapted, though they do not object to an occasional minnow or small frog.
Now and Then