These glorious fish, the delight of the angler’s heart, the bravest and strongest except the salmon, the largest without exception of the finny tribe that the sportsman pursues, frequent every cove and bay of our northern Atlantic coast, and furnish the main attraction of salt-water fishing.

Their mode of capture differs according to the locality; from the rock-bound coast of the Eastern States the adventurous angler, perched upon some projecting rock, casts the simple bait into the crested wave, amid the thundering surf of the stormy sea; along the sandy shores and in the tranquil inlets of the Middle States, gut snells, sinker and float come into play in the rapid tide ways; and among the numerous lagoons and bays of the Southern States the clumsy but effective hand-line is employed.

To the eastward, menhaden and lobster are the favorite baits; in Pennsylvania and New York shrimp, crab, and squid; and in the Southern States killeys, herrings, and other small fish. The artificial baits are the eel-skin, imitation squid, and gaudy bass-fly. The eel-skin used mainly along New England shores is attached to a hand-line, and cast into and drawn rapidly through the boiling surf of the ocean; the squid is towed with trolling tackle behind the sail or row boat, in the quiet waters of the Middle States; while the fly is used with stout rod and long line wherever the fresh current of some river haunted by fish falls directly into the salt water of the sea.

For casting with the menhaden from the rocks, New London harbor, Point Judith, West Island near Newport, Montauk Point, and Newport Island itself, are favorite localities; while the Little Falls of the Potomac at the Chain Bridge, near Washington, where the green waters dash over the sunken rocks and eddy round the cliffs that rise perpendicular from the river’s brink, furnish the finest fly fishing for bass in the world.

For bait-casting the necessary implements are a large reel, running on steel pivots, two hundred yards of flax line attached to a 7° hook with a round head, and a rod of not over nine feet in length, with a large agate funnel top. With such tools experienced fishermen can cast a slice cut from the side of a menhaden, and weighing about three ounces, two hundred, aye, nearly three hundred feet into the curling breakers of the Atlantic ocean, and kill bass that will pull down the scales at fifty, sixty, and seventy pounds.

A mode of preparing a bass line to render it light and water-proof, without weakening it, is recommended by excellent authority, and is simply to soak it for one night in fish oil which does not rot linen, to hang it up to drain the following day, and to place it in mahogany sawdust to dry. When thus prepared it does not soak water, nor even sink.

Fly-fishing for bass, however, is the perfection of the sport, and infinitely surpasses in excitement all other modes of killing these noble fish. The best season on the Potomac is in July or August, and the favorite hours the early morning or the twilight of the evening. The ignorant and debased natives who inhabit the romantic region of hill and valley in the neighborhood of Tenally Town, about five miles northwest of Washington, and who, dead to the beauties that nature has lavished around them, and utterly unacquainted with scientific angling, look merely to their two cents per pound for striped bass, manufacture a fly by winding red or yellow flannel round the shank of a large hook, adding sometimes a few white feathers. They substitute for rod a young cedar sapling, denuded of bark and seasoned by age, and attaching to the upper end a stout cord, fish with the large flannel swathed hook in the rapids and below the falls of the Potomac, at the old chain bridge, and without a reel, kill bass of twenty or thirty pounds.

No spot can be imagined more wild and romantic, and with proper tackle, the reel, the lithe salmon rod, and the artistic fly—no sport can be more exciting. The roar of the angry flood, the bare precipices topped with foliage on the opposite bank, the flat dry bed of the stream where it flows during the heavy freshets, but at other seasons a mass of bare jagged rocks, and the dashing spray of the broken current lend a charm to the scene. While the fish, rendered doubly powerful by the force of the stream, and aided by the numerous rocks and falls, have every chance to escape.

The bass pursue the silvery herring, which is the principal natural bait, and ascend the Little Falls of the Potomac during the summer months in vast numbers. They are captured in such quantities with the net in the salt water and with hook and line in the rapids, as to be almost a drug in the market.

As the season advances, the native crawls upon some rock that reaches out into the stream, and with his coarse but elastic cedar pole, casts the roll of flannel, wrapped round a hook and misnamed a fly, into the seething current; and when the brave fish seizes the clumsy allurement the fisherman contends for the mastery as best he may, occasionally at the risk of a ducking in the stream consequent upon the sudden breaking of his tackle, and accompanied with considerable risk. When a man has but a slight foothold upon the slippery surface of a shelving ledge, and has attached to the end of his rod a vigorous fish of twenty pounds, he is apt to fall if the line parts unexpectedly. Many are the tales of such accidents, and now and then of fatal results. But with proper tackle, the scientific angler is master of the situation; he can reach any part of the current, casting into the eddies at the base of the precipitous cliffs opposite; he can yield to the rush of the prey; can retire, paying out line, to surer footing, and can follow the fish along the shore; and finally, having subdued his spirit and broken his strength, can lead the prize, gleaming through the transparent water with the sun’s rays reflected in rainbow colors from his scales, into some quiet nook where he can gaff him with safety. Such is fly-fishing for striped bass amid the most lovely scenery, gorgeous in its summer dress of green and alternating hill and valley, dotted with pretty farms and smiling grain-fields; and there is but little sport that can surpass it.

Bass are also taken at the Grand Falls, ten miles further up the river; but the Little Falls are their favorite locality, as they are here just passing from the salt tide into the pure, sparkling, broken fresh-water. They frequently weigh twenty pounds, and occasionally much more; but, of course, the main run is smaller, and the number killed in lucky days is prodigious, being counted by hundreds.

Bass are said to be taken with the fly in other rivers of the Southern States, and also to a certain degree in those of the north. At the mouths of narrow inlets, where the tide is rapid and diluted with fresh-water, a gaudy red and white fly with a full body, kept on the surface by the force of the current and not cast as in fly-fishing, will occasionally beguile them; but generally speaking, bass are not fished for with the fly north of the Potomac.

Although the artistic angler naturally despises the miserable flannel abortion manufactured by the stupid boors of Tenally Town, it will often be found as good a lure as though composed of the rarest materials; in fact the bass exhibit none of that daintiness of choice that is universal with salmon. So long as the fly is large and showy they seem to be satisfied, and their immense mouths can readily grasp a No. 7 hook, such as the natives occasionally use. One of half that size is abundantly large, however, and the clearer the water the finer should be the tackle. The rod, reel, and line are those appropriate to salmon fishing, although the line, if it is wet by salt-water, should be afterwards rinsed in fresh to prevent rotting. Some fishermen fasten a float above the fly, and paying out line let it run down stream into distant eddies; but this is not so orthodox a mode of proceeding, and does not require equal skill nor as delicate tackle.

After a fish is struck, the same care has to be exercised if he is heavy that is necessary with the salmon, and he will often compel the angler to follow him a long distance ere the gaff terminates the struggle. Bass make very determined but not such rapid runs as their fellow-denizen of the flood, the salmo salar, but rarely retain that reserved force which makes his last dash so often fatal; nevertheless they are resolute and powerful, and have to be handled with care.

Another mode of taking bass, which is strongly recommended, even for the open bays of the north, by one of our best fishermen, but which I have only tried in the narrow coves, inlets, and streams, where the tide-way can be covered by a good cast, is to use the salmon rod, line, and reel, but to substitute a shrimp for the fly. The casting is then done in the ordinary manner, and the gentleman referred to claims, that it is by far the most killing mode. If even equally successful, it is certainly far preferable to the use of the float and sinker, or to the dull monotony of bottom fishing. Any sport that brings into active play the faculties of body or mind, and which demands practice and experience, surpasses the one that requires the merely passive quality of patience.

The most successful, and excepting perhaps fly-fishing, the most skilful method of taking the striped beauties of the northern coasts, is with the menhaden bait, cast into the boiling surf of the ocean, or the larger bays; and this sport is universally enjoyed along the iron-bound shore of New England, from New London to Eastport. This entire reach, is one mass of rock, indented by innumerable bays, or severed by inlets into barren islands, where the tide rushes, and the surf beats; and in every favorable locality are the bass taken with a stout rod, a long line, and menhaden bait. From almost every bold rock, or prominent island, can the angler cast into the vexed water of some current, made by the huge waves rushing over the uneven bottom, and allure thence the fierce bass, who has been attracted from the ocean depths, to feed on the small fry that hide in the clefts and crevices; and waiting with fins often visible above the tide, to pounce upon his prey, mistakes for it the angler’s bait, and after a brave struggle surrenders to human ingenuity.

Although the true fisherman may pursue the small fish of the Delaware or Hudson, of New York Bay or the Sound, may patiently bide their time at Hackensac or Pelham bridges, McComb’s dam or the hedges; and may have true pleasure in capturing them with dancing float and shrimp, or running sinker, and shedder crab; if he can spare a week or two, he should cut adrift from the noise and turmoil, foul stenches, and fouler deeds of the city; and hastening to Newport or Point Judith, enjoy the noblest sport of the salt water—bass-fishing with menhaden bait. He will need stout nerves, strong muscles, good tackle, and abundant skill; for he will be called upon to cast with the utmost of his power, perhaps a hundred yards, and to strike and land fish that may weigh half a hundred pounds. He will be exposed to the sea-breeze, or it may be the storm wind at early day-light, and the spray from the salt waves, and wet and cold will be his portion; but he will forget these trivial evils, when he strikes the bass of forty, fifty, or sixty pounds, the fish that he has been living for, and when he lands him safely on the slippery rocks.

Fishermen of character have been known to assert, that they could cast with the rod, the ordinary menhaden bait, one hundred and twenty yards; and although from a high stand, with the aid of a strong wind, this is possible, the ordinary cast is not over half that distance, and to exceed one hundred when standing on a level with the water is rare indeed. In fact, seventy-five yards is a good cast, and no man need be ashamed who can put out his line fair and true that distance. Rather better can be done with the hand-line than with the rod, but with far greater fatigue, and a painful over-exertion of the muscles of the arm that is almost unendurable to one who has not steady practice. The length of cast is in a measure controlled by the direction and violence of the wind and the elevation of the stand above the water; in a contrary wind the best angler will find it difficult to reach seventy-five yards, while from a high rock, with a favorable wind, he will cover that distance with ease.

The use of the hand line is neither artistic nor adapted to gentlemen who fish for pleasure, although more killing probably than the rival method. For rod fishing, the best tackle and implements are necessary; the rod must be short and stout, the finest being made of cane at a fabulous expense; the reel should have steel pins or run on agate, be made large and perfectly true, and the line must be from two hundred to three hundred yards long. Cane rods are preferred on account of their lightness and elasticity, but they are at present almost unattainable at any price, and the ordinary ones will answer well, although after several hundred casts weight will be found to tell on unaccustomed muscles. The objection to jewelled reels is, that a fall or blow may render them useless, while they run but little smoother than those with steel pins. The reel and guides must be large to deliver the line freely, and if the line is seen to bag during the cast between the guides, it is a sure sign that they are too small. The line is of twisted grass or raw silk, which is the best but most expensive and delicate; of plaited silk, which is the strongest; or of linen, which is cheap and common, but as they are all easily rotted, is the one in general use. The grass line, if it overruns and whips against the bars of the reel, is sure to cut, but it delivers beautifully; the silk line soon becomes water-logged and sticky; and the linen one combines these defects with a faculty of swelling when wet peculiarly its own. A perfect bass-line is a desideratum not yet supplied. The American reels and cane rods are perfection, but the lines are a cause of reproach and vexation of spirit.

Casting the menhaden bait is similar to casting the float and sinker, only the power is enormously increased and deficiencies proportionally magnified. The line is wound up till the bait, if a single one, is almost two feet from the tip, the rod is extended behind the fisherman, who turns his body for the purpose, and then brought forward with a steady but vigorous swing that discharges it without a jerk, like an apple thrown from a stick by rustic youths. The reel is so far restrained by pressure of the thumb that it revolves no faster than the bait travels, but does not in the least detain it, and upon the accuracy of this manipulation mainly depends the result. If too much pressure is used, the line cannot escape rapidly enough and falls short; if too little, the reel overruns and entangles the line, stopping the cast ere half delivered with a jerk that threatens its destruction. The fisherman must be able to use either hand on the reel to rest his arms and to take advantage of the wind.

If he is an adept he will drive the greasy bait straight and true directly to the desired spot, and if the weather is favorable and the fates propitious, he will bring up some scaly monster of twenty-five or mayhap thirty pounds, who will start seaward with bait, and hook, and line, and only be persuaded, after many efforts and determined rushes, that it is in vain. The strong ocean breeze will play with his hair and the salt spume wet his cheek; the vessels, like floating marine monsters, will drift across the waste of waters before him, the seagulls will hover round uttering their harsh cry, and he will cast and cast till arms and legs are weary, and he may kill in a single day a thousand weight of fish. The fresh air will give such a tone to his system, and the exercise such strength to his muscles, and the excitement such vigor to his nerves, that he will hardly believe himself the same relaxed, despondent, listless individual that left the city a week previous.

The most famous localities for the sport are West Island and Point Judith; the former is reached by the way of New London, and the latter by the Connecticut shore line of railway to Kingston. West Island has lately been purchased by a club of gentlemen, but will not probably be reserved exclusively for their use, as the neighboring islands being free to all no special privileges could be secured. There is often great difficulty in obtaining bait, particularly during a storm, which is the time that it is most needed, as the fish bite best in rough weather, and on going from the cities it is well to pack a few hundred menhaden in a box with ice and sawdust, and thus insure a supply for some days ahead.