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Largemouth Bass Fishing Jumping Leaping Traits.
Largemouth Bass Fishing Jumping Leaping Traits
With many anglers the grade of a fish, when restrained by the rod, is determined by his practice of leaping from the water. I doubt if the salmon of the fresh water, or the tarpon of the ocean, would be so highly esteemed as a game-fish were it not for their leaping qualities. The black bass is an acrobat by heredity. No matter when you fasten one in running water, he will sooner or later come into the air. I have known them to leap from an eddy on the side of a rift (they do not feed in strong rapids) and alight in the boil of the current, and fight there with an apparent knowledge that the swift down-flowing water aided their muscular efforts to escape.
Of the many fishes in American waters there are to my knowledge only twelve that invariably come out of the water when they feel the tension of a re straining line. These are the black bass, the salmon (both sea and, landlocked), the rainbow-trout, the unspotted mascalonge of the Northwest, the gray ling, and semi-occasionally the black spotted trout of Western waters. These all have a fresh-water habitat, and of them the black bass, the salmons, rainbow-trout, and grayling are the only ones known to me that leap into the air on a slack line. The Eastern brook-trout (fontinalis) seldom, if ever, comes entirely out of the water when hooked, unless it be pulled out by the over-zealous angler. Of the salt-water fishes that leap there are only the tarpon, ladyfish, Spanish mackerel, the large kingfish of Southern seas, and, strange to note, the needle-fish or billfish of Key West, which is the most skilled acrobat of them all in either fresh or salt water. I have seen the latter fish make com plete double somersaults, their long, slim bodies, with the sheen of a polished silver lance, looking in the sunlight like a palpable thread of glancing white light in the blue atmosphere of the Keys.
When fish leap from the water it is undoubtedly with a view to escaping from the hook, and with many of them the leap is followed by a vigorous shake of the head. In the case of the black bass the shake involves the entire body from the snout to the tip of the caudal fin. The leap on a slack line, which is never made, so far as I know, by the Spanish mackerel and kingfish (not the " barb " or " kingfish " of Northern waters) , is an evidence of superior intelligence or accumulated experience (take your choice) in a fish, for he has evidently found that it is practically impossible to eject a well-entered hook when a taut line holds it firmly in place.
The black bass always leaps on a slack line, and the angler frequently thinks that the fish has escaped, as the line loops in the water and the strain upon it is no longer felt. But, presto ! Thirty, forty, or perhaps fifty feet away, his eye catches a gleam of bronze and brass two or three feet above the sur face of the water, and he notes with delight the aerial flight of that old bronze-backer, vigorous even in the air, with every muscle in action, franti cally shaking its body and almost doubling it up in the frenzy of restrained liberty. And just here, sad to say, comes in the thrill evolved by the hope that the quarry is within possible reach of capture. The leap of the black bass is always directly up ward when hooked, and he generally falls tail first into the water. At times, however, this fish, like the trout, will rise vigorously to the fly, and, miss ing it, will make a graceful curve in the air ere he quietly returns, head down, to his element. But as a rule the bass rises fiercely and with an accurate aim to the fly, and then starts instantly for his lair, which, when feeding, is most frequently at the foot of the rift flowing into a pool, or just on the edge of the rapid in an eddy made by the swift running water. I have never found basjs feeding or loiter ing in the rapids, and this is not easily accounted for, seeing that in black-bass water the chub, large and small, are always found in swift water. An other coincident condition is that the chub seem to have realized that they are safer from the ravages of the bass in the swift currents than in the still waters of the pools. I have noted on the Delaware River particularly that whereas some twenty-five years ago, before the black bass became sovereigns of that water, the chub swarmed in the pools and large eddies, at the present time a chub can very seldom be taken on hook and line in such waters. As an old angling friend, resident upon the banks of this great black-bass stream, expressed it:
" The chub appear to be stealing up the river by the way of the shallow rapids near the shores, and can never be found when the bass lie in the deep water."
But the black bass is not to be cheated of his favorite food, for as the shadows fall he may be found lying in wait in the circling eddies on the edge of these rapids, and woe betide the hapless cyprinoid that chances to come within jaw-reaching distance of a ravenous bronze-backer, or within the possible compass of a sudden dash into the tumbling water, in which, however, the black bass does not linger a minute, returning at once to the eddy.
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