. The American angler. Fishing. 158 TJic American Aiis^ler minnow, and the voracious trout and bass that feed and fatten on them. In- sect and minnow life are sure to be utiHzed in feeding the game fish and birds in which the sportsman so much delights. "Were it otherwise, insect and minnow life might become an appalling nuisance, and game and good fish and birds might be sadly depleted. The minnow as food for other and larger fish to feed, grow and fatten upon, plays a very important part in the economy of nature. various observations and experiments. May it not account for those mysteri
. The American angler. Fishing. 158 TJic American Aiis^ler minnow, and the voracious trout and bass that feed and fatten on them. In- sect and minnow life are sure to be utiHzed in feeding the game fish and birds in which the sportsman so much delights. "Were it otherwise, insect and minnow life might become an appalling nuisance, and game and good fish and birds might be sadly depleted. The minnow as food for other and larger fish to feed, grow and fatten upon, plays a very important part in the economy of nature. various observations and experiments. May it not account for those mysterious occasions which every angler has noted, "when the fish won't bite ?" The mascalonge, pike, pickerel, perch, catfish, eel, and the gamy bass and trout, make their main dinner on the minnow, as the worm, grub, helgramite, crayfish, fly and little frog are only side dishes. When the black bass are feed- ing on minnows, during a tolerably still time in September or October, on the reefs and rocky shoals near the. PLATE II. " What would become of the bass and the trout If it weren't for the minnows a swimming about?" " Gone, for want of food," would be written on the gravestone of our mem- ories of them. Did you ever see a big trout or bass in the act of gorging himself with min- nows? Of course, you have; and it was a sight to be remembered. They dart at a single minnow or a school of them with lightning rapidity, causing those they fail to gobble up to leap for life clear out of the water. They will feed thus for two or three hours, and then sulk away in some secluded nook. Three or four hours of repose follow, during which no lure, however dainty, will tempt them; and then again they are up and at it. This we know from islands of Lake Erie, the leaping of the minnows attracts large flocks of the beautiful terns (a small species of the gull). And what is very curious, the terns hover over the water in the form of a tunnel, and seem instinctively t
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade1890, booksubjectfishing, bookyear1896
