"Granted. Fish rise to the fly only in comparatively shallow water, and are found in such situations in bright weather only early and late in the day. But I prefer to fish at just those times. I do not care to fish during the middle portion of the day in summer." And the Doctor proceeded to reel in his final cast. Just then his friend hooked the largest fish of the morning's outing. It was an unusually gamy bass, and leaped several times in rapid succession from the water, shaking itself violently each time. But the Shiner was equal to "his tricks and his manners," and soon had him in the landing-net. "Doctor, why does a hooked bass break water and shake his head? Is it through fear or rage?" "It is to rid his jaws of the hook. He can neither pick his teeth with a fin, nor remove a foreign substance from his mouth with his tail. His mouth is his prehensile organ. A horse, cow, dog, or fowl will shake the head violently to rid its mouth of an offending object. But a fish, having no neck to speak of, can only shake his head by shaking his body, and that only in a lateral direction. As a bass cannot shake himself energetically enough beneath the water to dislodge the hook, owing to the resistance of the denser medium, he naturally leaps into the air for that purpose; and he always does so with widely extended jaws, as you have seen time and again this morning. He probably also fortifies himself at the same time by taking in oxygen from the air. He does so, at all events, willy-nilly." "How high can a black-bass leap from the water, do you think?" "A foot or two at most, as you well know," replied the Doctor. "In rocky streams like this, one has a good gauge for measuring the leap. I never saw a bass leap as high as yonder boulder, which is about three feet above the water; and as you have taken several fish in its eddy, you might have proved it by your own observation, as I did myself." "I distinctly remember, now," affirmed Shiner, "that my last catch--the big fellow--leaped several times very near that same rock, and he did not go half as high." The two friends then repaired to a cool spring beneath a spreading beech, to enjoy a luncheon and a quiet pipe,--well satisfied with their morning's sport,--and to continue the _argumentum ad hominem_ anent fly and bait, with the usual result that; "A man convinced against his will. Is of the same opinion still." THE ROCK-BASS (_Ambloplites rupestris_) In the same family with the black-bass are a number of other sunfishes that will next be considered, merely as a matter of sequence, and not on account of their importance as game-fishes.