Shrimps, soft or shedder crabs, soft-shelled clams, sandworms, small minnows, silversides, spearing or killifishes, are all good baits in their season. Shrimp is perhaps the best all-round lure. It should be hooked under the back plates, and a single shrimp is sufficient for small bass. Shedder or soft crab should be cut in small pieces. The scallop is likewise an attractive bait, especially in the fall, when clam bait may also be used to advantage. Early in the spring shad roe may be used in quiet waters, or at slack tide, but it is a difficult and unpleasant bait to handle. The bait should be from one to three feet above the bottom, and should be kept in motion. Even crab bait should not be allowed to lie on the bottom, as some anglers advise. To maintain the proper position and depth of the bait the angler may employ a float, with or without a sinker, as the exigencies or conditions demand. Very often hand-lines or stiff cane poles are used in estuary fishing, and the bass, even when of several pounds in weight, are yanked out of the water into the boat at once. But with the tackle recommended above the pleasure of the angler is enhanced, and the fish given a chance for his life in the brief struggle that follows. In trolling for fish of from three to ten pounds a natural bamboo rod, eight or nine feet long, answers well with one hundred yards of braided linen line, size E or F, and Sproat hooks No. 2-0 to 3-0 on gut snells. Where the bass run larger, two hundred feet of line, size E, with hooks Nos. 5-0 to 6-0 may be required, also a heavier rod. The baits for trolling are bloodworms of large size, a minnow hooked through the lips, the natural squid or an eel-tail; also the artificial squid of bone or block tin, or a trolling-spoon or spinner with a single hook. When the spoon or artificial squid is used it is not necessary or advisable to add sandworms or other natural bait, as is often done. Employ one or the other, but never both in combination. The artificial baits are sufficiently attractive in themselves, and the additions mentioned do not enhance their effectiveness. The boat should be rowed alongshore, or over rocky reefs or shoals, and about the eddies of rock pools. As the fish always hooks itself in trolling, it only remains for the angler to play and land his quarry in good form, always having a large landing-net or gaff in the boat.