I was originally drawn to this March 1909 National Sportsman magazine by the cover. One does not often see a leaping bass on the front of a 115-year-old magazine. But alas, it still has a fly in its mouth, not a plug.
My first surprise upon opening the magazine was that the opening article was about a canoe camping and fishing trip taken in the immediate local of my home in southern Michigan. It seemed a bit strange, reading about long portages and tent camping on the shores of lakes that are now wall-to-wall cottages and where the sound of “Jet Skis” seems to be ever-present.
There were no remarkable ads in the magazine but there was a write-up on the new and ever-more popular sport of “Baitcasting” that touched me. Read this short write-up and I think you will agree that the writer understood that the fun of baitcasting is as much in the act of casting to a particular spot as catching the bass that was laying just where you thought he might be.
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I’m always drawn to leaping fish on old magazine covers, expecially bass, northerns and musky. This one is fantastic. Something struck me about the last few lines in the excerpt: reeling the bait back to the boat. Although the leaping bass on the cover has what appears to be a fly in its mouth, we don’t see the angler. Is he in a boat or wading? We often associate fly fishing with wading and walking, and bait casting with boat fishing, especially in former eras. It seems doubtful that if the writer had been talking about fly fishing he would have mentioned returning his line “back to the boat.” Anyway, that’s just something that rattled around in my noggin this morning.