By Dan Beard
Fig. 88.
Crickets.
Black Crickets
These are good bait for almost all kinds of game fish, and are killing bait for bass and trout. Frequently, when bass will not notice a live minnow, crawfish, hellgramite, or frog, he will eagerly soup at a black cricket.
There is but one way to catch this bait, so far as I know, and that is to seek it under the loose stones and chips, where crickets delight to hide. I have had the best luck in open, sunny spots, hilltops, and pathways. Mr. Keene, in his interesting notes on bait in Harper's Young People advises his reader, to look for crickets in a cool, damp place; but be evidently found them, as I have, under chips
and stones. Mr. Keene caught one hundred and twenty-four trout in one stream with black crickets.
Handle your crickets with care, not for fear that they might hurt you, but because they are easily injured, and their usefulness is thus impaired. After you have collected a sufficient quantity for your purpose, hasten to place them in some roomy receptacle, the bottom of which is plentifully supplied with damp gravel and small chips for hiding-places. Otherwise they will eat each other.
