Devil Bass of the Cypress Swamps
This article was originally by Edwin C. Totten and published in 1920.
Modern preface by Fiscian.com: The original title of the article was "Debbil" instead of Devil but has been changed for clarity. The Laurel River referred to in the article is probably now known as Broad Creek. There is not too much additional context the modern reader needs to enjoy this article. A batteau is a shallow-draft, flat-bottomed boat for those unaware. If you don't know what black bass fishing is check out our Q&A here. It's also interesting to point out the author's sentiments on limiting your catch, catch & release, and spot burning.
In the chase lies the sport. It is not the act of killing your game that provides the ultimate sigh of satisfaction. It is the knowledge that you have overcome obstacles, taken your prey and won your reward in the face of odds.
With this thought in mind I would that my pen were mighty enough to take my readers with me. If I could but portray in a slight degree the beautiful tawny blackness; the mingled and intermingled vines and swamp briars; the grotesque stumps and tree butts, hollowed and cuplike; the ink-black silky smooth banks; the occasional rusty moccasin gliding through the dark growth; the glittering backed terrapin sliding from the partly submerged log; the screaming fish hawk soaring in short circles about her nest—and all overhung with the heavy scent from the magnolia and wild swamp growth—then I would be satisfied in the knowledge that others had enjoyed one of nature's rare offerings.
However, this would take us but a little way toward the real pleasure. We find that difficulties from the outset always increase the charm. There is always the question as to whether the little batteau is still safely chained to the big log. On securing it we must wade in not any too safe or comfortable waters, shoving, dragging, hauling and pulling until the stream becomes deep enough to climb aboard. Then we must bend, stoop, squat and finally fall flat to pass beneath some of the fallen trees and overhanging vines, always the ones with the heaviest thorns and sharpest points hang lowest. Finally the stream widens and the water becomes clear, but the bottle-shaped butts of the cypress become more numerous. Only the most skillful poling will carry the little boat through this forest growing in the water. Another half hour of toil and careful going and the pools are reached and then--
But I really do owe a little explanation as to the main purpose. You who have taken black bass in the open lake and rivers and have experienced the pleasures that nature offers in her practically clear and unobstructed waters have merely tasted the joy of black bass fishing. Such hardships as flies, mosquitoes, leaking boats, weeds and storms fade into nothing compared with the swamp fishing trials. But neither is the result as satisfying.
To a few words exchanged in the early morning mist on the Laurel River, one morning this past June, do I owe my finding of the haven of black bass. I have never complained of the fighting beauties that the river will always furnish the hard working bass fisherman, but when “Old Bob” Bell, the only Negro, perhaps in the United States, who has a street named and duly recorded after him, mentioned that a five-pound bass in my box reminded him of the “debbil” bass of the cypress swamp, because it was so black, why it was then that my entrance into a fairyland of fishing had its inception.
That evening I found Bob seated on the bow of his boat, just as his photograph presents him. I questioned him like a cub reporter on his first murder story. Bob would stray from his tale, veering to his favorite subject as to “jes' how Master Dallas named the street Bell's avenue,” but by the persistency that every fisherman should have aplenty of, I finally obtained the information I sought. Bob spoke of his old Daddy and the hickory poles that the “debbil” bass had broken. His weird variations which touched on the mysteries of the swamp were appealing.
It was in the swamp mist of the following morning that we chugged up to the swamp edge. While I backed the car off the one track trail Fred, the boy whom I believe to be the best boy with a paddle in the State of Delaware, located the boat. There was but one course, a mere trickling stream over black oozy mud. We pushed and yanked for what seemed fo be several miles, but in reality was less than two hundred yards. We waded knee deep and occasionally deeper in the softest mud that I have ever enjoyed The stream widened and we climbed in and poled. It continued to widen and Fred brought his paddle into play. There was another stretch of perhaps three hundred yards where the cypress grew so close that we found it difficult to pass between the trees.
This first journey was a nightmare and I fully decided that it would be our last—until we reached the open pools. We had failed to enjoy all that Mother Nature so generously offered during the first part of the trip—but it remained for future pleasure.
The first pool might have been a large drop of printer's ink, seeming in the dusky shade to have stained the gray trunks of the cypress that surrounded it. There I made my first cast in the swamp. It was not rewarded with the mighty lunge that would have completed the picture even though the plug dropped lightly and was carefully retrieved. The pool was barely large enough for more than a second cast and that was also without result.
We pushed forward and our sport began. The pools became numerous but the close growth of cypress prevented the use of a fly rod and even my six-foot casting rod was practically useless. Fortunately I had a cut down casting rod that I had not used for several seasons, and that saved the day. My first bass was taken just as I would have him taken. With the decidedly uncomfortable and handicapped casting I swelled inwardly with pride when I dropped my plug directly at the foot of a cypress on the far side of a fair sized pool. The plug scraped the bottle shaped base of the tree and scarcely splashed as it struck the water. The hit was immediate and for the next two minutes I had a new experience—confining a three-pound largemouth bass to a deep pool not more than twelve feet broad at the widest point. Once outside of that area he would have wound my line about so many trees that I undoubtedly would have spent the remainder of the day unwinding it.
I found that Old Bob's tale was true. The specimen was new to me. The entire back and extending down the sides, the scales were black. A deep glowing black. They appeared almost transparent in certain lights. The belly was white, without trace of yellow at any point and standing out in a ghastly comparison with the back. And that bass had fought, fast and savagely. Considable brute force had to be used to land him.
The remainder of the morning was rather confused. As we proceeded down stream we found splendid pools, but to cast them always proved a question. The bass were shy. Unless a bait was dropped skillfully the results were poor. Usually we found an excellent entrance to the pools after I had balanced myself between two trees or had made other commotion in making a useless cast.
We did not get down into the more open water during that trip. We were a trifle uncertain as to direction and with a healthy storm brewing we turned back. Five bass, all of the deep black back and white belly were on our stringer. Our first was the largest. More than twice that number had tasted our baits and departed. There were three very excellent baits missing from my bait box on our return and I do not know how to estimate the exact number of yards of line that remained in the swamp. My one regret was that serious damage might have been done to the kings of those pools who had freed themselves.
I would like to mention at this point that Fred is a very unusual boy. We seldom find a youngster of sixteen or thereabouts who can make a few offhand comments and thereby wreck perfectly good resolutions on the part of a full grown man. However, my resolutions about not getting up in the middle of the night were broken on numerous occasions directly after our first trip and I attribute the fact to such remarks as “gee, to-morrow mornin' will be one fine bassin' time,” and “the big ones are hittin' down the river, I expect them swamp bass will be doin' the same,” which were quietly issued by the same Fred, and always within my hearing. Not that I object to such comments, but we all have to work occasionally during these perilous times of high prices.
Our second trip was far more pleasant —and resultful. We went equipped. The first mile, always the most difficult, seemed as nothing to the first time we made it. The second provided undiluted joy to the tune of four bass weighing in all a trifle over twelve pounds. And then we reached the place that I am certain the bass god planned that all bass should spend their after life—if they have one.
The cypress trees thinned out, but there were great fallen trees whose limbs had long since rotted and left the giant trunks forming the most perfect pockets that the most particular bass could desire for his own little domain. There were scores of these and each had its king.
Now brothers of the rod, those of you who take your game fish as the gentlemen in Kentucky at one time took their “licker”—straight—I would surely like to have pass before your eyes this vista of bass ground. Perhaps the beauties of the swamp have cast a spell over me and inflamed my imagination but had a fairy with a silver fly rod, rigged with a baby fly appeared on one of the windfalls and made a cast, I doubt if I would not have accepted it as a part of the scenery. Such fairy did not appear but I dropped my bait where such fairy would have undoubtedly dropped her fly—and that was anywhere within reach.
In the course of the morning I returned to the water five bass as being too small. I carried home my allowance of ten and Fred caught three. One of Fred's weighed a trifle under five pounds and we decided to call it an even “five” as it was Fred's largest ever. Incidentally I photographed him holding this prize, right down in the dark pool where he took it. He claimed that the photograph would convince his boy friends after the “five” pounder had graced the family dinner table.
The swamp broadens out into an old mill pond studded with cypress and filled with stumps. The fishing there is good but in all sincerity let me say, not as good as further back in the swamp itself—the fairly open water makes it “too easy.”
I have taken several good fishing buddies down through the swamp. It gives you an opportunity to get an entirely new line on a man to fish with him under conditions that are really trying. My experiences have been happy in this respect, for while I have learned several new cuss words and enjoyed several hearty laughs, my friends have come through. The air on the return trips has always been very calm and serene.
The men who have fished this swamp with me are as reliable as fishermen of the general run, and I am confident that they will vouch for the fact that there cannot be a more beautiful bass ground. I know that they will insist that the bass taken in this swamp are truly all that Old Bob has declared them to be—‘debbil bass,” for they have much to aid them in their fight and they are seldom molested.
Only on three occasions have I taken my limit in the cypress swamp and they were special days. I have replaced more than I have taken out to kill. On this past “Fourth”'—you recall the heat —three of us, Maxwell Krause and John Hartman, of Lebanon, Pa., and myself, fished the swamp, taking home thirty bass —and we felt the heat not at all. Both Krause and Hartman are bass men of the first water and deserved their catch. They traveled all night of the “Third” to be on hand at 4 a. m. Another guest, my nephew, journeyed from Ithaca, N. Y., for a “whack at 'em,” and while not taking his limit declared the 300-mile trip well worth while; that he would do it over again any time that I sent him the word to come.
I know in myself that I have failed to give deserving illustration of the cypress swamp and the fishing found in it, but I am selfish enough to be pleased to a certain extent by this fact, for should the portrayal be too attractive it would mean that the glorious old swamp would be visited by those who would desecrate it. I stand ready and willing at any time to supply information to sportsmen who would appreciate real bass fishing under the conditions described, but I also wish to make plain that I withhold without question any information when I have the slightest reason to believe that it will be misplaced. It has been my misfortune to direct several of the so-called “sportsmen” to certain excellent bass grounds in this section only to find that my decency has been misplaced.
My theory is that the man who does not believe that the sport is in the chase, but in the killing, should be barred from real bass fishing and other game in our country. In conclusion I wish to mention that the taking of photographs in the swamp is a sport in itself—you get about one out of a dozen. I trust some day that I will become proficient enough in the art of photograph taking to present views of those pools that will in themselves be evidence of the royal fighters hidden in their black waters.