Book of The Black Bass - Synopsis

Synopsis

Henshall's Book of Black Bass is really three books in one. There are nearly 180 pages devoted to the biology of the Black Basses known at the time. A slightly lesser number of pages in Part Second are focused on the fishing tackle necessary for successful Black Bass fishing. Henshall himself was a leading reel collector when his book was published and his chapters on fishing reels and their development are often quoted and valued by tackle collectors today. The Part Third as Henshall named it is focused on the various fishing techniques to be used in Black Bass fishing to include fly fishing.

Henshall published a companion book entitled More About the Black Bass is 1889 and in 1904 published Book of the Black Bass in a revised 2nd edition that included much of the writings in More About the Black Bass.

In the 1881 Preface, Henshall introduces the book thus:

This book owes its origin to a long-cherished desire on the part of the author, to give to the Black Bass its proper place among game fishes, and to create among anglers, and the public generally, an interest in a fish that has never been so fully appreciated as its merits deserve, because of the want of suitable tackle for its capture, on the one hand, and a lack of information regarding its habits and economic value on the other.

The Book of the Black Bass is of an entirely practical nature, both as regards its subject-matter and its illustrations. It has been written more with a view to instruct, than to amuse or entertain the reader; he will, therefore, look in vain, between its covers, for those rhetorical flights, poetic descriptions or entertaining accounts and pleasing illustrations of the pleasures and vicissitudes of angling, which are usually found in works of this character. Nor is it to be regarded, on the other hand, as a book of a purely scientific nature—far from it—for the author has written as an angler rather than as a naturalist. With these apologies, I trust the reader will not be disappointed in its perusal.