Fishes as Food for Man 



339 



' ' To my mind, there is no real sport in any kind of fishing 

 except fly-fishing. This sitting on the bank of a muddy stream 

 with your bait sunk, waiting for a bite, may be conducive to 

 gentleness and patience of spirit, but it has not the joy of action 

 in which a healthy man revels. How much more sport is it to 

 clamber over fallen logs that stretch far out a-stream, to wade 

 slipping over boulders and let your fly drop caressingly on 

 ripples and swirling eddies and still holes! It is worth all the 

 work to see the gleam of a silver side as a half-pounder rises, 

 and, with a flop, takes the fly excitedly to the bottom. And 

 then the nervous thrill as, with a deft turn of the wrist, you 

 hook him securely whoever has felt that thrill cannot forget 

 it. It will come back to him in his law office when he should 

 be thinking of other things; and with it will come a longing 

 for that dear remembered stream and the old days. That is 

 the hold trout-fishing takes on a man. 



"It is spring now and I feel the old longing myself, as I 

 always do when life comes into the air and the smell of new 

 growth is sweet. I got my rod out to-day, put it together, 

 and have been looking over my flies. If I cannot use them, I 

 can at least muse over days of the past and dream of those to 

 come." (WALDEMAR YOUNG.) 



