20 GENERAL REMARKS. 



it is not all that is required, nor will it alone entitle 

 him to full fellowship with the fraternity. He must 

 have higher aspirations and nobler gifts ; he must 

 look beyond the mere result to the mode of effect- 

 ing it, regarding, perhaps, the means more than the 

 end. Any unfair trick or mean advantage he must 

 never take, even to fill a vacant creel or empty 

 pocket ; he must never slay the crouching bevy, 

 huddled in terror before his pointer's nose ; he 

 must never resort to the grapple or the noose, no 

 matter how provokingly the wary trout, lying mo- 

 tionless in the clear water, may disdain his choicest 

 flies ; and, when the nature of the fish pursued 

 induces it to accept the imitation, he can use the 

 natural bait, only in extreme cases and at great risk 

 to his reputation. The noblest of fish, the mighty 

 salmon, refuses bait utterly, and only with the most 

 artistic tackle and the greatest skill can he be 

 taken ; the trout, which ranks second to the salmon, 

 demands an almost equal perfection of both, and in 

 his true season, the genial days of spring and sum- 

 mer, scorns every allurement but the tempting fly. 

 The black bass prefers the fly, but will take the 

 troUing-spoon, and even bait, at all seasons ; whereas 

 the fish of lesser station give a preference to bait, or 

 accept it alone. This order of precedence suffici- 

 ently proves what every thorough sportsman will 

 endorse — that bait-fishing, although an art of intri- 

 cacy and difficulty, is altogether inferior to the 

 science of fly-fishing ; and that the man who merely 

 follows it without higher aspiration, and uses a 



