CHAPTER XXI. 



FLY-FISHING. 



" And now, scholar, my direction for fly-fishing is ended with this shower, 

 for it has done raining."— Izaak Walton. 



Artificial fly-pishing is the most legitimate, scien- 

 tific and gentlemanly mode of angling, and is to be greatly 

 preferred to all other ways and means of capturing the 

 finny tribe. It requires more address, more skill, and a 

 better knowledge of the habits of the fish and his sur- 

 roundings than any other method. 



Fly-fishing holds the same relation to bait-fishing that 

 poetry does to prose ; and, while each method will ever 

 have its enthusiastic admirers, only he who can skillfully 

 handle the comely fly -rod, and deftly cast the delicate fly, 

 can truly and fully enjoy the aesthetics of the gentle art. 

 As the lover naturally "drops into poetry" to express the 

 ardent feelings of his soul, "with a woful ballad made 

 to his mistress' eyebrow," so the real lover of nature and 

 the finny tribe as naturally takes to fly-fishing, and finds 

 liquid poems in gurgling streams, and pastoral idyls in 

 leafy woods. 



A friend in Texas, to whom I sent a bass-fly (an Abbey), 

 and who had never seen a " fly " before, enthusiastically 

 declared it to be " a fish-hook poetized," and thought that 

 a " Black Bass should take it through a love of the beauti- 

 ful, if nothing else." Not only the fly, but every imple- 

 ment of the fly-fisher's outfit is a materialized poem. 



(387) 



