398 Fortieth Annual Meeting 



The psychological reasons why the pursuit and capture of 

 game fishes should constitute happiness are probably too 

 deep or involved for our most learned philosophers to 

 determine. Many theories are advanced but none seem to 

 actually solve the problem. However, any one of them is 

 good enough for our purpose. The fact remains that a 

 great number of people attain a great amount of personal 

 gratification through the pursuit and capture of game fishes. 



The sport has its detractors, those who sneer openly and 

 call it foolishness, and those who negatively oppose it by 

 a non-appreciation but are kind-hearted enough not to be- 

 little it and those who condemn it as a mere lust for killing. 

 But so long as mankind kills in order that he and his may 

 eat, this latter seems flimsy sentimentality. 



Sport fishing has its place and its uses in the world as has 

 architecture, painting, sculpture or music, for all of these 

 at their best are but the expressions of man's effort toward 

 attaining happiness. Architecture speaks to him primarily 

 as needed shelter from the elements, but secondarily as a 

 gratification to the eye and to the demands of the soul for 

 proportion and outline. Painting and sculpture tell him 

 stories that play in one way or another upon his imagina- 

 tion and his emotions, and music sings to him her great 

 songs of love, of sorrow, of triumph, of achievement; the 

 sum total of its mission being to bring betterment to 

 mankind. 



Does not sport fishing bring to its devotee as much of 

 good as do these great arts ? Does it not bring to his soul 

 surcease from care? Does it not bring to his body health 

 and refreshment? Does it not bring to his eye beauties 

 even more enthralling than those portrayed on canvas or 

 carven in Carrara marble, and does it not bring to his ears 

 music as sweet as the artist has ever drawn from his in- 

 strument? True, it may be humbler in a way than these 

 splendid things, but it is none the less a blessing to those 

 fortunate enough to be so constituted that they seek its 

 pleasures. 



