CHAPTER XIV. 



TROUTING ON LONG ISLAND OPENING OF THE SEASON. 



ON Long Island the first day of March has long been regarded by the sport- 

 ing fraternity as the opening day of the trouting season. The temperature is 

 warmer there than in the interior, and the snow-water runs out from the streams 

 nearly a month earlier. The fish are in good condition, active, constantly on the 

 lookout, and supposed to be eager to retaste the remembered pleasures of last 

 year's fly-time. 



The piscatorial experts and professional fly fishers of New York seem to 

 regard it as important that this season should be opened in due form as the bishop 

 does that the church should be. formally consecrated. They also deem it incumbent 

 upon themselves to be present to wet the first line, just as fashionable young ladies 

 must wear the first bonnet of the new style. Accordingly, on this momentous first 

 of March (or rather, the day before), the afternoon train of the Long Island Rail- 

 road is almost monopolized by sporting gentry in full panoply of approved jacket 

 and capacious boots, and armed with rods, creels and mysterious leather cases and 

 bags of divers shapes and sizes. 



A FISHING PARTY. 



They are generally men of middle age, of the rotund' and jolly pattern, ventri- 

 potential, who crack loud jokes and laugh from the depths of the stomach. Those 

 with the ruddiest noses and smoothest faces are generally addressed familiarly as 

 "judge;" others, heavily bearded, are ostensibly dubbed "general"' or "colonel" by 

 the younger and less distinguished of the party, who have no titles to the universal 

 admiration and nudging approval of the country people in the car. However, on 

 such occasions the distinctions of caste are all obliterated by the wicked flasks that 

 equalize and level. 



This sporting party is of goodly and genteel material. It has this reputation. 

 It is the aristocratic cream of the universal community of sportsmen. Many of 

 them are strangers to each other, inasmuch as they belong to different "clubs" that 

 are scattered along the whole Atlantic coast of the island. These clubs vary in 

 their number of members from a half dozen to four-score, paying for special 

 fishing privileges in private ponds and premises. There are no localities where the 

 public can fish indiscriminately and without restraint, except upon the spongy 

 marshes where the salt tide-water flows into the creeks ; and even here goodly fares 

 of trout have been taken by inexperts. Some of the ponds are owned by wealthy 

 retired merchants, and accessible only to a few particular friends. Others, not so 

 well stocked, are the property of small farmers who are but too well pleased at 

 the opportunity of profit from the leasing of the fishing privileges. 



These few facts being ascertained, it is easily explained why, as the railway 

 train goes on its journey, parties of two and three or half a dozen get out from 

 time to time at the succeeding stations. These invariably find wagons in waiting, 

 and are immediately rattled off to the seaboard over four miles of barrens. 



The party in present interest consisted of four persons. Four is an agreeable 

 number; it makes a table at whist, a quartet in music, and a party to a duel. The 

 biggest man, corporeally, was a skillful wirepuller of wide reputation in the pisca- 



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