34 PLAYING A FISH. 



PLAYING A FISH. This is the pleasantest and 

 most exciting portion of the angler's recreation. 

 Contest and struggle have now begun. If you 

 fail, you lose the object you have been carefully 

 seeking for, and perhaps a line and flies you have 

 cherished for the fatal remembrances attached to 

 them. The fish that had struggled so savagely to 

 do them damage you see with exultation tired to 

 death, or with chagrin you see him swim away 

 with them and sink to the bottom of the current. 

 The blood in this tussle is called from the interior 

 to the surface of the body and sent through the 

 vessels with exhilarating rapidity, and you feel a 

 temporary access of the pleasantest sort of in- 

 toxication, viz. that which attacks you at a sport- 

 ing crisis.. Playing a fish is the great crisis of 

 angling, full of hope, full of fear, full of doubt. 

 If he be hooked firmly, if your tackle do not fail 

 you, if he do not get your line and flies foul, if, 

 if, if ah, the pleasant anxiety implied by those 

 ifs ! you must kill him. 



Having hooked a fish, your first business is to 

 determine what may be his size, and whether he 

 be hooked firmly or loosely. You can scarcely 

 be^ mistaken with respect to size and strength, 

 except when you have hooked a fish foul, that is, 

 eutside the mouth, in the fin, or in some other 

 external portion of the body. Then a small fish 

 may be taken for a large and strong one. There 



