The amusement derived from angling has 

 likewise its gradations, more or less intense, 

 according to the way in which it is practised. 

 The patient barbel-fisher, who is obliged to bait, 

 night after night, his fishing-ground, and to sit, 

 hour after hour, watching the bending of his 

 rod or the sinking of his float, and who, in the 

 end, can only hope to catch some of the worst 

 fish that swim in our rivers, enjoys an 

 amusement less exciting than the middle - 

 fisher, that is, than he who trolls with a 

 minnow for perch or trout, or with a gudgeon 

 for pike; and the middle-fisher's pleasurable 

 excitement is less than that of him who angles 

 at the top, or fly-fishes. The fly-fisher has 

 chosen the most difficult branch of the art of 

 angling, and as little really worth possessing 

 is given to us in this world without some 

 portion of pain and labour, he enjoys, when 

 the pain and labour of learning his art is over, 

 a pleasure far keener than that of those ang- 

 lers who do not venture beyond the lower 

 and more easily-acquired divisions of the art. 



One of the first encouragements that pre- 

 sents itself to the fly-fisher is, that he knows 

 that he is in pursuit, not of the coarse fish 

 the vilains of the water, but of those which 

 in form and in flavour are the finest and most 

 delicate, and, (without meaning any offence to 



