FOREWORD 



Dear Dixie: 



They tell me you're doing a book on " Lake and 

 Stream Game Fishing." Since I never fished for 

 game in either lake or stream, and since one of the 

 best things I do is to write learnedly on that which I 

 know nothing about, let me give you a little advice : 



In writing fishing stories one should follow the 

 mechanics of story-telling, just the same as in writing 

 love stories. Fish are more human than the people 

 about whom romances are written, though, of course, 

 they fall down when it comes to " problems " or 

 " triangles," for I never heard of a scandal under 

 water except the famous submarine controversy. 



Look at the latitude you have, though, on other 

 standard topics for stirring tales motherhood, for 

 instance. Motherhood is the most sure-fire of all 

 the subdivisions in the selective acreage of story-stuff. 

 And a mother-fish, I am told, has a yield at each con- 

 ception that would stagger Roosevelt. Can't you 

 see the possibilities here for racking tales of Mrs. 

 Fish and her brood or are children of a fish called 

 a " flock"? In either event, the maternal muskel- 

 longe or the parent bass or the like holds forth, in my 



