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inasmuch as fishes, like men, have their five senses, and since 

 in fly-fishing the sense of sight alone is tested, such kind of 

 angling is a mean imposition upon the creatures' credulity, 

 and not fair play at all. 



I utter no plea for the bait-fisher who angles stolidly from 

 boat or stump ; there is neither sport nor science nor sense 

 in his method. But to the man who can handle his rod 

 properly and with successful result in an impetuous river or 

 tumbling mountain stream (I care not whether he uses fly 

 or bait), I must in justice concede a claim to high rank in 

 the angling fraternity. A thorough knowledge of the habits 

 of the fish is requisite in either case; and without that 

 knowledge which the practiced bait-fisher must acquire of 

 their haunts and breeding-places, their, exits and their 

 entrances, their food and times for feeding, and the seasons 

 when they are in condition, no man can be regarded a per- 

 fect angler, no matter whether he handle his fly with the 

 skill of Arachne herself. (Joke intended.) 



Exhausted with my attempt to legitimate the habitual 

 bait-fisher into the family of sportsmen (for which he will 

 doubtless thank me), I am fain to assert -that the acquisition 

 of the artificial fly to the angler's portfolio has measurably 

 increased the charms of his sport. Fly-fishing gives more 

 varied play and greater exercise to the muscles ; it bestows a 

 keener excitement ; it intensifies the perceptive faculties ; it 

 requires nicer judgment than bait-fishing, quicker and more 

 delicate manipulation, and greater promptness in emergen- 

 cies ; it is more humanizing in its influences ; it is beautiful 

 in its associations, and poetic in the fancies it begets. Light 

 as a thistle's down the little waif of a fly flits hither and yon, 

 dancing upon the ripples, coursing over the foam, breasting 

 the impetuous current, leaving its tiny trail where the sur- 

 face is smoothest, but always glancing, gleaming, coquetting 

 like the eye of a maiden, and as fatally ensnaring. It woos 

 no groundlings; it is not "of the earth earthy"; it is all 



