CHAPTER I. 



"Of recreation there is none 

 So free as fishing is alone, 

 All other pastimes do no less 

 Than mind and body both possess! 

 My hand alone my work can do 

 So I can fish and study, too." 



THE above lines are taken from the "Compleat Angler," 

 the most famous book on fishing ever written or likely to 

 be written, by Isaac Walton, than whom no greater fisher- 

 man ever lived. Isaac Walton was born at Stafford in England 

 in the year 1593, but it was not until the year 1653 that the 

 first edition of his book was published. How many editions 

 have since been published cannot be exactly stated, but there 

 were five alone in the thirty years he lived after the book was 

 written (he was just 90 when he died) and over a hundred 

 editions since. The book itself, of course, is now of little value 

 as a treatise, but as Lamb said, "It would sweeten a man's 

 temper at any time to read it," and it seems to show what a 

 gentle, kindly, sincere spirit the ideal angler should be. 



"Of all sports and recreations there is nothing like fishing, 

 in which a person is so entirely dependent upon the skill of 

 his own hand, combined with a well-developed store of patience 

 and perseverance. 



"Of all sports there is nothing like fishing, which will 

 develop the above traits and tend to make a man of kindly, 

 upright disposition and keep him both physically and morally 

 healthy. 



"Of all sports there is nothing like fishing, which will keep 

 a youngster out of mischief and mould his character along the 

 right lines." 



The famous Dr. Samuel Johnson, though he was a great 

 admirer of Walton's book, once described fishing as "a rod and 

 line with a worm at one end and a fool at the other." There 

 have been more jokes made about fishermen than any other 

 class of sportsmen. Everybody knows the old "chestnut," 

 that came out in "Punch" many years ago, of the lunatic 

 looking over the asylum wall at a man fishing in the river just 

 outside and advising him to come inside because he had been 

 sitting out there fishing steadily for five hours and had not 



