CHATS ON ANGLING 



INTRODUCTORY. 



jO those who love angling, with all its associations 

 and surroundings, no apology may be needed for 

 inflicting on them in book form certain short articles 

 which have mainly appeared in the columns of 

 the Field. They are "Chats" rather than didactic 

 deliverances, and are offered in the belief that much will be forgiven to a 

 brother angler, since all that pertains to the beloved pastime has some 

 interest, and the experiences of the poorest writer that ever recorded his 

 views and fancies may haply strike some responsive note. 



But to the outside world, to those who care nought for all we hold so 

 dear, to those who would rank all fishermen as fools, and would classify 

 them as Dr. Johnson was said to have done — to such these notes cannot 

 appeal ; they will regard them, not unnaturally perhaps, as yet one more 

 addition, of a desultory kind, to an already overladen subject. 



No form of sport has so enduring a charm to its votaries as angling. 

 Its praises have been sung for centuries, from Dame Julia Berners to the 

 present day. Once an angler, always an angler ; years roll by only to 

 increase the fervour of our devotion. It is a quiet, simple, unassuming 

 kind of madness, without any of the excitement or the glamour of the 

 race meeting or of the hunting field, and the love and the madness 

 are incomprehensible and inexplicable to those who neither share them 

 nor know them. 



The quiet stroll by the stream or river bank, the constant communing 

 with nature, the watching of bird and insect life, appeal with irresistible 

 force and power to the angler. As the short winter days draw out, and 



b 



