xii ELEMENTS OF ANGLING. 



Walton might have called them " anglers 

 -spoiled," and he would certainly have tried to 

 persuade them of their error in matching their wits 

 against golf balls and other small deer when they 

 might have been dibbling for chub not that I 

 would say a disrespectful word about the royal and 

 ancient game ; many honest anglers of my 

 .acquaintance tell me that it goes hand in hand with 

 fishing very well, and is not really worse for the 

 temper. There are some potential anglers, too, 

 who do not play golf, and who, for one reason or 

 .another, do nothing else which would give their 

 natural propensities full scope. They, I take it, are 

 the people who look on at one's fishing with great 

 sympathy but little understanding, and who 

 sometimes express a wish that they had had 

 opportunities of becoming anglers when they 

 were young, regretting that they are now too 

 old to learn. 



In this last assumption I think they are wrong, 

 deluded, perhaps, by the popular idea that angling 

 is a mystery, which in its turn is a delusion partly 

 .based upon Walton's often-quoted dictum. Angling 

 is not a mystery, though some of its component 

 parts are mysterious. In itself it is the simple 

 process of a person with the proper temperament 

 .trying to catch fish with rod, line, and hook, and he 



