14 WINTER TALKS ON SUMMER PASTIMES. 



good men better. Such sort of angling inspires something 

 more than rod and line, 'with a worm at one end and a fool 

 at the other. ' There must be rivulet and lake, forest and 

 mountain, sunshine and shadow, the music of birds, the mel- 

 ody of running waters, delicate tackling, and the rise and 

 strike and swirl of bass, trout or salmon. Where such 

 things are combined with the love of nature inherent in the 

 contemplative, mild-mannered and gentle disciples of the 

 historic fathers of the art, angling becomes an irresistible 

 fascination, and gives rest to the weary, vitality to the over 

 wrought, cheerfulness to the despondent, ambling rhythm 

 to the life that now is, and a clearer appreciation of the 

 promised felicities of the life th'at is to come/' 



A quiet ripple of applause greeted this rhapsody of the 

 honored mentor of the happy group, when our bass fisher 

 from the St. Lawrence was asked: 



"Did you never hook a muscalonge? They are certainly 

 a gamy fish, quite deserving the attention of the most fas- 

 tidious angler. " 



"Oh, yes; 1 have often taken muscalonge on a trawl, and 

 their capture gave me a great deal of muscular exercise, but 

 nothing else. They hook themselves, and all that is required 

 of you is to drag them in, hand over hand, as rapidly as 

 possible. It requires a little skill to get them in your boat 

 without upsetting, but not much more than to do the same 

 thing with a water-soaked log, and hauling them in is very 

 much like hauling in the same weight of deadwood against 

 the current. Yes, I have caught muscalonge of all weights, 

 from five to thirty pounds, but I would rather take a five- 

 pound bass on an eight-ounce fly -rod than a score of musca- 

 longe at the end of a two or three hundred feet trawl/' 



"How do the quantity and weight of bass in the St. Law- 

 rence now compare with forty years ago?'' 



"I do not think the quantity has materially diminished, 

 but they have changed their haunts. I find very few now 

 where they used to be abundant, and places wheie we never 

 had any luck in old times now teem with them. They are 

 not nearly as plenty among the Thousand Islands as they 



