160 THE FINE ART OF FISHING 



the awkward rod handler may obtain enough birds or 

 trout to salve the wounds to his pride caused by re- 

 peated misses with the gun or the usual misfortunes of 

 the novice or the confirmed bungler with the fly-rod. 



There is a certain fish and game preserve controlled 

 by a number of amiable but quite unathletic gentlemen 

 "from the City." Each year, just before the opening of 

 the trout season, the superintendent of this preserve 

 dumps into the stream which runs through it several 

 hundred liver-fed, two-pound trout. A few days there- 

 after the amiable but quite unathletic gentlemen "from 

 the City" come up and "catch J em" on worms. That 

 is one sort of sport. 



On the other hand, there is another trout stream not 

 far distant, a hard-fished public stream, from which I 

 am willing to wager that the not too strenuous gentle- 

 men aforesaid could not take a half-dozen trout in a 

 day's fishing with worms or in any other way. Yet 

 a friend of mine can usually show you fifteen or twenty 

 good trout taken from this stream on flies almost any 

 day. That is another sort of sport. 



This is not saying that the amiable metropolitans are 

 entirely lacking in the right spirit; the mere fact that 

 they show a certain appreciation of what we mean when 

 we say "trout fishing" is evidence of existence of the 

 right idea. It is merely saying that sport of the right 

 sort is a matter of skill plus experience and observation. 



But knowledge of the open season habits of fish and 

 game, while all that the sportsman absolutely must 

 know, may well be supplemented with some familiarity 

 with the life of game when the season is closed. The 



