94 ANGLING. 



CHAPTER VII. 

 FLY FISHING FOR TROUT. 



FLY FISHING. I now come to not only the most 

 sportsmanlike, but the most delightful method of trout 

 fishing. One not only endeared by a thousand delightful 

 memories, but by the devotion of many of our wisest and 

 best men for ages past; and, next to my thanks for 

 existence, health, and daily bread, I thank God for the 

 good gift of fly fishing. If the fishes are to be killed for 

 our use, there is no way in which they are put to so little 

 pain as in fly fishing. No minnow is dashed on the 

 ground, no worm impaled upon a hook. The fish rises, 

 takes your fly as though it were his ordinary food ; the 

 hook fixes in the hard gristly jaw, where there is little or 

 no sensation. After a few struggles he is hauled on 

 shore, and a tap on the head terminates his life ; and so 

 slight is the pain or alarm that he feels from the hook, that 

 I have over and over again caught a trout with the fly still 

 in his mouth which he has broken off in his struggles an 

 an hour or even half-au-hour previously. I have seen 

 fish that have thus broken off swim away with my fly in 

 their mouths and begins to rise at the natural fly again 

 almost directly.* What becomes of the " agonies and 



* Strangely enough, since this was in the printer's hands, I 

 have twice taken a fish which broke away with my fly not five 

 minutes before, and caught the same fish with the same fly in 

 his mouth, and on both occasions retrieved my lost fly. The fish 

 were l|lb. fish, and were both caught in the Test, at Stock- 

 bridge, in the third week of April. The one took two olive duns, 

 the other two grannoms. There is no doubt at all that if there 

 is any question of pain, the fish really suffer more in a net. 



