THE ANGLER AND THE 

 FISHERMAN 



" The Tuna Angling Club, of Santa Catalina Island, Cali- 

 fornia, is bound to the use of light rods and lines, and hand- 

 lines are referred to as unsportsmanlike and detremental to 

 the public interest." NEWSPAPER ITEM. 



N E profound proof of the soundness in 

 the philosophy that teaches against 

 wantonly wasteful slaughter in the chase 

 is the disinclination on the part of 

 certain so-called sportsmen a vulgar 

 gentry that resort to the woods and 

 waters solely because it is fashionable to 

 dp so and their guides to honorably 

 dispose of their game after the killing. 

 These greedy snobs are viciously adverse 

 to losing a single bird or fish in the pursuit , 

 but they think little of letting the 

 game rot in the sun after the play. With this fact easily 

 provable any day in the year, it may be said that outside 

 of market fishing and camp fishing for the pot the one 

 real object in fishing and angling is the pursuit itself and 

 not the quarry. 



In baseball, it's the game, not the bases; in archery, 

 it's the straightest shooting, not the target. True, we 

 play cards for prizes, but surely as much for the game 

 itself, not altogether for the prizes, because it is possible 

 to buy the prizes or their equivalent outright or take the 

 prizes by force. 



My bayman developes fits bordering closely upon in- 

 curable hysteria if I lose a single bluefish in the play, but 

 he worries not when he goes ashore with a sloopful of 

 hand-liners and half a hundred fish he can not make 

 good use of. 



"Pull it in ! you'll lose it !" "We could catch a hundred 

 if you wouldn't fool !" "The other boats '11 beat us badly !" 

 "There's a million right 'round the boat!" 



These are a few of his excitable expressions. But, when 

 I say to him, "What's the difference, Captain, in losing 

 one or two fish here and wasting half a hundred on shore ?" 

 he calms down for a minute or two. Only for a minute 

 or two, however, for he's in the game solely for fish, not 

 the fishing. It's all numbers and size with him, and he's 

 encouraged in this greed by nine out of every ten men he 

 takes aboard his boat. 



"We caught fifty," says Tom. 



"We caught a hundred and ten," says Dick. 



