32 PLAYING A riSH. 



most exciting portion of the angler's recreation. 

 Contest and struggle have now begun. If you 

 fail, you lose the object you have been carefully 

 seeking for, and perhaps a line and flies you have 

 cherished for the fatal remembrances attached to 

 them. The fish that struggles so savagely to do 

 them damage you see with exultation tired to 

 death, or with chagrin you see him swim away to 

 the bottom of the current with them. The blood 

 in this tussle is called from the interior to the 

 surface of the body and sent through the vessels 

 with exhilarating rapidity, and you feel a tem- 

 porary access of the pleasantest sort of intoxica- 

 tion, viz., that which attacks you at a sporting 

 crisis. Playing a fish is the great crisis of ang- 

 ling, full of hope, full of fear, full of doubt. If 

 he is hooked firmly, if your tackle do not fail you, 

 if he do not get your line and flies foul, if, if, if 

 ah, the pleasant anxiety implied by those ifs ! 

 you must kill him. 



Having hooked a fish, your first business is to 

 determine what may be his size, and whether he 

 is hooked firmly or loosely. You can scarcely be 

 mistaken with respect to size and strength, ex- 

 cept when you have hooked a fish foul, that is, 

 outside the mouth, in the fin, or in some other 

 exterior portion of the body. Then a small fish 

 may be taken for a large and strong one. There 

 is a general rule for judging how a fish is hooked. 



