13 SCIENCE OF FISHING. 



when they should be at work. It is the rest, the quiet, the 

 fresh air, and a mess of lish that they are after, usually, but 

 many like the fishing for itself and to them there is as much 

 pleasure in hauling a surprised and protesting carp or bull- 

 head from his watery home as can be secured from any other 

 form of sport. Let us not despise still-fishing, as it is called, 

 for it is the sport of the man or woman who wants fish, 

 and it yields fish too, in many cases more than the artistic 

 methods of the fly-caster or the strenuous methods of the 

 bait-caster. There is scarcely a person who cannot enjoy a 

 day's fishing for "sunnies" with a cane pole and can of worms, 

 and how many are there who have not, when a boy, spent 

 many a day idling on the river's bank, watching the cork 

 float ; and then remember if you can the pleasures you exper- 

 ienced when the cork did its acrobatic feat and dived beneath 

 the water, how you pulled the rod from its rests and hauled 

 the flapping prize on shore, swinging it far overhead lest it 

 fall off into the water and escape! And sometimes when 

 you drew the fish to the surface but the hook failed to catch, 

 how greatly magnified that fish appeared to be as he turned 

 over and you got a fleeting picture of his gleaming si(le ! 

 Nobody could have made you believe that the small fish that 

 you caught a few minutes later was the same one that you 

 had lost it was much larger than that one. And you 

 believed you were perfectly honest and truthful in your story 

 of "the big one that got away." 



But regardless of your purpose, whether for sport or 

 fish, it is fish that you want to take home with you, and 

 what you want to know is how to get them. There is 

 much in knowing what tackle to use and how to use it ; 

 in knowing the habits of the fish, what they feed on, and 

 where they mav be found. Let the old hands say what they 

 like about learning from experience we know it is the 

 best way but it is a fact too evident to be disputed that 

 if the novice can read a good work on fishing, he can learn 



