Viii TO THE READER. 



reading public; and this in the face of the fact that we are an 

 angling people, and that our thousands of brooks, creeks, rivers, lakes, 

 bays, and inlets abound in game-fish. 



The best informed of those who have written on American fishes, 

 have omitted many important species, and treated slightingly of 

 others which are worthy of a more extended notice. Since the pub- 

 lication of Dr. Bethune's " Walton," and subsequently Frank For- 

 ester's " Fish and Fishing," sporting-fish have decreased in some 

 parts of the country where they were once abundant. In the mean 

 while, the opening of new lines of travel has brought within reach 

 of the angler many teeming waters that were then almost inaccessible. 



With a view of filling up the blank left by my predecessors, of 

 correcting some erroneous ideas that have been imparted, not only 

 concerning fish, but the adaptation of English rules and theories, 

 without qualification, to our waters; and with the object of making 

 the angler self-reliant, and to encourage him as much as possible to 

 make the best of such resources as may be within his reach, espe- 

 cially as regards his tackle, I have devoted many spare hours to the 

 following pages ; in writing which, to use the words of Isaac Walton, 

 u I have made a recreation of a recreation ;" and as reminiscences of 

 my boyhood or maturer years have come back to me, and the mood 

 was on me, I have at times indulged my sense of the ludicrous or the 

 ridiculous ; and, again adopting the words of Walton in his address 

 to his readers, " I have in several places mixed not any scurrility, but 

 some innocent harmless mirth, of which, if thou be a severe sour- 

 complexioned man, then I here disallow thee to be a competent judge, 

 for divines say there are offences given and offences not given, but 

 offences taken." But I am sanguine enough to hope that my simple 

 narrations or allusions to such incidents will touch a chord of sym- 

 pathy in the breasts of good-natured readers " who love to be quiet 

 and go a-angling." 



I had collected most of the matter contained in this book much 

 of it as the reader finds it, but a greater portion in rough notes 

 when the present unhappy rebellion broke out. I then thought it 

 doubtful whether the following pages would ever be printed, but 



