A Wise Ol' Cat 



Judge George V. Triplet! of Owensboro, Ken- 

 tucky, is a Green River fisherman, and for all around 

 fishing excellence a Green River fisherman can't 

 be beat. Old time Kentuckians in the early days 

 of our country did more to elevate fishing as an art 

 than did any other Americans. They were the first 

 to develop the modern reel and the first to cast 

 direct from the reel. They pioneered the way for 

 modern bait-casting. 



I doubt whether any one of us can recall a more 

 genuinely tragic moment than when his first little 

 two-inch shiner wriggled off the hook and dropped 

 back into the bosom of the old horse-pond. But that 

 was in our chrysaloid stage before we had acquired 

 the philosophic spirit in this greatest of all games of 

 chance. Later we discovered that all angling has in 

 it the blessed element of chance. If it were other- 

 wise quoting Dr. Van Dyke it would "rob life 

 of one of its principal charms and make fishing too 

 easy to be interesting." Nevertheless, I have always 

 somehow wished .... 



It was a long time ago and the retrospect brings 

 up many things a bit alien to our modern sporting 

 annals. For instance, in those days jugging was a 



121 



