i6 



the mention of carp. It is my firm conviction that the true basis for 

 most of the unfriendly feeling toward the carp is the fact that this 

 fish does not habitually rise to a fly and is not fitted by nature to 

 inhabit the purling brook, the foaming cataract, the glacier-fed rivers, 

 and the bottomless lakes, where the fly caster is wont to go. And yet 

 to hold that the carp is beneath the attention of sportsmen is to ignore 

 well known facts and to acknowledge indifference to the classical tenets 

 of angling. From earliest times the carp has been a favorite with the 

 anglers of Germany and England ; Isaak Walton himself devoted a 

 chapter to it, and called it "queen of rivers, a stately, a good and a 

 very subtle fish ;" Cholmondeley-Pennell has shown that it is at times 

 as fastidious a biter as a trout or bass ; and Professor Goode has pro- 

 tested against the dictum of New World authorities in excluding from 

 the class of game fishes the carp, the dace, the roach and other pets 

 of the father of angling, classical in sportsmen's literature, and af- 

 fording "sport which in England tens of thousands enjoy to every 

 one who gets the chance to whip a salmon or trout lint over preserved 

 waters." 



I add — and take pleasure in doing so — an article written by Mr. 

 John T. Bramhall, of Chicago Press Club, who has been for many 

 years my friend and for as many years a friend and believer in the 

 carp — and who has been largely instrumental in getting it before the 

 people as an article or food : 



Isaak Walton and the Carp. 



The carp was a stranger in England three hundred years ago, as he is 

 now in America, and he was not regarded by the generality of anglers with 

 any more good will than here, for England had her trout, her grayling, her 

 salmon, and many other better fish than the carp. Good Isaak Walton, how- 

 ever, who seldom had a bad word for any fish, or anybody, had some good 

 words for the interloper. "The carp," he says, "is the queen of rivers: a 

 stately, a good and a very subtle fish; that was not at first bred, nor hath 

 been long in England, but is now naturalised." And then he quotes the 

 chronicle of Sir Richard Baker, 



' Hops unci turkeys, carps and beer. 

 Came to England all in a year." 



It is difficult to imagine old England without her hops and beer, and 

 Dickens, we remember, served a turkey for the Christmas dinner in the 

 Carol. Doubtless the carp is now as fully naturalized as the turkey. Be that 

 as it may, the most delightful of anglers and gossips holds entertaining 

 discourse of the carp, and quotes Sir Francis Bacon and the German natur- 

 alist, Gesner, on the great age of this fish (the latter observing that he had 

 been known to live in the Palatine above a hundred years, and as to the 

 famous carps' tongues of the Roman epicures, that carps have no tongue, 

 but "a piece of flesh-like fish in their mouth like to a tongue, but should be 

 called a palate; but it is certain that it is choicely good." Walton testifies 

 thai the earn is worthy of the angler's rod. Here is his counsel: 



"And my first direction is, that if you will fish for a carp, you must put on 

 a very large measure of patience, especially to fish for a river carp: I have 

 known a very good fisher to angle diligently four or six hours in a day. for 

 three or four days together, for a river carp, and not have a bite." There 

 is game for you! Then, after some talk of ponds and rivers, and the color 

 of the water, he goes on to say: "And therefore, being possessed of that hope 



