Fly-Fishikg. 357 



CHAPTER XXI. 



FLY-FISHING. 



"And now, scholar, my direction for fly-fishing is ended with 

 this shower, for it has done raining." — Izaak Wamon. 



Artificial fly-fishing is the most legitimate, scientific 

 and gentlemanly mode of angling, and is to be greatly 

 preferred to all other ways and means of capturing the 

 finny tribe. It requires more address, more skill, and a 

 better knowledge of the habits of the fish and his sur- 

 roundings than any other method. 



Fly-fishing holds the same relation to bait-fishing that 

 poetry does to prose; and, while each method will ever 

 have its enthusiastic admirers, only he who can skillfully 

 handle the comely fly-rod, and deftly cast the delicate fly, 

 can truly and fully enjoy the ffisthetics of the gentle art. 

 As the lover naturally " drops into poetry " to express the 

 ardent feelings of his soul, " with a woful ballad made 

 to his mistress' eyebrow," so the real lover of nature and 

 the finny tribe as naturally takes to fly-fishing, and finds 

 liquid poems in gurgling streams, and pastoral idyls in 

 leafy woods. 



A friend in Texas, to whom I sent a bass-fly and who 

 had never seen an artificial fly before, enthusiastically de- 

 clared it to be " a fish-hook poetized," and thought that a 

 " black bass should take it through a love of the beautiful, 

 if nothing else." Not only the fly, but every implement 

 of the fly-fisher's outfit is a materialized poem. 



Fly-fishers are usually brain-workers in society. From 

 time immemorial the fraternity has embraced many of tho 



