Stil-l-Fisiiing. 411 



CHAPTER XXIII, 



STILLr-FISHING. 



"And if you rove for a perch with a minnow, then it is best 

 to be alive, you sticking your hook through his back-fin; or a 

 minnow with the hook in his upper lip, and letting him swim up 

 and down, about mid-water or a little lower, and you still keep- 

 ing him to about that depth by a cork." — Izaak Walton. 



What angler's heart does not leap when he thinks of his 

 boyish experiences in angling ! We were all " still-fishers " 

 then. The boy. who began fishing on a small trout stream, 

 though, would not tarry long in one spot ; he soon learned 

 that he must be a roving fisherman to fill his string. 



But the boy who began on " sunnies," or red-eyes, or 

 "brim," or, gudgeons, or even bull-heads or suckers, im- 

 bibed his first lessons in the virtue of patience during his 

 pin-feather days of angling. 



What finished, artistic fly-fisher but would gladly hark 

 back to those golden days ! What a monument of patience 

 he was, and what a fatalist as to luck, and what a firm be- 

 liever in the secret, unwritten mysteries of the art, as he 

 sat motionless on a rock, or perched upon a gnarled root, 

 or lay prone upon a grassy bank, watching his float with 

 all the eagerness and expectancy of a kingfisher, on his dead 

 branch, or an osprey on his elifl! ! 



And how well he knew every " hole," and every sub- 

 merged rock, and every snag; and just "how deep" to 

 place his float, and just how long to let it run before 

 " yanking " the fish or his hook into the limb overhead, or 

 into the bush behind him ! 



