114 NOTES ON FISH AND FISHING. 



stances, his success in no slight degree depending on the 

 nature of the rod, line, float, and hook he employs' for the 

 capture of the particular fish he is in quest of, and the 

 judgment with which he puts his tackle together. He 

 must be learned in the great variety of baits taken by 

 different fish, being stored, not only with book-learning, 

 but with what he has gleaned from brother anglers and 

 acquired by his own personal experience. Then, again, 

 he must be acquainted with the whole question of ground- 

 baiting, on which so much has been written, and on some 

 points concerning which scientific anglers still differ. 

 These and many other matters of angling knowledge he 

 must be master of, and, I need hardly add, of all the 

 various niceties of handling his rod, working his winch 

 and line, and striking, playing, and landing his fish. And 

 all these matters of knowledge, and accomplishments, are 

 only attained by careful study and a long and patient 

 apprenticeship to angling. When an angler has become 

 a learned angler, there is as much difference between his 

 knowledge and that of an unlearned angler as there is 

 between the knowledge of a Bacon and a country bump- 

 kin; and when the angler has become an " artist," there 

 is as much difference between his art and that of the 

 bungler as between the art of a Titian and a public-house 

 sign-painter — of a Phidias and a second-rate statuary of 

 the Marylebone Road. 



The thorough angler, too, is a man of as many expe- 

 dients as our old friend iro\v/j.T]Ti,<i , OBvcrcr6v<;,tke "resource- 

 ful " (if I may coin a word) Ulysses. He has need of 

 them, indeed, to meet the vagaries and capriciousness of 

 fish, the exigencies of the weather and water, and the con- 

 stantly recurring difficulties of fishing certain spots ; and 



