74 Bird Day Book 



ANGLING. 



ANGLING is one of the gentlest and most refined of arts known 

 to sportsmen of ancient and modern times; its devotees 

 belong to the humblest as well as to the most exalted stations of 

 life. Not only a sport of an excellent charcater is to be derived 

 from fishing but the catch affords an elegant and palatable table 

 article. 



The barefoot boy, with torn hat and tattered clothes, equipped 

 with hickory-pole, home-spun line, cheap hook, or bent pin, and 

 bait-can, repairs to the shady fishing-pole where the cool waters 

 purl, and enjoys enticing the lazy yellow-cat with his tempting lure 

 with a keen zest that rivals the thrills that accompany the landing 

 of the wiley black bass by the millionaire with his steel rod, gold 

 mounted diamond-bearing reel, silk line and phantom silver min- 

 now. 



Fishing furnishes a delightful medium of harmless open-air 

 enjoyment; it is restful, it brings the angler in close contact with 

 the wonderful charms of Mother Nature's enrapturing enchant- 

 ments ; the primitive instinct of man is called into play ; the sordid, 

 envious, jealous world is forgotten as the fisherman plies his art, 

 and his soul becomes attuned to the harmony of his magical envir- 

 onment. 



Alabama at one time, by reason of the fact that it was coursed 

 by myriads of clear and swift running streams, was an angler's 

 elysium ; black bass, bream, pike and, in the northern sections of the 

 State, salmon abounded in abundance, to say nothing of the dozens 

 of other species of excellent fish that readily took the hook. The 

 modern invention of nets, seines and traps, the use of dynamite in 

 our waters, has been responsible for the appalling decrease in our 

 fish supply. 



By the enactment of appropriate legislation for the protection 

 of fish and the strict enforcement of such laws, by restocking our 

 waters with desirable species of fish, the same ideal conditions can 

 be made to prevail as existed in the days primeval. 



