Dec. 19, 1908.] 
FOREST AND STREAM 
981 
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Fishing Trophies. 
Editor Forest and Stream: 
Mutual confidence being the foundation of so¬ 
ciety, we look askance at the liar as an enemy 
of the human race. There is, moreover, no 
pleasure in lying for its own sake. A lie that 
takes nobody in becomes to its inventor “a dead 
sea fruit that turns to ashes on the lips.” If 
he be not rewarded by the open-eyed admira¬ 
tion of his audience, he had better have remained 
silent—yea, though he has lied like Ananias. For 
these two reasons we all wish to be believed, and 
it is a pitiful circumstance that the more untruth¬ 
ful we are the greater is our hunger for cre¬ 
dence. The unimaginative man, who has nothing 
worth telling, need not and does not concern 
himself about the acceptance of his paltry stories. 
But the genius, who has struck out a first rate 
figment, is touched in his being if the child of 
his fancy fails to make good. 
Among anglers, therefore, a convention exists 
that everything shall be believed. In communi¬ 
ties where all men go armed, courtesy and tolera¬ 
tion flourish, because no one knows what wide¬ 
spread carnage may result from one over-hasty 
pistol shot. So fishermen, when they exchange 
their experiences, are careful to raise no eye¬ 
brow, to utter no dubious cough, lest the gentle¬ 
ness which characterizes the craft should sud¬ 
denly give place to wrath and contention. As 
the whole, so of the part. Mutual confidence is 
the foundation of our society. We proceed’ upon 
the principle of “a lie for a lie and an untruth 
for an untruth” all goes swimmingly, and har¬ 
mony prevails. 
I can never understand why anybody should 
have wished to improve upon this admirable 
state of things. Yet, at one time or another 
some angler must have found it unsatisfying. 
He was probably a fisherman of so prodigious 
a talent that he found that he had achieved the 
impossible by stretching too far the forbearance 
of his friends. And so, to bolster up his posi¬ 
tion among them, he went away and made a 
trophy. Armed with some distorted effigy of a 
ten-pound trout, he returned to their midst and 
laid it before them in silence—the proud, hurt 
silence of the deeply wronged man. Instead of 
tearing the traitor in pieces and pulverizing his 
cast, burning the fragments together and sowing 
the barren seashore with the ashes, they gazed 
dumbly upon the proof of his veracity, bowed 
low before him, and departed severally in search 
of plaster-of-Paris. A new era had dawned for 
anglers. Since that day, in order to be a great 
fisherman, it has been necessary to hang great 
casts on the wall. 
Now, if a man shows me a fish—a large dead 
fish—which he takes from his creel at the end 
of the day, I am prepared to hold it a convinc¬ 
ing proof of his skill. I do not know how he 
came by it. I do not know if it was caught on 
a dry olive or with a worm or with a strokehall, 
whatever that may be. He may have bought it 
from a boy. He may have charmed it out to 
him on the bank with the music of the flageolet 
for all I care. I do not ask these things. He 
has a fish. I can handle it and recognize it for 
a fish by its touch and its appearance and its 
fishy smell; I am content. If his fish is bigger 
than any of mine I tell him of one much bigger 
than his, which broke me just after I began in 
the morning, when my gut was not thoroughly 
soaked. Yet I own frankly that he is an angler, 
and I take off my hat to him. 
But a plaster cast is a different affair. On its 
evidence I would rather hang its owner than 
yield him a title of respect. A plaster cast rep¬ 
resents to me nothing but so much coin ex¬ 
pended. If I had enough money I could have 
a cast as big as the whale that swallowed Jonah; 
and I would. If the house did not contain it, 
it should stand in the garden, and I would paint 
it once every three years with no less than three 
coats of good and substantial oil color. 
It was one of the greatest of living anglers 
who unwittingly opened my eyes to the fact 
that these things are impostures. Wishing to 
impress me with a proper understanding of his 
supremacy, and the length of time he had en¬ 
joyed it, he once told me that the trophies of 
pike which he had collected when he was a mere 
MRS. MANN AND HER BEST CATCH. 
boy were so large that he could not afford to 
take them with him. He wished me, I believe, 
to infer from this that the loss of his unique col¬ 
lection was of less moment to him, the skillful 
angler, than was the cost of its freight to him, 
the undergraduate, with many calls upon his 
purse. But I gathered more from his abandon¬ 
ment of these trophies than he perhaps intended 
me to do. It is obvious that they were so big 
that they could not be taken without injury to 
the house, and that the ground landlord obtained 
an injunction against their removal as being par¬ 
cel of the freehold. To this inference a corol¬ 
lary attaches. As they could not be taken out, 
they were never brought in. In other words, 
they were made on the premises, and point to 
their creator’s inordinate passion for fame a 
great deal more surely than to his success with 
the rod. 
If a man should go into a court of law and 
swear that such and such a thing happened at 
half-past one by his watch, and should produce 
the very watch in proof of his statement, he 
would surely advance his case very little. Yet 
I have seen men stand in front of the counter¬ 
feit presentment of a trout so vast that, in the 
good old days, before trophies were introduced, 
not a man among us would have dared to whis¬ 
per its alleged weight—and swallow it, glass, 
case and inscription—without an effort. 
But the most pernicious feature of the trophy 
remains to be exposed. Unless an angler has 
casts to show, he is looked upon with suspicion. 
I may expend treasures of ingenuity in adorn¬ 
ing the relation of my exploits, but, in the pres¬ 
ence of my bare walls, my friends say: ‘‘We 
see that you do not care to have your fish set 
up. Some people don’t.” 
There are persons of course who cut their fish 
out of brown paper, and for some years after 
this method of angling was discovered it en¬ 
joyed a considerable popularity among the in¬ 
digent. But for one reason or another a brown 
paper shape is not convincing. The most credu¬ 
lous eye sees through it. I suppose it is too easy 
to make; brown paper is too cheap; the thing 
has been overdone. Besides it does not look at 
all like a fish. It has not the glass eye of the 
cast. It is flat, and, though you color it in chalk, 
it can never compete with the modeling of the 
paint of the more expensive kind of trophy. No 
one looks twice now at brown paper fish. They 
are thoroughly discredited. The worst angler 
dare no longer hope for help from them. I have 
not made one for years. As in every walk of 
life there is in angling one law for the rich and 
another for the poor. It is very hard. 
W. R. Gilbert. 
Drowning the Bait. 
“W. C. P.,” in the Yorkshire Weekly Post, 
relates the following classic Yorkshire angling 
story of the unsuccessful defendant in a fishing 
case, who attributed his defeat to the bungling 
of his solicitor, against whom he felt very sore. 
Shortly after the trial he was pursuing his 
favorite sport at the riverside, when the 
solicitor chanced to walk along that way. 
“Ah, indulging your pet fondness!” said the 
man of law. “What are you fishing for?” 
“The devil,” growled the angler. 
“Good gracious!” exclaimed the solicitor. 
“And what are you baiting with?” 
“A lawyer,” came the ungracious response. 
“Humph! You’ll never catch him with that,” 
sniffed the other. 
“I don’t care a hang whether I catch him or 
not,” snapped the angler, “if I can only drown 
the bait.” 
Mrs. Mann as an Angler. 
Clayton, N. Y., Dec. 5.— Editor Forest and 
Stream: I am sending you a photograph of 
Mrs. Herman Mann, her guide and a 42-pound 
muskallonge that she caught Sept. 18 last at 
Clayton. This lady is a resident of New York 
city. She comes here every season and has been 
very lucky in catching large muskallonge. She 
has probably caught more muskallonge than any 
other fisherman or fisherwoman that comes to 
the Thousand Islands. R. P. Grant. 
The Forest and Stream may be obtained from 
any neivsdealer on order. Ask your dealer to 
sup fly you regularly. 
