ANGLING
—is the art of catching fish by rods and lines, of different construction, with baits, natural and artificial, according to the season of the year, and the fish intended to be caught. As this sport (if it may with consistency be termed one) is not very eagerly sought, and enjoyed but by few, it will not be much enlarged on here; more particularly as those who enter into the minutiæ of enquiry, and spirit of the practice, will find whole volumes appropriate to this particular purpose. A writer of no small celebrity, in alluding to this subject, says, "FISHING is but a dull diversion, and, in my opinion, calculated only to teach patience to a PHILOSOPHER;" and this most likely is the echoed opinion of every fox-hunter in the kingdom; for it should seem that the simple sameness of angling, and the more noble, healthy and exhilarating sports of HUNTING and SHOOTING, were, in a certain degree, heterogeneous, as it has been but very rarely or ever known, that the enthusiastic admirers of one were ever warm or anxious followers of the other.
The kinds of fish which mostly attract the attention of anglers in the principal fresh water rivers and trout streams of the kingdom, (whether for the sport of killing, or the supply of the table,) are salmon, trout, pike, barbel, chub, perch, roach, dace, and gudgeon: CARP and TENCH may also be taken into the aggregate, upon the score of attraction; but instances are few where any great quantity has been taken in this way, as they are, in general, particularly in ponds, motes, and still waters, too shy and cautious to become the hasty victims of human invention.
Upon the subject of ANGLING, it may not be inapplicable to term it a most unfortunate attachment with those classes of society who have no property but their trades, and to whom time alone must be considered a kind of freehold estate: such time lost by a river side, in the frivolous and uncertain pursuit of a paltry plate of fish, instead of being employed in business, has reduced more men to want, and their families to a workhouse, than any species of sport whatever. Racing, hunting, shooting, coursing, and cocking, (destructive as the latter has been,) have never produced so long a list of beggars as the sublime art of angling; in confirmation of which fact, the eye of observation need only turn to any of those small country towns near which there happens to run a fishing stream, when the profitable part of the pleasure may be instantly perceived by the poverty of the inhabitants.