And fishing brings out a lot of the points in scouting, especially if you fish with a fly. To be successful you must know a lot about the habits and ways of the fish, what kind of haunt he frequents, in what kind of weather he feeds, and at what time of day, which kind of food he likes best, how far off he can see you, and so on. Without knowing these you can fish away until you are blue in the face and never catch one.
A fish generally has his own particular haunt in the stream and when once you discover a fish at home you can go and creep near and watch all that he does.
Then you have to be able to tie very special knots with delicate gut—which is a bit of a puzzler to any boy whose fingers are all thumbs.
And you have to have infinite patience; your line gets caught up in bushes and reeds, or your clothes—or when it can't find any other body it ties itself up in a knot round itself. Well, it's no use getting angry with it. There are only two things to do—the first is to grin a smile, and the second is to set to work, very leisurely, to undo it. Then you will have loads of disappointments in losing fish through the line breaking, or other mishaps; but remember those are what happen to everybody when they begin fishing and are the troubles that in the end make it so very enjoyable when you have got over them.
And when you catch your fish, do as I do—only keep those you specially want for food or as specimens; put back the others the moment you have landed them. The prick of the hook in their leathery mouth does not hurt them permanently, and they swim off quite happily to enjoy life in their water again.
If you use a dry fly, that is keeping your fly sitting on top of the water instead of sunk under the surface, you have to really stalk your fish just as you would deer or any other game, for a trout is very sharp-eyed and shy.
You can also catch fish by netting, or, as scouts often have to do, by spearing them with a very sharp three-pronged spear. I have done it many a time, but it requires practice to be successful.
A scout, of course, has to look at animals of all sorts, partly with an eye to their being useful to him sometime or another for food. Reptiles don't look tempting as food but, once you have tasted frogs legs nicely cooked, you will want more of them.
I believe that fried snake, like fried eel, is not half bad.
I have eaten the huge kind of lizard called an iguana. He had his head and tail cut off to enable him to go into the cooking pot, and when he was boiled and put on the table he looked exactly like a headless baby with his arms and legs and little hands. And when we ate him he tasted just like a baby too. Well—you know what a baby tastes like—sort of soft chicken flavoured with violet-powder!