My bayman develops fits bordering closely upon incurable hysteria if I lose a single bluefish in the play, but he worries not when he goes ashore with a sloopful of hand-liners and half a hundred fish he cannot make good use of.
"Pull it in! you'll lose it!" "We could catch a hundred if you wouldn't fool!" "The other boats'll beat us badly!" "There's a million right 'round the boat!"
These are a few of his excitable expressions. But, when I say to him, "What's the difference, Captain, in losing one or two fish here and wasting half a hundred on shore?" he calms down for a minute or two. Only for a minute or two, however, for he's in the game solely for fish, not the fishing. It's all numbers and size with him, and he's encouraged in this greed by nine out of every ten men he takes aboard his boat.
"We caught fifty," says Tom.
"We caught a hundred and ten," says Dick.
"We caught two hundred and sixty," says Harry.
And so the bayman brags, too, because it's purely business with him.
I have always found the greatest pleasure in fishing is the fishing and not the blood and bones associated with the pursuit. I would rather take five fair fish on fine tackle correctly manipulated than fill the hold with a hundred horrid monsters mastered by mere strength, as in hand-line trolling for bluefish in the ocean and for muskellonge, etc., in fresh water.
"But," says Captain Getemanyway, "I can catch more fish with a hand-line than you can with your fine rod and reel."