"Of course you can, Robert," say I, "and you could catch still more if you spread a screen across the tiny stream or set a trap, or if you used a set line with a hundred hooks, just as the target shooter might more readily puncture the circle with a charge of shot than with the single bullet, or just as the greedyman with a blunderbuss might excel in number the wing shot by potting quail bunched on the ground instead of chivalrously bagging single birds on the wing with a pertinent arm."
The neophyte always confounds the angler with the indiscriminate fisherman and so implicates the angler in the cruelty and wastefulness associated with mere chance fishing, when in fact the Angler is the real propagator and protector of the fishes, and is in no sense cruel or wasteful.
The laws that prohibit greedy catches, and protect the mother fish in breeding time, are made by, enforced by, and supported financially by the Angler.
The rearing of the fishes that are placed in depleted waters was originated by, is conducted by, and is paid for by the Angler.
No other class has earnestly bothered its head, honestly lifted its hands, or liberally opened its purse in these matters, and the nearest association man in general has with the preservation of both wild fish and fowl is in uttering a cowardly, false accusation against the one who really deserves sole credit for the work, the sportsman, the genuine field sportsman, not the vicious sporting man of the race track, cockpit, and gambling den—two distinct species of animal, as vastly separated in character as the deerhound and the dragon.
And why this charge against the innocent? Simply because the guilty wish to shield and profit themselves, as the thief cries fire that he may pick your pocket in the panic that ensues.
But then there is a well meaning but wholly unenlightened element, that, influenced by the cry of the methodical spoiler, ignorantly condemns the honest man—the really humane men and women who are sincere in their condemnation but totally ignorant of their subject.
One of this sort, an estimable woman in public life, loudly preaches against the chase and is all the time drawing dividends that provide her with the means to indulge in the vulgarest and cruelest of fashionable extravagances—among them the wool of the unborn lamb, furs from the backs of fast-disappearing quadrupeds, and feathers of the farmers' most valuable insect-destroying song birds—and these wicked dividends derived from several acid factories, a gas house, a power plant, and a dye works that have not only killed off the trillions of fishes in several rivers but destroyed forever the very habitat of the species!
Another of this sort is well exemplified in the character of an old gentleman in Pennsylvania who loudly proclaims against trout fishing, but who utterly ruins nearly eight miles of trout water, once the home of thousands of lordly fish, by permitting his mill hands to run off sawdust in the streams.
This poor, ignorant soul objects to you and me chivalrously taking half a dozen specimens on the fly—catching the cunning trout with an imitation of the living thing itself destroys by the thousands for food and play—while he mercilessly slaughters the entire immediate supply, and prevents further propagation of the whole species with the refuse of his forest-devastating, money-making machine.