True, the Angler like all fishermen, and like the fishes themselves, kills his specimens, but this killing is ordained by nature herself—at least it has better grounds for excuse, if excuse it needs, than that ten-fold more destructive killing by the fishes that not only slay for food, but actually mutilate millions upon millions of their kind for the mere play afforded them in this practice—and though the Angler may be in the wrong when he humanely dispatches a few of the batch he breeds, he is not as hopeless as the wanton fisher, or as brutal as the unenlightened "reformers," the so-called humane lady with the fashionable furs and feathers of fast-disappearing species she never turns a hair to replenish or protect, and the old gentleman hypocrite with his murderous sawmill.
CHAPTER IV
FLY-FISHING
"Of all sports, commend me to angling; it is the wisest, virtuousest, best."—Thomas Hood.
When I go fishing, it is for the purpose of catching fish; when I go angling—fly-fishing—it is the soul I seek to replenish, not the creel.
"One of the charms of angling," says Pritt, "is that it presents an endless field for argument, speculation, and experiment."
True, but Anglers have no argument in the first feature of their pastime—the object of it. Fishermen and men who do not go fishing or angling argue that the object sought by the Angler is the fish, but Anglers all agree that the game is but one of the trillion of pleasant things that attract them to the pursuit of it.