Fig. 224.—Fishing for Tai, Tokyo Bay. (Photograph by J. O. Snyder.)
"To my mind, there is no real sport in any kind of fishing except fly-fishing. This sitting on the bank of a muddy stream with your bait sunk, waiting for a bite, may be conducive to gentleness and patience of spirit, but it has not the joy of action in which a healthy man revels. How much more sport is it to clamber over fallen logs that stretch far out a-stream, to wade slipping over boulders and let your fly drop caressingly on ripples and swirling eddies and still holes! It is worth all the work to see the gleam of a silver side as a half-pounder rises, and, with a flop, takes the fly excitedly to the bottom. And then the nervous thrill as, with a deft turn of the wrist, you hook him securely—whoever has felt that thrill cannot forget it. It will come back to him in his law office when he should be thinking of other things; and with it will come a longing for that dear remembered stream and the old days. That is the hold trout-fishing takes on a man.
"It is spring now and I feel the old longing myself, as I always do when life comes into the air and the smell of new growth is sweet. I got my rod out to-day, put it together, and have been looking over my flies. If I cannot use them, I can at least muse over days of the past and dream of those to come." (Waldemar Young.)
FOOTNOTES:
[146] The cormorant is tamed for this purpose. A harness is placed about its wings and a ring about the lower part of its neck. Two or three birds may be driven by a boy in a shallow stream, a small net behind him to drive the fish down the river. In a large river like that of Gifu, where the cormorants are most used, the fishermen hold the birds from the boats and fish after dark by torchlight. The bird takes a great interest in the work, darts at the fishes with great eagerness, and fills its throat and gular pouch as far down as the ring. Then the boy takes him out of the water, holds him by the leg and shakes the fishes out into a basket. When the fishing is over the ayu are preserved, the ring is taken off from the bird's neck, and the zako or minnows are thrown to him for his share. These he devours greedily.