11. Ondawa.
12. “W. T.”
“Sometimes, of course, the loss of fish, or even fish and tackle, cannot be avoided: but good, careful work and the best materials will frequently obviate so annoying an ordeal. However, having struck your fish, the tackle and your own coolness are generally responsible for the issue, and woe betide you if careless knot or indifferent tying should have been made in constructing your leader or fry,”—Parker Gilmore.
“It is well known that no person who regards his reputation will ever kill a trout with anything but a fly. It requires some training on the part of the trout to take to this method. The uncultivated, unsophisticated trout in unfrequented waters prefers the bait and the rural people, whose sole object in going a-fishing appears to be to catch fish, indulge them in their primitive taste for the worm. No sportsman, however, will use anything but a fly, except he happens to be alone.”—Charles Dudley Warner.
“The true fly-fisher, who practises his art con amore, does not delight in big catches, nor revel in undue and cruel slaughter. He is ever satisfied with a moderate creel, and is content with the scientific and skilful capture of a few good fish. The beauties of nature, as revealed in his surroundings—the sparkling water, the shadow and sunshine, the rustling leaves, the song of birds and hum of insects, the health-giving breeze—make up to him a measure of true enjoyment, and peace, and thankfulness, that is totally unknown to the slaughterer of the innocents, whose sole ambition is to fill his creel and record his captures by the score.”—James A. Henshall, M.D.
“In the fly book the sportsman collects his treasures—the fairy imitations of the tiny nymphs of the water side—and it is the source of much delight in inspecting, replenishing and arranging during the season that the trout are safe from honorable pursuit.”—R. B. Roosevelt.
“There have been caught in Walden, pickerel, one weighing seven pounds, to say nothing of another which carried off a reel with great velocity, which the fisherman safely set down at eight pounds, because he did not see him. I am thus particular, because the weight of a fish is commonly its only title to fame.”—Henry D. Thoreau.
“Wet days in camp try ‘grit.’ ‘Clear grit’ brightens more crystalline the more it is rained upon; sham grit dissolves into mud and water.”—Theodore Winthrop.