As to creels (or baskets) the merest mention will suffice. At the nearest newspaper office will be found one of suitable size and fair proportions. It is called a “waste basket” and is specially constructed to hold the abnormal catches made by winter anglers.
Possibly the highest charm of winter angling (or as some call it “Fireside fishing”) is the grand wide ranging freedom of it. Three vast realms are at one’s command. The realm of Memory, with its myriad streams of recollection filled with the fish and fancies of the Past. The realm of Anticipation bright with golden dreams of the coming open season, and lastly the realm of Pure Lying, wherein from the deep, dark pools of his own inner turpitude the angler at each cast hooks a speckled-sided Hallucination (Salmo Hullucionidus), a large-mouthed Prevarication (Micropterus Prevaricatrix), or a silver-gleaming Falsehood (Salmoides Falsus), each more huge than the other, and all “beating the record” quite out of the field. *
* Note—The writer respectfully submits this nomenclature to revision by Dr. Henshall, an unquestioned authority.
What wonderful vistas, what remotely narrowing perspectives, stretch away into the vague distances of the first two of these grand realms! How far reachingly the life-lines of anglers uncoil in both directions from the reel of time—“playing” the hoarded treasures of memory at one end, and making tournament casts into the future with the other! Are not the time-worn rod-case and the well-thumbed fly-book and note-book on his table, side by side with the last daintily tapered product of his plane, rasp and scraper—his rod, just finished for the coming summer—which, perchance for him may never come?
Is he not at once revelling in the past and dreaming of the future?
There is no sport, when known in all its branches, that is so fully an all-the-year-round delight as is angling.
Many an idle hour of the long winter evenings may be pleasantly passed by the angler in “going over” his tackle, oiling his reels, airing his lines, and re-arranging his flies, freeing them from the moth and rust that do corrupt. He is but a slovenly worshipper at the shrine of the good Saint Izaak, who casts aside his panoply after the last bout of autumn and gives no thought to it again till spring makes her annual jail-delivery of imprisoned life. Constant care of the belongings of his art, be he fly or bait fisher, is characteristic of the faithful angler, and only simple justice to the tackle maker. There is nothing sadder or more dejected-looking than a crippled rod and a neglected “kit” full of snarled lines, rusty hooks, and moth-eaten flies.
In the matter of winter angling, the fly-fisherman has a decided advantage over him who uses bait alone. The art for him has more side issues. He may, if he can, learn to tie flies or contrive and construct newfangled fly-books. The effort to learn will probably ruin his temper and break up his domestic relations if he has any, but it is not for me to say that “le jeu ne vaut pas la chandelle.” If no domestic ties trend him toward caution as yet, and he dreads none in the future, he may even venture the attempt to make his own rods.
Let me say a word here of amateur tackle-making from the standpoint of personal experience. It is agreeable—it is even fascinating, but it does not pay; very few have the mechanical deftness, the patience, taste, and judgment combined to really excel in any of its branches. No young man with a career to make for himself by dint of constant toil or close application to a business or profession has any right to devote to these arts the time and attention they demand if even a fair degree of skill is to be attained. For the angler of “elegant leisure” this has no weight perhaps, but he too will, as a rule, find better tackle than he can make, readily at his command at a cost so inconsiderable as to quite justify me in saying that his amateur work will not pay—for, if he be young, out-of-door sports will far better serve to lay up in his still developing frame the treasures of health and vitality for future use. There are those, indeed, for whom it is a proper employment of time and who are endowed with the peculiar faculties required. To such it is a charming occupation, a delightful distraction, and a choice factor in the enjoyment of the winter angler by the fireside.
Every angler ought to keep a record or diary of his angling bouts. Most anglers do so, I think. Therein should be recorded not only the weight and size of daily catch, the number saved, and the number thrown back, (I look back with especial pride upon my record in this direction), but also some jottings of scenes, impressions, and incidents. Reading therefrom years after at the fireside he will detect a faint perfume of old forests in the winter air, and hear again in fancy the swirl of swift waters sweeping among mossy rocks.