“P. S.—What are the prospects for the spring fishing in your neighborhood? Did the late freshets of last fall destroy the trout eggs deposited in the streams about you?” or, “Did the unusual severity of the winter cause destruction to the trout spawn in the headwaters of your brooks?”
Some evening when the “fever is on” you will write to a guide up in the North Woods, some honest, faithful fellow that you have known in all weathers for many seasons:
“Be sure and take a boat over to Mahogany Pond, (that is not the name of it, for its title is taken from a domestic wood that grows on its shores), before the snow goes off and keep me informed as to the condition of things, for I wish to start and be with you as soon as the water is free from ice. I shall bring a friend with me, the gentleman I told you about last summer, who knows the name of every plant that grows in the woods, as well as the name of every fish that swims in the water. The old camp, with a few repairs, will answer, as Mr. ——— is an old woodsman and angler of the first order, and requires no more than the few simples that you usually take to camp. He, like myself, goes into the woods to fish and fill his lungs with the pure mountain air that you live in.”
When Dick reads the letter he smiles, for it contains nothing unknown to him before. It is his own idea to carry a boat to the pond on the snow, for there is no road, path or trail, but he only says to himself:
“He’s got it just as bad this spring as ever. The medicine will be ready for him.”
The angler does all this and more; mind, I say the angler, for the other fellow that goes a-fishing because it is the thing to do, or because he has heard some one dilate upon the pleasure to be found in practising the art, will do nothing of the sort. It is too much trouble, or, more likely, these things never occur to him.
How the man of severe aspect who, if he smiles, looks as though he wore a petrified smile that he had bought at a bargain, and whose sole ambition and pleasure is to make money, live as long as he can in doing so, and die as rich as possible; this man, if he could know, and comprehend, what is passing through the angler’s mind at this season, would say such vagabonds are the cumberers of the earth; but he could not find a “cumberer” in all the land who would change places with him, take his joyless life, sapless heart, frozen visage, narrow views and great wealth, and give in return the angler’s light heart, happy disposition, love of God, his fellow-man and Nature; his resources within himself, engendered by his fondness for the wild woods, to enjoy the past and anticipate the future, whatever betide; his desire to see good in every thing, his clear conscience and his fishing tackle.
Bear in mind that the pleasure of angling is not alone the consummation of your hopes for a large score. Hear what Sir Humphrey Davy says on this subject:
“From the savage in his rudest and most primitive state, who destroys a piece of game, or a fish, with a club or spear, to man in the most cultivated state of society, who employs artifice, machinery, and the resources of various other animals, to secure his object, the origin of the pleasure is similar, and its object the same: but that kind of it requiring most art may be said to characterize man in his highest or intellectual state; and the fisher for salmon and trout with the fly employs not only machinery to assist his physical powers, but applies sagacity to conquer difficulties; and the pleasure derived from ingenious resources and devices, as well as from active pursuits, belongs to this amusement. Then, as to its philosophical tendency, it is a pursuit of moral discipline, requiring patience, forbearance, and command of temper.
“As connected with natural science, it may be vaunted as demanding a knowledge of the habits of a considerable tribe of created beings—fishes, and the animals that they prey upon, and an acquaintance with the signs and tokens of the weather, and its changes, the nature of waters, and of the atmosphere. As to its poetical relations, it carries us into the most wild and beautiful scenery of nature, amongst the mountain lakes, and the clear and lovely streams that gush from the higher ranges of elevated hills, or that make their way through the cavities of calcareous strata. How delightful in the early spring, after the dull and tedious time of winter, when the frosts disappear and the sunshine warms the earth and waters, to wander forth by some clear stream, to see the leaf bursting from the purple bud, to scent the odors of the bank perfumed by the violet, and enamelled as it were with the primrose and the daisy; to wander upon the fresh turf below the shade of trees, whose bright blossoms are filled with the music of the bee; and on the surface of the waters to view the gaudy flies sparkling like animated gems in the sunbeams, whilst the bright and beautiful trout is watching them from below; to hear the twittering of the water-birds, who, alarmed at your approach, rapidly hide themselves beneath the flowers and leaves of the water-lily; and, as the season advances, to find all these objects changed for others of the same kind, but better and brighter, till the swallow and the trout contend as it were for the gaudy Mayfly, and till in pursuing your amusement in the calm and balmy evening, you are serenaded by the songs of the cheerful thrush and melodious nightingale, performing the office of paternal love, in thickets ornamented with the rose and woodbine.”