One good reason is that you may learn to know fish. Isaac Walton tells us that "it is good luck to any man to be on the good side of the man that knows fish." This is true, but you cannot learn to know fish unless you go forth to find them. There are about 15,000 kinds of fish in the world; 4,000 of them in North America, north of Panama. Now no man knows them all, not even on one continent, though some have written books upon them.
But the man who knows a large part of them has not only learned fish, but a host of other things as well. He calls to mind rosy-spotted trout of the Maine woods, and still rosier of many brooks of Unalaska. He has seen the blue parrot fishes of the Cuban reefs and the leaping grayling of the Gallatin and the Au Sable. He has tried the inconnu of the Mackenzie River and the tarpon of the Florida reefs. He knows the sparkling darters of the French Broad and the Swannanoa, the clear-skinned pescados blancos of the Chapala Lake and the pop-eyes and grenadiers of three miles drop of Bering Sea. Till you learn to know fish you cannot imagine what the water depths still have for you to know.
The second good reason why you should go a-fishing is that you may know the places where fishes go. All the finest scenery is full of fish. The Fire-Hole Canyon, the Roaring River, the Agna Bonita, the Rio Blanco, de Orizaba, the creek of Captains Harbor, the Saranna, the Roanoke, the Restigouche, the Nipigon, and the lakes of the St. John, all these are good fishing water of their kind. So is the Rio Almendares, the Twin Lakes, and the Eagle River, the Sawtooth Mountains, the Venados Islands, the shores of Clipperton, the Pearl Islands, Dead Man's Reef, No Man's Land, and the sand reaches of San Diego, Santa Barbara, Pensacola, and Beaufort. If you know all these you know the rest of the United States, with Canada and Mexico as well. All this is a goodly country, which it is well for a good citizen to understand. If you go a-fishing to know the fish, the rest will be granted to you. And with all the rest you have filled your mind not only with pictures of plunging trout, of leaping muscallonge and diving barracuda, but you have enriched it with endless vistas of deep, green pools; of foamy cascades, flower-carpeted meadows, of dark pines and sunny pines, white birch and clinging vines and wallowing mangrove. You have "dominion over palm and pine," the only dominion there is, for your dominion doth not "speedily pass away." You know the crescent bay, with its white breakers, the rush of the eager waters through the tide-worn estuary, the clinging fucus on the rocks at low-tide, the bark of sea wolves, and the roar of sea lions in the long lines of swaying kelp which reach far out into the farthest sea. This is good for you to know, for it is an antidote to selfishness and doubt and care. Then, too, it is good to know the men that live in the open where the fishes are. To shake their hands and share their hospitality will cure you of pessimism and distrust of democracy, and banish all the chimeras and goblins which vex those who live too long in cities. To hear the elk's whistle and the ouzel's call, the whirr of the grouse's wings and the rush of the water in the canyon, will get out of your brain the shriek of cable cars, the rattle of the elevated railway, and all the unwholesome jangle of men who meet to make money.
So there is a third reason for going a-fishing—not so good as the first two, but still very noble. We may fish for rest or exercise, which is but another form of rest. We may fish placidly in the placid brooks as Walton did, for chub and dace, till our thoughts flow as placidly as the Charles, or the Suwanee, or the Thames. Or we may fish in the rush and roar of the Des Chutes or the Buttermilk, tramping high through the pines to Agua Bonita, or far across the desert to Trapper's Lake, or struggling through the wooded reaches to the Saranac. We may come back at night tired enough to lie flat on the floor and "drip off the edges" of it, but withal at peace with all the world—it matters not whether we have fish or not.
There is one reason for fishing which is wholly indifferent—that is to go a-fishing for the meat which is in the fish. This is pan-fishing or pot-fishing. If you get your living by it, that is your business. It is frequently an honest business. But it is not a matter of pride. If you caught a hundred trout in the Au Sable and ate them all you were fortunate. They helped out your store of provisions, and trout are very fair eating when properly fried. But don't brag about it. It interests the rest of us no more than if you boasted of catching ten frogs, or eating a hundred chickens in a hundred consecutive days. The matter of fish as food belongs to economics or some other dismal science. By eating trout or bass you can never get "on the good side of the man who knows fish."
There remains one reason for going fishing which is positively horribly, disgustingly bad—that is, to see how many fish you can catch, just for numbers' sake. This is called "hog fishing," and whether your purpose be to brag over the size of your basket or to lie about the catch, or both, it is bad—bad for the fish, bad for the rivers, bad for your neighbors, bad for you. The good man will never slay fish wantonly. We creatures of God on the earth together should enjoy each other, and the beautiful world, which is ours alike.
Because man is the wisest of all, with greatest power of knowledge and capacity for happiness, it is all the more incumbent on him to preserve the world as fair as he found it, and to respect the rights so far as may be of every other man and beast.
