Chapter I: The Joys of Angling

Now, when the first foul torrents of the brooks,
Swell’d with the vernal rains, is ebb’d away,
And, whitening, down their mossy-tinctured stream
Descends the billowy foam; now is the time
To tempt the trout. The well-dissembled fly,
The rod fine-tapering with elastic spring,
Snatch’d from the hoary steed the floating line,
And all thy slender watery stores prepare.
* * * * *
When with his lively ray, the potent sun
Has pierced the streams and roused the finny race,
Then, issuing cheerful, to thy sport repair.
Chief should the western breezes curling play,
And light o’er ether bear the shadowy clouds,
High to their fount, this day, trace up the brooks;
The next, pursue their rocky-channel’d maze
Down to the river, in whose ample wave
Their little Naiads love to sport at large.
THOMSON’S _Seasons_

Fresh- or sweet-water angling is one of the most ancient, cleanest, most engrossing, enduring, healthful, and accessible of recreations available in this world of mingled riches and poverty, pleasure and pain, of steadfast affections and changing regard; and it possesses a considerable literature, both delightful and classical, extending from before the times of Dame Juliana Berners, prioress of Sopwell nunnery, and of its patron saint Izaak Walton, down to the present day. “Bards have sung its praises, traditions have hallowed it, and philosophers have reveled in the gentle pastime, since the days of Oppian and Homer.” Need we say here for the enlightenment of anyone that Walton is the immortal author of “a discourse on fish and fishing not unworthy the perusal of most anglers,” the same being, as another famed angling writer aptly has characterized it, “a conglomeration of fertile meadows, crystal brooks, meandering streams, milk-maids’ songs, and moral reflections,” which down through the years has continued to “prove irresistible.”

Perhaps the reader may now be curious to know something of what the good Dame Berners had to say of “fysshynge”, in the year 1500 A. D.--“Dowteles thene folowyth it, that it must be the dysporte of fysshynge with an angle. For all other manere is also laborous, and grevous, whych many tymes hath be seen cause of grete infirmytes. But the angler may have no colde, nor no dysease nor angre, but if he be causer hymself. For he may not lese at the moost but a lyne or an hoke: of whych he may have store plentee of his owne makynge, as this symple treatise shall teche him. So, thenne, his losse is not greous, and other greffes may he not have, savynge but yf ony fisse breke away after that he is take on the hoke; or elles that he catche nought; which been not greous. For yf he dooth as this treatyse techyth, but yf there be nought in the water, and yette atte the leesth he hath holsom walke and mery, at his ease: a swete ayre of the swete savours of the mede floures, that makyth hym hungry. He hereth the melodyous armony of foules. He seeth the yonge swannes; heerons; duckes; cotes, and many other foules wyth theyr brodes; whyche me seemyth better than alle of noyse of houndys; the blastes of hornys and the crye of foulis that hunters, faukeners and foulers can make. And yf the angler take fysshe: surely thenne is there noo man merier than he is in his spyryte.”

In 1919 Emerson Hough comments at sixty-three: “By process of elimination, I have found a great many other sorts of sport of late to be too hard or too easy or too clean or too dirty.... Indeed, what really can equal the art of the fly-rod on a good trout-water? It is clean, it is beautiful beyond comparison, it is difficult and yet alluring.... It is dangerous for a man with a weak heart to go trout-fishing, for he is liable to get a case of shell-shock at any time. You are going down a nice, quiet stream and you see a dark corner over there where a tree hangs out, over a pool which is as smooth as oil and black as ink. You know what is going to happen. You know you’re going to be scared. You feel that you shall either jump into the creek or run for home when it does happen. It is manifestly impossible that it should happen at all--and yet that terrifying thing does happen. There comes the tremendous unheralded flash into the air of a crimson and white and orange creature, a terrifying phantasm, a moment seen, then gone forever. Did you see it? Why, yes; but you forgot all about your rod and it certainly must have spit out the fly which it took as it went down half an hour ago. You stand and tremble, and look in apprehension at the spot where the little wrinkles still are spreading out on the oily ink. He might do that again. It takes a brave man to go after trout.”

It is surprising how many notables amongst professional workers and men prominent in the larger affairs of business and of the State have succumbed to the allurements of angling. Says Dr. van Dyke: Perhaps the fisherman whom you overtook on the stream “is a man whom you have known in town as a lawyer or a doctor, a merchant or a preacher, going about his business in the hideous respectability of a high silk-hat and a long black coat. How good it is to see him now in the freedom of a flannel shirt and a broad-brimmed grey felt with flies stuck around the band. I have had the good luck to see quite a number of bishops, parochial and diocesan, in that style, and the vision has always dissolved my doubts in regard to the validity of their claim to the true apostolic succession.”

The incurable piscatorial proclivities of President Cleveland and of his eminent surgeon friend Dr. Bryant, of Joseph Jefferson and of Rev. Dr. van Dyke himself, are matters of quite common knowledge; but there are many guilty others not known to the populace. There was Sir Humphry Davy, Admiral Nelson, Sir Walter Scott, Patrick Henry, Daniel Webster, “Christopher North” (John Wilson, Professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of Edinburgh), Lord Tennyson, Canon Kingsley, Audubon the naturalist, James Russell Lowell, Henry Ward Beecher, President Harrison, Bishop Potter, and James Whitcomb Riley; and think you that Thomson, the poet of _The Seasons_, was not a fisher? Davy tells in his _Salmonia_ how, when the Bishop of Durham inquired of the great Dr. Paley “when one of his most important works would be finished, he said, with great simplicity and good humor, ‘My Lord, I shall work steadily at it _when the fly-fishing season is over_.’” And this reminds us that Canon Greenwell died in this same Durham only a year ago the eighteenth of January, at the ripe age of ninety-seven years. A famous English archæologist, he was known to the angling world as the inventor of “Greenwell’s Glory,” a salmon fly which has carried his name to rivers in all quarters of the globe. The wings of this fly are mottled black and brown, the legs are made from a red and black hackle-feather, and the body is dark-brown or olive silk or wool and ribbed with yellow silk or gold tinsel.

Continuing with these later days, it would be difficult to cite an example of more capable versatility than that exhibited in the life of S. Weir Mitchell, M. D.--equally noted as neurologist and novelist--and he did not omit a keen enthusiasm for angling. There is Dr. Richard C. Cabot, who is the accomplished Assistant Professor of Medicine at Harvard University and the man responsible for the modern Social Service hospital idea, whose inspiring book, _What Men Live By_, should be read and reread by everybody, angler or otherwise; and his confrère at Harvard, Dr. James G. Mumford, author of another charming volume, _A Doctor’s Table Talk_. The names of the sculptor J. Q. A. Ward, of “our friend” John Burroughs, of Thomas A. Edison, Eugen Ysaye the great Belgian violinist, Andrew Lang, Viscount Edward Grey, our Secretaries of State and of the Treasury, Robert Lansing and William G. McAdoo, the Assistant Secretary of the Interior, Alexander T. Vogelsang, of Marshal Joffre, and Sir Harry Lauder, and of a multitude of others which time and space alone forbid that we should mention, come to memory; the great surgeon McBurney, of appendicitis fame, neither do we forget him, and at the next instant our thoughts instinctively turn to Dr. Robert T. Morris, who wields a pen as keen, swift, and sure as his scalpel, when he isn’t wielding the latter, growing nuts, flora- or faunaizing, or angling for salmon. As for Andrew Carnegie, the noted financier and philanthropist, when at the threshold of his seventies, upon returning from a brief vacation, he is quoted as having diverted an interviewer who sought to draw him out concerning a recent steel operation of magnitude, by exclaiming: “What is a matter of a few-million dollars’ profit compared with landing a ten-pound pickerel!” When in his eighties, on July 7th, 1917, angling in Lake Mahkeenac near Lenox, Mass., he caught two black bass, thirty-four perch, and ten sunfish, in two-hours’ time, declaring he never enjoyed better sport on his favorite loch in Scotland; and he was fishing in these same waters within a few days of his death, in the Summer of 1919.

The compilation of such a list of memorable men, of great eminence and learning, who likewise were great lovers and devotees of angling, has been possible at almost any period in the world’s history. From a famous reference in Father “Iz. Wa.” we will mention “Dr. Nowel, sometimes Dean of S. Paul’s in London (in which Church his Monument stands yet undefaced) a man that in the Reformation of Queen Elizabeth was so noted for his meek spirit, deep Learning, Prudence and Piety, that the then Parliament and Convocation both, chose, injoyned, and trusted him to be the man to make a Catechism for publick use, such an one as should stand as a rule for faith and manners to their posteritie: And the good old man (though he was very learned, yet knowing that God leads us not to Heaven by many nor by hard questions) like a honest Angler, made that good, plain, unperplext Catechism, that is printed with the old Service Book. I say, this good man was as dear a lover, and a constant practicer of Angling, as any Age can produce; and his custome was to spend (besides his fixt hours of prayer, those hours which by command of the Church were enjoined the old Clergy, and voluntarily dedicated to devotion by many Primitive Christians:) besides those hours, this good man was observed to spend a tenth part of his time in Angling; and also (for I have conversed with those which have conversed with him) to bestow a tenth part of his Revenue, and usually all his fish, amongst the poor that inhabited near to those Rivers in which it was caught, saying often, _That Charity gave life to Religion_: and at his return to his House would praise God that he had spent that day free from worldly trouble, both harmlessly and in a Recreation that became a Church-man. And this good man was well content, if not desirous, that Posterity should know he was an Angler, as may appear by his Picture, now to be seen, and carefully kept in Brazennose College, to which he was a liberal Benefactor; in which Picture he is drawn leaning on a desk with his Bible before him, and on one hand of him his Lines, Hooks, and other Tackling lying in a round; and on his other hand are his Angle-rods of several sorts; and by them this is written, ‘That he died 13 Feb. 1601, being aged 95 years, 44 of which he had been Dean of St. Paul’s Church; and that his age had neither impaired his hearing, nor dimmed his eyes, nor weakened his memory, nor made any of the faculties of his mind weak or useless.’ ’Tis said that Angling and Temperance were great causes of these blessings, and I wish the like to all that imitate him, and love the memory of so good a man.”

Continues Walton, “My next and last example shall be that undervaluer of money, the late Provost of Eton College, Sir Henry Wotton (a man with whom I have often fish’d and convers’d) a man whose foreign imployments in the service of this Nation, and whose experience, learning, wit, and cheerfulness, made his company to be esteemed one of the delights of mankind; this man, whose very approbation of Angling were sufficient to convince any modest Censurer of it, was also a most dear lover, and a frequent practicer of the Art of Angling; of which he would say, ‘’Twas an imployment for his idle time, which was not idly spent;’ for Angling was after tedious study, ‘A rest to his mind, a cheerer of his spirits, a diverter of sadness, a calmer of unquiet thoughts, a Moderator of passions, a procurer of contentedness, and that it begat habits of peace and patience in those that profest and practic’d it.’

“Sir, this was the saying of that Learned man; and I do easily believe that peace, and patience, and a calm content did cohabit in the cheerful heart of Sir Henry Wotton, because I know that when he was beyond seventy years of age, he made this description of a part of the present pleasure that possest him, as he sat quietly in a Summer’s evening on a bank a fishing; it is a description of the Spring, which because it glided as soft and sweetly from his pen, as that River does now by which it was then made, I shall repeat it unto you:

“This day dame Nature seem’d in love;
The lustie sap began to move;
Fresh juice did stir th’ imbracing Vines,
And birds had drawn their Valentines,
The jealous _Trout_, that low did lye,
Rose at a well dissembled flie;
There stood my friend with patient skill,
Attending of his trembling quil.
Already were the eaves possest
With the swift Pilgrim’s dawbed nest:
The Groves already did rejoice,
In _Philomel’s_ triumphing voice:
The showers were short, the weather mild,
The morning fresh, the evening smil’d.
_Joan_ takes her neat rub’d pail, and now
She trips to milk the sand-red Cow;
Where, for some sturdy foot-ball Swain,
_Joan_ strokes a _Sillibub_ or twaine;
The fields and gardens were beset
With _Tulips_, _Crocus_, _Violet_,
And now, though late, the modest _Rose_
Did more than half a blush disclose.
Thus all looks gay, and full of chear
To welcome the new livery’d year.”

Would you go “a-angling” then, thou sedate and solid citizen, be last of all restrained because of the company you will keep. Do you not recall about that historical fishers’ lunch around the little camp-fire by the waterside?--“Peter saith, ... I go a fishing. They say, ... We also go with thee.... Jesus stood on the shore.... Then Jesus saith unto them, Children, have ye any meat? They answered him, No. And he said, ... Cast the net on the right side of the ship, and ye shall find.... As soon as they were come to land, they saw a fire of coals there, and fish laid thereon, and bread. Jesus saith, ... Bring of the fish which ye have now caught.... Come and dine. Jesus then cometh, and taketh bread, and giveth them, and fish likewise.” If, now, your conservatism still shies at “new-fangled frivolities,” read in the nineteenth chapter of Isaiah about “all they that cast angle into the brooks;” in the book of Job, where the Lord asked him, “Canst thou take out a fish with the hook?” or in the first chapter of Habakkuk, how “they take up all of them with the angle.”

Perhaps the sustained interest of such men as those referred to is not so surprising either, when we consider the opportunities that angling affords of intimate, leisurely enjoyment of Nature in her most beguiling moods and with the added zest of agreeable companionship; for anglers are admittedly a quiet, considerate, genial, and gentle craft.

The pastime does indeed supply a most happy and inspiring change of activities from the usual more or less sedentary occupations of its most ardent votaries, its varied technic with the combination of open-air life, not too fatiguing exercise, and the complete change of environment being subtly efficacious for the solacement of nerves jangled and out of tune and for the revivifying of the whole man--or woman. Physicians have reason a-plenty keenly to realize that a warped mentality or a sick soul presents an infinitely more serious problem than does a disordered body. I have now in mind one who but a few short months ago was the personification of ambition and will power, and who at the present time is a pitiable example of a strong man bereft of confidence and groping and shrinking in the grip of paralyzing fears. By what means should men strive to forestall such a calamity? and how are they to be helped out of such a Slough of Despond? Dr. Richard C. Cabot says that what the blind, the worried, the invalid, the discouraged, the convalescent, the neurasthenic, the drug-victim--what the whole world needs both to keep well people well and for the restoration of the sick, is vitality and resisting power. “As contradistinguished from the hothouse care of sanitaria, we are realizing more and more that the sufferer must be encouraged to get back into real life, which is the best of all teachers and doctors. Nothing less fruitful will nourish body and soul.”

“Real life” he defines as more satisfying and interesting occupation, more recreation or refreshment through art, play, or natural beauty, deeper and more intensive affection; and if a fourth resource, worship, gets into life, so much the better, though it has become today so unfashionable a habit that one must be prepared to shock the modern ear and to violate all the scientific proprieties if one confesses to a belief in it. The interplay of these four inexorable blessings--responsibility, recreation, affection, and through them a glimpse of God--is the end of life, and the sole worthy end in my creed, says he; and continues:

‘I came to the belief first from a doctor’s point of view and as a result of a search for the essential principles of healing within a special field. This is the end of all education, all moral training, the food of the soul in health or in disease, needed by all, to feed our own souls as well as to cure and to prevent social ills. This is the vital nourishment without which all material relief soon becomes a farce or a poison, just as medicine in most chronic diseases is a farce or a poison. Every human being, man, woman, and child, hero and convict, neurasthenic and deep-sea fisherman, needs the blessing of God through these four gifts. It is not often, I believe, that a whole life is possessed by any one of the elements of play, work, or drudgery. Work usually makes up the larger part of life, with play and drudgery sprinkled in. I have rarely seen drudgery so overwhelming as to crush out altogether the play of humor and good-fellowship during the day’s toil as well as after it.’

So this book has particularly to do with refreshment through the play that is “sprinkled in,” through the contact with art--since the building of a bamboo fly-rod and the skilled use thereof both are arts--and with the beauty of nature and its incentive to truest worship of God; and all of this naturally enough is of interest to the medical-man from the viewpoints both of outdoor recreation and of indoor handicraft.

In some way, and at stated intervals, all of us should divert from our routine work, and do something spontaneously--whole-heartedly, with the zest and abandonment of the boy we used to be, and still should be on occasion. For

“He that works, then runs away,
Will live to work another day.”

Very few of us indeed are so placed as never to find it possible either to “break out” or to “break away”; none incessantly so situated as was that unknown ancient and most unfortunate author of this pathetic pair of couplets:

See I a dog? there’s ne’er a stone to throw!
Or stone? there’s ne’er a dog to hit I trow!
Or if at once both stone and dog I view--
It is the king’s dog! Damn! What _can_ I do?

COPYRIGHT BY THE CENTURY CO.

“ITS PATRON SAINT IZAAK WALTON”]

Says Dr. A. T. Bristow in _The World’s Work_ magazine, “The man who wishes to secure the best results from the days which he spends in search of rest and renewed vigor, will not seek the artificial life of our great hotels with all the attendant excitement, false standards of living, and a table which is an invitation to gluttony. So we in our struggle with the gigantic forces which make up modern civilization must return to nature for refreshment and renewed strength. The forest, the mountains, and the streams hide the elixir of life. We need to get away from the crowds, from idle gossip, from the trivial observances of society, the fetters of custom. There is no rest like that which is hid for the weary within the shady recesses of the great woods, and camp life is far preferable to that counterfeit of camp life, a hotel in the mountains. You can sleep as soundly in a bark camp on a thick bed of balsam as on the softest mattress in a hotel bedroom. A tramp through the woods is what you need for mind and body. The fatigue will bring to your tired eyes sleep far more refreshing than the stuporous slumber you have experienced in a hotel, superinduced by late hours and the plethora of over-eating without sufficient exercise.

“Remember that there is no better exercise for anyone than walking. It gives the rambler time to learn needed lessons from nature, and it is free from the excitement of high speed, which is the very thing that a vacation should avoid. The man who hurls himself through space in a high-powered automobile is not resting. He simply is substituting one form of mental stimulation for another. He is like those unfortunate victims of the drug habit who go from morphine to cocaine and from both to whisky. Their diseased nerves crave some sort of artificial stimulus. So it often is with our business-men in their ‘relaxations.’

“What these men need is the repose of the woods, the calmness of spirit that comes to the tired mind only amidst mountain solitudes. To invite a man of active mind to a ramble through the forest without an incentive is, however, almost as bad as to advise him to saw wood for exercise. Such an occupation affords exercise, but it is a nauseous dose which is too often taken submissively if not with cheerfulness. There is no better motive for the forest wanderer, whether his paths be by mountain stream or highland tarn, than the time-honored sport of good old Izaak Walton. Go a-fishing.

“The angler’s art is but a pretext or rather the incentive to a ramble, and not the sole object of the fisherman, unless, alas! he belongs to that too common variety, the man whose sole object is his catch. Such a man fishes always with a worm, hides fingerlings in the depth of his basket, and photographs his catch as a witness to his crimes. He is not a fisherman but a butcher. A yellow primrose on the river’s brim is to him a primrose and nothing more. The true fisherman loves to catch fish, to match his wits against the wary trout, but as he wanders from pool to pool the songs of the birds greet him restfully; every turn in the stream reveals a nook in which strange wild flowers nestle. The gentle excitement of the sport prevents the scene from becoming monotonous. The element of chance, the uncertainty of the catch, adds the drop of tabasco sauce which gives zest to the day. And the noontide meal by the brink of the stream! When did a meal have a more delightful flavor? Delmonico never served a trout like unto those we have eaten by the banks of a mountain brook with the clear blue sky above, the waving forest round about and the murmuring stream at our feet. The hour of contemplation comes afterward with the pipe of peace in our hand instead of the relinquished rod. How far off the city seems! Are there such things as corporations, trusts, stocks, bonds; electric lights that amaze the sight, harsh warnings of trolley gongs, the rumble and grind of the wheels and the brakes on the elevated road which affright the ear? The harshest note that breaks the stillness here is the boom of the bittern in the distant marsh. Home to camp the fisherman goes, taking a cast in this silent pool in which the trout rose in the forenoon to his cast but missed the fly, or in that dark hole deep under the bank in which a vigilant eye may detect the brown sides of a trout with lazily waving fins and tail--an old campaigner not easily caught.

“So the shades of evening find the ramble ended, and no harsher beams than the soft radiance of the stars or the gentle spark of the fireflies and the glowworm light the wayfarer to his repose.

“There are other incentives which are able to make the haunts of wild things attractive. To a man who has walked through the woods for exercise much as he would saw wood by a woodpile, a walk through the tangled paths with a naturalist is both an astonishment and a revelation. A few years ago popular works on nature-study were things unknown. The only means of information for the inquiring amateur were purely technical; works such as Gray’s _Botany_, to a beginner as uninteresting and difficult as a work on differential calculus. Now there are whole libraries of books which are both interesting, popular and true to the scientific facts.[1] There are fifty-seven species of fern described in one book, and of these the writer collected twenty-two during a three-weeks’ stay in the Adirondacks. Some were found half way up Catamount, some on the slopes of Whiteface, one or two on the face of cliffs overlooking Wilmington. The memories of that Summer are delightful, and as we look over the specimens we gathered in those wanderings, my wife and I, the scenes come back to us and we live those delectable days again.”

BY KIND PERMISSION OF GEORGE SHIRAS, 3D.

“THE HAUNTS OF WILD THINGS”]

A long quotation, this, but we freely admit that we could not have said it so well as has Dr. Bristow. We are of those unafraid of quotations, and now invite the reader to attend to this selection from Edwin Sandys, borrowed from the same source as the foregoing. “Fishing leads its devotee into pleasant places, and because the true angler needs must also be part poet, such ears, perhaps, best hear the sermon of streams and stones. There are no cleaner things than pure air and water, and did fishing offer no more than these it would be entitled to consideration. But it does much more, for of it might truly be said: Its ways are pleasant; its paths are peaceful--which means much.

“The more important fishes of our fresh waters, grouped according to habitat, include the salmon, trout, ouananiche, and the grayling, of rapid rivers and brooks and cold lakes of the rock-bound regions; the black, the rock and other basses and the perch of streams and lakes other than typical trout waters; the maskinonge and pike of the Great Lakes and their tributaries, and the various pickerel and the wall-eyed pike common to weedy waters of a great extent of the country.

“Of the salmon and its fishing it is unnecessary to speak at length. Very few of the salmon rivers of the East are open to the fishing public, and only a specialist with the two-handed tackle is likely to attempt the capture of the king of game-fish. The ouananiche, too, is not a fish for the masses. It is a game fighter, and at certain times a free riser, but it is found in but a few of the Northern waters. Its stronghold is Lake St. John, that Mecca of the sportsman northward bound from Quebec City. In Lake St. John and its tributary rivers, but especially at the lake’s outlet, which is the beginning of the famous Saguenay River, is the stronghold of the high-leaping ouananiche, and there the acrobatic small salmon has been taken by many a tourist-angler. And there are other salmon. Some of the waters of the Far West at certain seasons are visited by countless salmon of allied yet distinct species, and many a fine fish, though inferior to the Atlantic species, falls victim to the common trolling-spoon and other devices.

“Beyond question the most popular of our game-fish is that spangled aristocrat of the hurrying stream, the brook-trout. In addition to his beauty and palatableness, there is a dash and go about his method which strongly appeals to those who like rapid action in their sport--and who does not? Furthermore, the typical trout water is in itself a most beautiful thing. Be the region plain or picturesque, the trout stream surely travels the most attractive part of it. Follow its musical bickering down a valley and you will be led through one of Nature’s picture galleries, with choice bits arranged in marvelous profusion upon either side. Glorious greenery, lichened rock, grim cliff, echoing vault, thunder-voiced fall, bubble-spangled ripple and mystic, velvet-shadowed pool follow in endless succession. And with it all the silver song of merry waters, perhaps chording true at shadowtime with the contralto of the thrushes. And so you lose yourself in the enchanted cavern of green.

“There is nothing evil to be found in all our hundreds of miles of trout waters. Only the celestial pavement itself is cleaner than the pure, sweet water, forever washing its bed and bounds and forever singing o’er its wholesome task. A trout stream is a good place for most folks to be. And we have an abundance of streams--for, broadly speaking, a rock country is a trout country. To remove the trout country from this continent would be to render it unrecognizable. There would remain prairies, marshlands, the regions of sluggish streams and placid ponds. The best of the easily reached free fishing is to be enjoyed upon the hill streams of the Adirondacks, Pennsylvania, and Connecticut. If you go farther there are still within reasonable distance the famous waters of the Rangeley and Moosehead systems of Maine, the Megantic waters of Quebec, the wilds of New Brunswick, the marvelous silver net of the North shore of the St. Lawrence and of Northern Ontario, which extends to the newly exploited region of the upper Ottawa and to that stronghold of big trout, the North shore of Lake Superior. All of these regions, both American and Canadian, are comfortably accessible by rail, and no railroad worthy of the name fails to pay strict attention to the comfort of anglers.

“I have fished in every one of the extensive regions named, and the average angler may visit any one of them with a certainty of enjoying fair fun and an excellent chance of extraordinary sport. Were the purse, leisure, and experience, or lack of it, of every reader known, it would be a comparatively easy task to name one particular water which would be almost certain to meet the requirements; but lacking full knowledge of individual desires, any attempt at the rôle of guide-post would be absurd. But the individual can get helpful, because as a whole reliable, information by securing a sporting guide-book of a railroad traversing the preferred country. Because I have written some of them and read the others I know they are not dangerously enthusiastic, especially over the more remote waters. In fact, not a few of them actually fail to do full justice to the regions they refer to. The pen of a wizard of word-painting could not overdraw the beauties of at least four-fifths of our trout waters, which will, under ordinary conditions, yield all the fish that clean sportsmanship can demand.”

Very true, Mr. Sandys--and also true that good sport, if not the most exciting, may be reached from most of the humble homes of the land, within a reasonable journey for the ubiquitous Ford, the motorcycle, bicycle, trolley-car, or even shanks’ mare. There are the Sullivan County and other Catskill streams of New York, streams of the White Mountain region in New Hampshire, streams in Vermont, New Jersey, and in Massachusetts. We have seen a dozen native trout creeled legitimately in August, only three days before the close of the season, from public water not fifteen miles out of New York City. And almost any pond will yield either bass, pickerel, or such very acceptable pan-fish as perch, rock-bass, or “sunnies.”

With a similar charming felicity have many other writers depicted the joys of angling. Of the numerous pleasures that are closely connected with its pursuit--“its accompaniments and variations, which run along with the tune and weave an embroidery of delight around it,” to borrow a fragment of Dr. van Dyke’s plenitude of happy phraseology--the intimate study of stream insect-life and the pretty art of the tying of artificial flies in imitation of these ephemera, in particular, constitute a very soul-satisfying diversion and accomplishment. But having already discussed this elsewhere, it is the writer’s present paramount purpose to enlighten those who would add to their accustomed enjoyment of the sport the pleasures of craftsmanship involved in the construction of the angler’s chief implement of his art, that magic wand, his _rod_.

When touching upon this phase of the subject even a professional rod-maker needs must lean to poesy in order to explain adequately why the rod plays the most important part in the angler’s equipment, as witness this extract from a trade catalog: “Its development to the present state of perfection has heightened the enjoyment of the sport to a degree far beyond any that was attainable by the angler of the olden time. The ecstatic period of supreme sensation which is peculiarly the angler’s inspiration and delight was formerly of short duration, and often with inglorious ending. Not so today, for the modern rod has made it possible for the entrancing thrill that comes to him through the titillation of the elbow by the vibratory connection of his hand and arm with a gamy fish at the other end of a rod and line, to be long drawn out, with intensely stimulating variations, in a contest calling into play the highest qualities of manly sportsmanship, and in which both victor and vanquished may fairly be credited with honors nobly won.” Is any further assurance needed that this man makes good rods? Anyway, we will say right here that he does--beauties.

The acme of perfection in angling-rods--“the rod fine-tempered with elastic spring”--is realized only in one built properly of six strips of split bamboo. In the maximum combination of the qualities of resiliency, balance, and lightness with power, quickness, and smoothness or sweetness of action, such an one is unsurpassed; and the split-bamboo rod of the best American manufacture has no superior the world over. In making this statement we are not heedless of the improvements upon this standard model that have been attempted, principally by our English cousins across the big pond. Various painfully ingenious combinations have been achieved, of bamboo without and steel core within, steel core within and braided steel, copper, or bronze ribbands outside, split cane inside and whole cane outside, and all sorts of other arrangements, in eight strips of cane, in nine strips, built double in twelve, sixteen, or eighteen strips--modifications leading all the way up--or down--to the rolled tubular whole-steel rod of American make. Most of these variations are possible only for the butt- and middle-joints of a rod, the top-joint or top--or as American anglers say less explicitly, the tip--being generally of clear bamboo. The British manufacturer has a penchant also for combining different woods in individual rods, as a greenheart butt- and second-joint with a bamboo top, or an ash or hickory butt with greenheart and bamboo for the other sections.

But of any of these mongrels we will have naught; as for us we pin our faith and fealty to the silk-wound hexagonal rod cunningly yet simply devised of its six subtle, individual triangular strips of cane throughout, and we can but view with compassion that angler who suffers a permanent perverted attachment to some one or other of the monstrosities mentioned above.

The making of a split-bamboo rod is readily within the accomplishment of anyone who can handle a few of the simpler carpenters’-tools, with patience--and your true angler already has this quality well developed. A little time, a little absorbingly interesting work, a small outlay for rod fittings or mountings, and forty-cents’ worth of bamboo in the rough is transformed into the most beautiful of all sporting implements, that the owner could not have duplicated by a professional rod-maker for forty dollars. A knife, a small plane, and a file are the principal necessary cutting tools, and with two or three simple contrivances, and one all-important device, these cover the essential instruments.

Almost any manual labor, especially if diverting and concentrating the attention into novel paths, is balm for the jaded or worried mind. This work is light and innately fascinating. How it would have been welcomed by many persons whom the writer has known, while monotonously convalescent from exasperating illness or accident; how it would have sweetened and shortened the days and have proven hypnotic at night for many a weary traveler along the road to restored bodily health and mental serenity. Patients often read and read during a forced period of shutting-in until they can’t read any longer, and don’t know what in the world next to do to alleviate the tedium of the dragging hours and days. We escaped this experience during an eight-weeks’ quarantine for scarlet fever, in beguiling many an hour by winding rod-joints with silk, satisfied that the subsequent coats of varnish preceded by an alcohol bath would prove effectively disinfectant. It was during this incarceration that first we learned of the virtues of pinochle; and the feeling nightly adieu of our teacher Jones, repeated each day with increasing unction, comes back to us as we write these words--the place was the City Hospital: “Thank God! one more day less in the pesthouse.”

Not only is the angler’s sport, like any other, greatly enhanced by the employment of implements of his own creation, but the very making of a rod is an idyl in craftsmanship, furnishing a recreation salutary and delightful in itself during the wintry days which debar actual but not anticipatory enjoyment of limpid lakes, quiet woodland trails, inspiring mountain heights, merry brooks, and companionable little rivers.

After experiencing for many years the pleasures to be derived from the possession of this handicraft, and having gained from that experience, including conference with brother anglers addicted to the same avocation, the most vital parts of what he knows about the subject, it becomes an added pleasure for the writer to pass the knowledge along to yet other Waltonians, who hitherto have missed this culminating enjoyment of their favorite sport. Thus, as truly as did “Piscator” in the writing of his immortal pastoral, the present author likewise has “made a recreation of a recreation”; and too has endeavored, despite its technical character, to have his text “not to read dully and tediously.”

COPYRIGHT BY DETROIT PHOTOGRAPHIC CO.

“QUIET WOODLAND TRAILS”

(An Adirondack carry)]

The reader is assured at the outset that by careful attention to and the following out of the very explicit directions contained in the chapters immediately following, he can construct not merely a passably-good split-bamboo rod, but a high-grade article that any expert angler would be glad to own--a rod that will have balance, action, finish, and distinction, and the possession of which will give infinite satisfaction to its creator. Admittedly, the process involves some manipulations of delicacy but none of discouraging difficulty, as all there is to it may be summed up in careful attention to a number of details in their proper sequence and not one of which truly is difficult in itself--and what could be better exercise for youth? for the same constitutes the successful conduct of life. From the standpoint of commercial manufacture, while some of the ways and means which will be elucidated might provoke a smile from the professional rod-maker--and we will not say without justification--nevertheless they will be found fully efficient for the production of one or two to a dozen or more rods for the personal equipment of the amateur angler, to whom our remarks are addressed. So--

Here’s to the swish of the Split-Bamboo!--
Flitting my flies o’er riffle and pool,
Bidding all grown-up cares adieu,
Back again coming to Nature’s school,
May the wind blow soft, my cast light true,
As _Fontinalis_ I try to fool,
And my creel have received its due
When come the shades of evening cool.--
Here’s to the swish of the Split-Bamboo!--
Musical swish of _my own_ bamboo.

ROD-MAKING: BAMBOO AS A ROD MATERIAL