Lines in Pleasant Places | Page 5

offer exercise in variety, and to carry with it
charms of its own. To-day it is therefore so popular that anglers have to
protect themselves against one another if they would prevent the
depletion of lakes and rivers, and salmon and trout streams are quoted
as highly remunerative investments.
Let us see, however, where exercise worthy of the name is found--the
inquiry will at the same time indicate the nature of the fascinations
which to not a few good people are wholly incomprehensible, if, indeed,
they are not a mild form of lunacy. We may take for granted the
antiquity of the sport, though probably the first anglers had an eye to

nothing nobler than the pot. Angling has never been worth following as
an industry, for one of the first lessons learned by the rod fisherman is
that there are superior devices for filling a basket if that alone is the
object. "Because I like it," is the least troublesome reply to one who
asks you why you will go a-fishing. Happy he who can go a little
further and aver, "Because I find it the most entrancing of sports." And
with equally sound sense may it be urged by old and young alike,
"Because it is splendid exercise."
Angling in truth is often made much severer than it need be. The
American fishing-men, in their instinctive search for notions,
discovered long ago that the rods which they had copied from us were
too long and heavy, and the necessary tackle altogether too
cumbersome. They seldom use a longer salmon-rod than 15 feet, and
frequently kill the heavy trout of their lakes and rivers with delicate
weapons of 8 and 9 feet.
In Scotland and Ireland, where the best of our salmon fishing is, you
may still meet with anglers who will have no rod under 18 or 20 feet.
Only big strong men accustomed to it can wield an implement of this
calibre through a hard day's casting without extreme fatigue. They have
a sound justification for their choice on such streams as Tweed, Dee,
and Spey, where the pools are of the major size and the getting out of a
long line is a necessity. They are not on such sure ground when they
urge that a heavy salmon can only be landed by a rod of maximum
dimensions. I saw a friend last autumn produce a 15-foot greenheart
rod on Tweedside. The gillies shook their heads incredulously at the
innovation, but honestly unlearned what they had always believed to be
infallible dogma when he killed his twenty-three pound fish as quickly
and safely as if the cause had been the 18-foot rod which they had
implored him to substitute for his most unorthodox concern. It is true
that there are "catches" which can only be covered by long rods, with
their undoubted advantages in sending out the fly, picking the line off
the water, and settling a fish with the promptest dispatch.
The young salmon-fisher should learn to handle a rod that is sufficient
for his height and strength and no more. For ordinary purposes 17 feet

of greenheart or split-cane are ample, and the modern salmon angler
has come to look upon even this--which our forefathers would have
pooh-poohed as a mere grilse-rod--as excessive. The secret of
comfortable and successful angling, as an exercise no less than as a
sport, is in the choice of a rod. Some men seem to be unable to make
the right selection; they seem to lack the correct sense of touch and
balance. Others suffer from love of change; disloyal to the old friend
which fitted their hand to a nicety, they discard it for the passing
attractions of some newly-advertised pattern.
It is distressing to watch the efforts of the right man with the wrong rod,
or vice versa. With man and rod in harmony the latter does the real
work; unfitted to each other, the power of man and rod is alike at its
worst. Unfortunately this matter is one upon which the angler must be
his own teacher; but the angler's troubles, in the majority of instances,
arise from the fatal predilection for a rod heavier than the owner can
legitimately bear, or from the use of a line too fine or too coarse for the
rod. Exercise is then over-exercise, injurious, and not good for body or
temper.
Salmon fishing from a boat is imagined by some to be objectionable
because it demands no exertion by the angler. This is an erroneous
conclusion, though doubtless the method brings certain muscles into
play to an unequal degree. At the same time, fishing from the bank, as
it is called for convenience, though the angler never stands upon one, is
the most enjoyable of all methods. There is a