Considering the younger generation of anglers, one finds more enthusiasm
among those who talk learnedly of all the niceties of the art. They
scorn all fish not acknowledged as game. They plan more, though they may
accomplish less than the common sort to whom all of fishing tackle is a
pole, a line, and a hook. To them fishing is but fishing, and fish are
only fish, and they will go for one or the other when the signs are
right and the day propitious.
Descending to the least and latest generation of anglers, we see the
conditions reversed. The youth born to rod and reel and fly is not so
enthusiastic in his devotion to the sport as the boy whose birthright is
only the pole that craftsman never fashioned, the kinky lines of the
country store, and hooks known by no maker's name. For it is not in the
nature of a boy to hold to any nicety in sport of any sort, and this
one, being herein unrestrained, enters upon the art called gentle with
all the wild freedom of a young savage or a half-grown mink.
For him it is almost as good as going fishing, to unearth and gather in
an old teapot the worms, every one of which is to his sanguine vision
the promise of a fish. What completeness of happiness for him to be
allowed to go fishing with his father or grandfather or the acknowledged
great fisherman of the neighborhood, a good-for-nothing ne'er-do-well,
but wise in all the ways of fish and their taking and very careful of
and kind to little boys.
The high-hole never cackled so merrily, nor meadow lark sang sweeter,
nor grass sprang greener nor water shone brighter than to the boy when
he goes a-fishing thus accompanied. To him is welcome everything that
comes from the waters, be it trout, bass, perch, bullhead, or sunfish,
and he hath pride even in the abominable but toothsome eel and the
uneatable bowfin.
Well, remembering that we were once boys and are yet anglers, though we
seldom go a-fishing, we wish, in the days of the new springtide, to all
the craft, whether they be of high or low degree, bent and cramped with
the winter of age or flushed with the spring of life, pleasant and
peaceful days of honest sport by all watersides, and full creels and
strings and wythes.