[Illustration:
COPYRIGHT BY THE CENTURY CO.
THE FORERUNNER OF THE SPLIT-BAMBOO]
[Illustration:
THE IDYL OF
THE SPLIT-BAMBOO
A Carefully Detailed Description
of the Rod’s Building
Prefaced by
a Dissertation on the Joys of Angling
there being appended some Information on
the Home Cultivation of Silkworm-Gut
and Suggestions on Landing-Nets and
other Equipment, and for
The Angler’s Camp
BY
GEORGE PARKER HOLDEN, M.D., F.A.C.S.
PROFUSELY ILLUSTRATED
CINCINNATI
STEWART & KIDD COMPANY
PUBLISHERS]
COPYRIGHT, 1920, BY
STEWART & KIDD COMPANY
_All rights reserved_
COPYRIGHT IN ENGLAND
THIS ANGLERS’ BOOK
IS DEDICATED
FIRST OF ALL, TO
THAT DEAR WOMAN
WHO “LETS ME;”
NEXT, TO THE MEMORY OF A FRIEND,
SIDNEY HUGHES
--A QUIET AND GENTLE
SON OF HIS LOVED SOUTHLAND,
WHERE HE DROPPED ASLEEP--
WIZARD WITH A FLY, AND
TO WHOM I OWE MY FIRST
INTRODUCTION TO TROUTING;
AND, AFTER THESE,
TO THAT GENIAL COTERIE OF
CHERISHED COMPANIONS
WITH WHOM IT HAS BEEN MY GOOD FORTUNE
TO HAVE SPENT SOME OF THE MOST
JOYOUS HOURS OF MY LIFE
OUT-O’-DOOR
FOREWORD
The publishers regret that on account of Dr. van Dyke’s unexpected
absence abroad, this “Foreword” has to consist of the following
letter instead of the introduction which we were anticipating. But if
this distinguished angler’s prediction concerning the present volume
proves correct, perhaps we can have that introduction in a later
edition.
Avalon
Princeton, N. J.
December 8, 1919
Dear Dr. Holden:
I am glad to hear about your new book on “The Split-Bamboo
Rod,” and though I had made a resolve not to write any
more introductions for books, or in fact undertake any
additional work of any kind this winter and spring, I
cannot resist the impulse to make an exception in your
case, because I feel sure that your book will be a valuable
addition to the practical literature of angling, as well as
a delightful record of the inward and outward joys of that
art. If therefore you will send me a set of page proofs of
the book when it is finished, I shall be very glad to try
my hand at a little “Foreword,” although I know that your
volume will not need any introduction.
Believe me,
Cordially yours,
HENRY VAN DYKE
PREFACE
We sing the song of the Split-Bamboo.
The author’s previous book, _Streamcraft_, deals mainly with actual
streamside technic--the selection, care, rigging, and use of the
rod; with the choosing of lures, natural and artificial, and their
manipulation; and with fly-tying. Its contents, presented in a
pocket form, will adapt it for a ready-reference companion on
fishing expeditions and even when actually engaged on the water
in the quest of the finny game. It comprises much data correlated
from many sources, though always authoritative. But nowhere else,
to his knowledge, may guidance be found for the construction of
the Split-Bamboo Rod equally comprehensive and detailed as in the
pages that follow. This has been preceded by a dissertation on “The
Joys of Angling,” and there has been appended some information
on “Cultivating Silkworm-Gut at Home,” and some suggestions on
“Landing-Nets and Other Equipment,” and for “The Angler’s Camp.” The
former treatise is largely a working manual for the open season and
the stream; this is more a book for Winter evenings and the fireside,
and for the workshop.
The sportsman’s transcendent implements are his rod and his gun.
Compared with the glut of “gun-dope”--data on models, actions, bores,
sights, gauges, shells, ballistics, etc.--constantly appearing in
the outdoor journals and in book form for the consumption of the
followers of Nimrod, there is a dearth of readily-available and
plain technical information relating to the fishing-rod. While it
might be urged that comparatively but few anglers would care to
undertake the manufacture of this instrument in its glorified form,
it requires little argument to convince anyone that fishermen in
general, whether especially addicted either to fresh or salt water,
love to tinker with their tackle; and no argument at all to elucidate
that a treatise dealing with construction must perforce include full
directions for all rod renovation and repairs. He that can make a rod
certainly can fix one. Further, we admit the temerity to trust that
this book will appreciably stimulate an increase in the number of
those who will be emboldened to essay the “whole trick.”
Building a split-bamboo rod is an operation, and we have explained
our technic with the same conscientious care that we would observe
in delineating the consecutive details of a surgical operation; for
it is a matter of curious comment that amongst all we have read
of definite instruction in this art, we never received any help
from such sources in overcoming those particular difficulties in
handling and working bamboo which at first gave us the most trouble;
perversely, as it seemed--albeit including much of interest and of
value--these authorities told us everything except what _we_ most
needed to know for perfect success, and at just such critical places
they left us stranded. We earnestly hope to succeed here in obviating
a like criticism.
While some of the subjects discussed in these volumes have been dealt
with much more exhaustively in various other and ofttimes sumptuous
and expensive treatises--many of them of foreign authorship--it has
been the present writer’s ambition to condense between the two pairs
of covers more information than hitherto has appeared within the same
extent of text, of essential, practical interest to the American
fresh-water fisherman, and to the average type of enthusiastic
American trout-fisherman of today in particular; and at the same
time not without some flavor of the delightful literary, esthetic,
and what may be termed the Nature sides of angling, which have
inseparably been associated with the sport from the beginning. In
this way it is hoped that the novice may easily attain an adequate
idea of the comprehensive scope of his artful recreation, while our
efforts shall not prove without interest even to those who have a
more familiar acquaintance with the “tight line.”
With appreciation we acknowledge our indebtedness to Mr. Edwin T.
Whiffen of New Rochelle, N. Y., and to the _Forest and Stream_
magazine, for the use of Mr. Whiffen’s delightful bit of natural
history comprised in Chapter XI.
That “good luck” in abundant measure may attend the reader, is the
greeting of
A BROTHER ANGLER
Yonkers, N. Y., _Winter, 1919–20_
CONTENTS
Dedication iii
Foreword, by Henry van Dyke v
Preface vii
I The Joys of Angling 3
ROD-MAKING:
II Bamboo as a Rod Material 35
III Splitting Out, Straightening, and
Assembling the Strips 49
IV Planing the Strips 69
V Rod Tapers and Rod Plotting 91
VI Gluing Up 117
VII Ferrules and Their Fitting;
One-Piece and Spliced Rods 133
VIII Windings and Guides 151
IX Handgrasp and Reelseat 177
X Varnishing and Finishing 191
XI Cultivating Silkworm-Gut at Home,
by Edwin T. Whiffen 199
XII Landing-Nets and Other Equipment 233
XIII The Angler’s Camp 249
THE JOYS OF ANGLING
THE IDYL OF THE
SPLIT-BAMBOO
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?
[Illustration:
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.”
[Illustration:
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.”
[Illustration:
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