TROUT ON BARBLESS HOOKS
Most women who indulge in fishing are, like children, mere fish
takers, not Anglers, but the craft is honored by the association of
many fine female devotees who study and practice the gentle art in its
fullest meaning--a devotion to the poetic, artistic, healthful, and
humane elements in piscatorial pursuits. Dame Juliana Berners, who
wrote the earliest volume on gentle fishing (1500), was the first
celebrated example of the artful and merciful woman fisher, and
Cleopatra the first female to make notorious the coarse and ungodly
method in fishing for pastime. Sweet Dame Berners believed in
angling--the desire of fair treatment to the quarry, correct tackle, a
love of the pursuit superior to greed for number in the catch, and a
heavenly admiration of the general beauties of nature in the day as
well as in the play; and brutal Cleopatra believed in mere fishing,
the killing of the greatest number, regardless of means, mercy, or
method.
Our modern Dame Bernerses and Cleopatras in the fishing fold are many.
The wife who aids the net fisherman--the marine farmer whose calling
emulates the professional duties of Jesus' disciples, Peter. Andrew,
James, and John--does not count. Her part in fishing, while by no
means angling, is as honest as the work of the upland farmer's
helpmate, and God Himself will not condemn little children, male or
female, who fish indiscriminately, "because they do not know." Fishing
for the modern market is just as honorable as market fishing was in
the ancient days when Jesus praised the net fishermen and made them
His nearest and dearest friends, and angling--merciful ungreedy
fishing with humane tackle and a clear conscience--is even more
righteous than net fishing, because, while the main result of the
Angler's pursuit is the same as the marketman's--fish taking--the
Angler's method of capture is far less cruel, and his creel of fish is
far less in number than the boatful of the marketman.
The distinction in angling and fishing is made by the modes employed
in the taking, the killing, and the disposing of the fishes. Any
fisherman who uses tackle appropriate to the various species, who is
not greedy in his catch, who plays his game with mercy, who dispatches
it with the least suffering, who disposes of it without wanton waste,
and who is thankful to the Maker for the ways and means for all these
conditions, is an Angler. And cannot woman be as artful and gentle in
pursuits and as appreciative in feeling as man? Surely. England and
Scotland and Ireland are famous for their women Anglers, and Maine,
the Adirondacks, California, and Canada boast of the finest female
fly-casters in the world. There are more women Anglers in these
last-named territories than there are men Anglers in all other parts
of the United States. A woman, Mary Orris Marbury, wrote the best
volume scientifically descriptive of trout, bass, and salmon flies of
modern times, and Cornelia Crosby, a daughter of the Maine wilderness,
is the fly-fishing enthusiast of America.
Great minds, male and female, have gentle hearts. Izaak Walton handled
a frog as if he loved him. Cowper would not unnecessarily hurt a worm.
Lincoln upset his White House Cabinet to rescue a mother pig from a
mire. Webster neglected the Supreme Court to replace a baby robin that
had fallen from its nest. Moses, John the Divine, Washington, Thoreau.
Audubon, Wilson, and even Napoleon and Caesar the mighty mankillers
were all of tender hearts, and all of these were--Anglers. Christ was
only a fisher of men, but He loved and associated with the fishers of
fishes. Walton, the father of fishers and fishing, angled for the
habits of fishes more than for their hides. The capture of a fish was
insignificantly incidental to the main notion of his hours abroad--his
divine love of the waters, the fields, the meadows, the skies, the
trees, and God's beautiful things that inhabit these. 'Tis the soul we
seek to replenish, not the creel. So a Long Island dairyman's daughter
views the theme, and she handles the mother and baby trout as if she
loved them. _Salvelinus fontinalis_, little salmon of the streams, the
Angler's dearly beloved brook trout--this is the dairymaid's special
delight. She breeds these rainbow-hued beauties and broods over them,
she feeds and fondles them, and they are to her what David's holy,
fleecy flock were to him--his blessed charge by heavenly day and
cardinal care at night. They feed from her hand, and play like kittens
with her fingers. Cleopatra cleaved her fishes with a murderous hand
and hook. Audrey cuddles her trout with a magnanimous mind and heart.
The trout, with all its famous beauty of color, grace, and outline,
all its army of admirers, all the glory of its aqua-fairyland habitat,
all its seeming gentility of breeding and character, is none the less
a little villain at the killing game, like the less admired feline and
canine and serpentine species, for he will devour the daintiest and
gaudiest butterfly that ever poet sang of. Fledgling robins and
bluebirds, orioles and wrens are meat and drink to him. Young
chipmunks and squirrels that lose their balance in the storm fall into
his ready maw. The bat, the bee, the beetle and ladybug are rich
morsels to his gastric eye, and the golden lizard, the umber ant, the
silvery eel, the crawling angleworm, the chirping cricket, creeping
spider, the grasshopper, the hopping frog, and e'en the heavenly
hummingbird are but mealtime mites to him. Perhaps the knowledge of
this life-destroying trait in all the fishes made Cleopatra
indifferent to the gentler mode of fishing, just as it had a softer
influence over Audrey, for she, though loving both the fishes and
their victims, was induced to angle and thus punish, but never kill,
her finny favorites. She had heard of the artificial dry fly Anglers
of Europe using the barbless hook that held the trout without pain or
injury, and this she made herself, tying up dozens of somber-hued and
lustrous patterns on the bent bit of bronze that formed the snare. The
ruly trout who gently waver in the deep pool, satisfied with the food
supplied by their fair mistress, and who behave themselves when they
swim abroad in the general ponds and streams, are not molested, but
the rebellious urchins who, disdaining the bits of liver and worm fed
to them in plenty, go forth to slay the happy ladybug and butterfly,
are made the game of the barbless hook.
Audrey has five or six thousand trout in the pond and the stream
flowing into it. The surrounding country is wildly beautiful, the
water being surrounded by great trees of elm, hickory, maple, beech,
chestnut, walnut, and dogwood, under which is spread a rich green
lawn, with here and there patches of wild shrubs, vines, and ground
flowers. Rustic benches circle the water-edge oaks, and sleek deer, as
tame as Belgian hares, browse on the rich grass and eat dainty morsels
from the palms of their human friends. Cleopatra's marble perch basin
was cold and deadly in its artificial atmosphere. Audrey's woodland
trout preserve is warm and lifelike in its natural loveliness.