This book is included in the Outdoor Survival Basics section.
Preface
FISHING is a sport especially suited to boys. It is a cleanly, healthy, open-air recreation, devoid of feverish excitements, and yet not destitute of quiet pleasures which are inexpressibly fascinating during the tender years of childhood, and, above all, entirely innocent in their tendencies. As youth succeeds childhood, the love of fishing deepens, and as maturity is attained, this love becomes a part of the man, never to be wholly cast aside. And as old age approaches, and gun and dog and saddle are regretfully retired, angling still remains the contemplative man's pastime. Thus throughout life is angling a source of comfort and pleasure, leaving no bad taste in the mouth or sting in the conscience, and being indeed unequalled by any other sport whatsoever in its purity and guilelessness. For what does Annie Trumbull Slosson's "Fishin' Jimmy" say in his quaint, homely fashion?
"I allers loved fishin', an' know'd 'twas the best thing in the hull airth. I knows it larnt ye more about creeters an' yarbs an' stuns an' water than books could tell ye. I know'd it made folks patienter and common-senser an' weather-wiser an' cuter gen'ally; gin 'em more fac'lty than all the school larnin' in creation. I knowed it was more fillin' than vittles, more rousin' than whiskey, more soothin' than lodlum. I knowed it cooled ye off when ye was het, an' het ye when ye was cold. I knowed all that, o' course, any fool knows it. But will ye bleve it ? I was more'n twenty-one years old, a man growed, 'fore I foun' out why 'twas that way."
The object of this little book is to explain to even the youngest reader what "Fishin' Jimmy" did not find out till he was "a man growed."
I have never had cause to regret that my own ancestors were professional fishermen, and that I have been one myself. My father, his father, and his father, and so on for several more generations, were watermen and fishermen on the English Thames. I cannot recollect, therefore, when I first became an angler; but like Topsy,
"I specs I grow'd" to be one from the cradle. Self-help in all pertaining to fishing was, however, the lesson drilled into me from my earliest years, and at an infant's age I first began to handle tackle and tackle-making implements. From
experience, therefore, I am satisfied that the boy who learns to prepare everything he uses will (as I have done) derive tenfold the pleasure from fishing, that is gotten by the angler who only buys his tackle all ready to his hand. The things that cost pains to procure are the most valued. In the following pages I shall explain the why and wherefore of everything likely to perplex the tyro, as well as the making of each piece of tackling, giving the methods I have myself made use of, with suitable diagrams. Moreover, I shall be pleased at any time to aid my boy-readers by letter, if they write me to my address below.
J. HARRINGTON KEENE.
GREENWICH, Washington County, N.Y.
Table of Contents PART I. SPRING. CHAPTER I. - SUCKER FISHING CHAPTER II. - PICKEREL TROLLING IN SPRING CHAPTER III. - BAIT-FISHING FOR TROUT PART II. SUMMER. CHAPTER IV. - FISHING FOR THE SUN-FISH AND OTHER " BOYS' FISHES," CHAPTER V. - FLY-FISHING FOR TROUT, AND FLY-MAKING CHAPTER VI. - FLY-FISHING FOR BASS, PERCH, SUN-FISH, ETC. PART III. AUTUMN. CHAPTER VII. - MINNOW-FISHING FOR TROUT CHAPTER VIII. - BASS FISHING WITH THE MINNOW, ETC PART IV. WINTER. CHAPTER IX. - FISHING THROUGH THE ICE CHAPTER X. - BREEDING TROUT, ETC., IN WINTER
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