Sporting Sketches
Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: shark ashore with winch and chain tackle; in lolling upon a wharf and taking slimy catfish, or other ignoble prey; or even in the lawless method of exploding a dynamite cartridge under water and lazily picking up a few of many fish destroyed. I make no attempt to decide the merits of these many opposing claims. Each supporter is partly right and partly wrong. Fishing of any kind (barring the dynamite) is good enough for me, and in my humble opinion, whatever kind fate allows one to enjoy, is, or should be, the best of all ? while it lasts. One method of fishing, almost invariably sneered at by anglers of high degree, is spring spearing; yet it frequently affords a deal of fun and requires no small measure of skill on the part of its successful votaries. I have heard men who had no aversion to spearing thro
...ugh the ice rail against spring spearing as unworthy of any decent man's attention, yet they never mentioned the one good argument, z. that the sport encouraged the destruction of fish while on their way to the spawning beds. Undoubtedly spring spearing is not beneficial to the fish speared, nor is the killing of a roe-laden fish on her way to spawn calculated to increase the number of young fry. But the decriers of spearing overlooked this and contented themselves with rash statements to the effect that it required no science and was merely " slopping about" anyway. The true causes of their dislike were, that the successful spearer must travel long distances over wearisome, muddy footing; must frequently wade in cold water and think naught of a ducking, and must be able to handle his grains, or spear, for thrust or throw, as skilfully as a Zulu warrior handles his deadly assegai. Stealing along a trout brook, or fishing from boat or punt, doesn't develop these qua...
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