Barton County democrat. [volume] (Great Bend, Kan.) 1885-1915, 1889-07-25
FISHING AND FLIRTING.

An English Writer'S sarcastic View of
Angling Females.
A favOrite delusion of mankind, in
youth, or even in middle age, is that
there is pleasure in fishing with a
lady. About this let there be no error.
If you do not care about catching
trout. and if the lady is young and
conveniently handsome" as our
Father Walton says. go fishing with
her by all means. In exactly ten min
utes the following things will happen:
First, she will entangle your lines and
flies with hers. Next, she will wind
her own cast all round her and in her
dress and in her hair, caught in the
coils of the casting line. like Salammbo
in those of her serpent. You will ex-
tricate her, and hand her your rod.
but long before you have disentangled
her flies she will have hooked yours in
the bottom of the boat. You snap the
line with jerk and make new cast.
the boat meanwhile drifting on shore.
You push off again and begin casting.
and by some accident you hook
trout. Then the fair one perhaps
screams, averts her face and calls you
by a number of names expressive of
tender and feeling but indignant heart,
or she gets wildly excited and twists
the oar into your line. If the trout is
firmly hooked she goes for him with
the landing net, and if one thing more
than another tries the human temper
it is to see woman with landing
net hacking at his line. She frightens
the fish away several times, and then
catches the net in the bobby, hits the
half dead trout on the nose,
breaks the cast and permits him
to join his relations with
piece of gut and an artificial fly in his
mouth. The horror of trying to troll
with women-kind. the extent to which
all the many hooks of phantom min
now get inextricably intertwined with
her garments, ought not to be de-
scribed by persons of feeling. If any
one likes these recreations, let him be
assured that he is no fisher, but
lover. If any one who does want to
fish can keep his temper in the midst
of these distractions, he is no husband,
but saint. ':All hopes abandon We
who fish with ladies'" might be writ
ten over all Highland lighthouses.
The one thing to do is to abandon
hope of sport. and set the time care
lessly. not toying with the tangles
of fly hooks in Ne8ra's hair. Land
on an island, lunch. smoke. touch the
light banjo, exchange sentimental con-
fidences. but do not think to fish with
a woman in a boat. And then, after
all. when you come home she will
mock you for not having caught any
trout. As if Mr.. Francis Francis, or
Mr.. Thomas Tod Stoddard, or Maui,
who invented barbs for hooks, could
have caught trout with lady in the
boat. Her presence may have other
advantages. that is a matter of pri-
vate taste and sentiment, but to loch-
fishing women is simply fatal. But
her presence in boat on loch is
great lesson in the difficult art of grin
ming and bearing it. Fishers are now
warned. Angling is quite difficult
enough, thanks to weather and the
wariness of fish; to add the perplex-
tiles caused by woman is merely wan-
ton. On the other side. he who has a
woman with him on the loch has a
a beautiful and charming substitute
for all the other excuses in which fail
ure and incompetence find refuge
London News.