Angling Sketches | Page 3

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This etext was prepared by David Price, email [email protected]
from the 1895 Longmans, Green, and Co. edition.

ANGLING SKETCHES

Contents:
Preface Note to New Edition The Confessions of a Duffer A Border
Boyhood Loch Awe Loch-Fishing Loch Leven The Bloody Doctor The
Lady or the Salmon? A Tweedside Sketch The Double Alibi The
Complete Bungler

PREFACE

Several of the sketches in this volume have appeared in periodicals.
"The Bloody Doctor" was in Macmillan's Magazine, "The Confessions
of a Duffer," "Loch Awe," and "The Lady or the Salmon?" were in the
Fishing Gazette, but have been to some extent re- written. "The Double
Alibi" was in Longman's Magazine. The author has to thank the Editors
and Publishers for permission to reprint these papers.
The gem engraved on the cover is enlarged from a small intaglio in the
collection of Mr. M. H. N. STORY-MASKELYNE, M.P. Such gems
were recommended by Clemens of Alexandria to the early Christians.
"The figure of a man fishing will put them in mind of the Apostle."
Perhaps the Greek is using the red hackle described by AElian in the
only known Greek reference to fly-fishing.

NOTE TO NEW EDITION

The historical version of the Black Officer's career, very unlike the
legend in "Loch Awe," may be read in Mr. Macpherson's Social Life in
the Highlands.

THE CONFESSIONS OF A DUFFER

These papers do not boast of great sport. They are truthful, not like the
tales some fishers tell. They should appeal to many sympathies. There

is no false modesty in the confidence with which I esteem myself a
duffer, at fishing. Some men are born duffers; others, unlike persons of
genius, become so by an infinite capacity for not taking pains. Others,
again, among whom I would rank myself, combine both these elements
of incompetence. Nature, that made me enthusiastically fond of fishing,
gave me thumbs for fingers, short-sighted eyes, indolence, carelessness,
and a temper which (usually sweet and angelic) is goaded to madness
by the laws of matter and of gravitation. For example: when another
man is caught up in a branch he disengages his fly; I jerk at it till
something breaks. As for carelessness, in boyhood I fished, by
preference, with doubtful gut and knots ill-tied; it made the risk greater,
and increased the excitement if one did hook a trout. I can't keep a
fly-book. I stuff the flies into my pockets at random, or stick them into
the leaves of a novel, or bestow them in the lining of my hat or the case
of my rods. Never, till 1890, in all my days did I possess a landing-net.
If I can drag a fish up a bank, or over the gravel, well; if not, he goes on
his way rejoicing. On the Test I thought it seemly to carry a landing-net.
It