Forgotten Treasures #18: FISHING WITH A WORM--Part II

FISHING WITH A WORM
____________________________________________
Part II

But angling's honest prose, as represented by the lowly worm, has also its
exalted moments. "The last fish I caught was with a worm," says the honest
Walton, and so say I. It was the last evening of last August. The dusk was
settling deep upon a tiny meadow, scarcely ten rods from end to end. The
rank bog grass, already drenched with dew, bent over the narrow, deep little
brook so closely that it could not be fished except with a double-shotted,
baited hook, dropped delicately between the heads of the long grasses.
Underneath this canopy the trout were feeding, taking the hook with a
straight downward tug, as they made for the hidden bank. It was already
twilight when I began, and before I reached the black belt of woods that
separated the meadow from the lake, the swift darkness of the North Country
made it impossible to see the hook. A short half hour's fishing only, and
behold nearly twenty good trout derricked into a basket until then sadly
empty. Your rigorous fly-fisherman would have passed that grass-hidden
brook in disdain, but it proved a treasure for the humble. Here, indeed,
there was no question of individually-minded fish, but simply a neglected
brook, full of trout which could be reached with the baited hook only. In
more open brook-fishing it is always a fascinating problem to decide how to
fish a favorite pool or ripple, for much depends upon the hour of the day,
the light, the height of water, the precise period of the spring or summer.
But after one has decided upon the best theoretical procedure, how often the
stupid trout prefers some other plan! And when you have missed a fish that
you counted upon landing, what solid satisfaction is still possible for you,
if you are philosopher enough to sit down then and there, eat your lunch,
smoke a meditative pipe, and devise a new campaign against that particular
fish! To get another rise from him after lunch is a triumph of diplomacy,
to land him is nothing short of statesmanship. For sometimes he will jump
furiously at a fly, for very devilishness, without ever meaning to take it,
and the, wearying suddenly of his gymnastics, he will snatch sulkily at a
grasshopper, beetle, or worm. Trout feed upon an extraordinary variety of
crawling things, as all fishermen know who practice the useful habit of
opening the first two or three fish they catch, to see what food is that day
the favorite. But here, as elsewhere in this world, the best things lie
nearest, and there is no bait so killing, week in and week out, as your
plain garden or golf-green angleworm.

Walton's list of possible worms is impressive, and his directions for
placing them upon the hook have the placid completeness that belonged to his
character. Yet in such matters a little nonconformity may be encouraged.
No two men or boys dig bait in quite the same way, though all share, no
doubt, the singular elation which gilds that grimy occupation with the
spirit of romance. The mind is really occupied, not with the wriggling red
creatures in the lumps of earth, but with the stout fish which each worm may
capture, just as a saint might rejoice in the squalor of this world as a
preparation for the glories of the world to come. Nor do any two
experienced fishermen hold quite the same theory as to the best mode of
baiting the hook. There are a hundred ways, each of them good. As to the
best hook for worm-fishing, you will find dicta in every catalogue of
fishing tackle, but size and shape and tempering are qualities that should
vary with the brook, the season, and the fisherman. Should one use a
three-foot leader, or none at all? Whose rods are best for bait-fishing,
granted that all of them should be stiff enough in the tip to lift a good
fish by dead strain from a tangle of brush or logs? Such questions, like
those pertaining to the boots or coat one should wear, the style of bait-box
one should carry, or the brand of tobacco best suited for smoking in the
wind, are topics for unending discussion among the serious minded around the
camp-fire. Much edification is in them, and yet they are but prudential
maxims after all. They are mere moralities of the Franklin or Chesterfield
variety, counsels of worldly wisdom, but they leave the soul untouched. A
man may have them at his finger's ends and be no better fisherman at bottom;
or he may, like R., ignore most of the admitted rules and come home with a
full basket. It is a sufficient defense of fishing with a worm to pronounce
the truism that no man is a _complete_ angler until he has mastered all the
modes of angling. Lovely streams, lonely and enticing, but impossible to
fish with a fly, await the fisherman who is not too proud to use, with a
man's skill, the same unpretentious tackle which he began with as a boy.

But ah, to fish with a worm, and then not catch your fish! To fail with a
fly is no disgrace: your art may have been impeccable, your patience
faultless to the end. But the philosophy of worm-fishing is that of
Results, of having something tangible in your basket when the day's work is
done. It is a plea for Compromise, for cutting the coat according to the
cloth, for taking the world as it actually is. The fly-fisherman is a
natural Foe of Compromise. He throws to the trout a certain kind of lure;
an they will take it, so; if not, adieu. He knows no middle path.

"This high man, aiming at a million,
Misses an unit."

The raptures and the tragedies of consistency are his. He is a scorner of
the ground. All honor to him! When he comes back at nightfall and says
happily, "I have never cast a line more perfectly than I have to-day," it is
almost indecent to peek into his creel. It is like rating Colonel Newcome
by his bank account.

But the worm-fisherman is no such proud and isolated soul. He is a "low
man" rather than a high one; he honestly cares what his friends will think
when they look into his basket to see what he has to show for his day's
sport. He watches the Foe of Compromise men go stumbling forward and
superbly falling, while he, with less inflexible courage, manages to keep
his feet. He wants to score, and not merely to give a pretty exhibition of
base-running. At the Harvard-Yale football game of 1903 the Harvard team
showed superior strength in rushing the ball; they carried it almost to the
Yale goal line repeatedly, but they could not, for some reason, take it
over. In the instant of absolute need, the Yale line held, and when the
Yale team had to score in order to win, they scored. As the crowd streamed
out of the Stadium, a veteran Harvard alumnus said: "This news will cause
great sorrow in one home I know of, until they learn by to-morrow's papers
that the Harvard team _acquitted itself creditably_." Exactly. Given one
team bent upon acquitting itself creditably, and another team determined to
win, which will be victorious? The stay-at-homes on the Yale campus that
day were not curious to know whether their team was acquitting itself
creditably, but whether it was winning the game. Every other question than
that was to those young Philistines merely a fine-spun irrelevance. They
took the Cash and let the Credit go.

There is much to be said, no doubt, for the Harvard veteran's point of view.
The proper kind of credit may be a better asset for eleven boys than any
championship; and to fish a bit of water consistently and skillfully, with
your best flies and in your best manner, is perhaps achievement enough. So
says the Foe of Compromise, at least. But the Yale spirit will be prying
into the basket in search of fish; it prefers concrete results. If all men
are by nature either Platonists or Aristotelians, fly-fishermen or
worm-fishermen, how difficult it is for us to do one another justice!
Differing in mind, in aim and method, how shall we say infallibly that this
man or that is wrong? To fail with Plato for companion may be better that
to succeed with Aristotle. But one thing is perfectly clear: there is no
warrant for Compromise but in Success. Use a worm if you will, but you must
have fish to show for it, if you would escape the finger of scorn. If you
find yourself camping by an unknown brook, and are deputed to catch the
necessary trout for breakfast, it is wiser to choose the surest bait. The
crackle of the fish in the frying-pan will atone for any theoretical defect
in your method. But to choose the surest bait, and then to bring back no
fish, is unforgivable. Forsake Plato if you must,--but you may do so only
at the price of justifying yourself in the terms of Aristotelian arithmetic.
The college president who abandoned his college in order to run a cotton
mill was free to make his own choice of a calling; but he was never pardoned
for bankrupting the mill. If one is bound to be a low man rather than an
impractical idealist, he should at least make sure of his vulgar success.

Is all this but a disguised defense of pot-hunting? No. There is no
possible defense of pot-hunting, whether it be upon a trout brook or in the
stock market. Against fish or men, one should play the game fairly. Yet
for that matter some of the most skillful fly-fishermen I have known were
pot-hunters at heart, and some of the most prosaic-looking merchants were
idealists compare to whom Shelley was but a dreaming boy. All depends upon
the spirit with which one makes his venture. I recall a boy of five who
gravely watched his father tramp off after the rabbits,--gun on shoulder and
beagle in leash. Thereupon he shouldered a wooden sword, and dragging his
reluctant black kitten by a string, sallied forth upon the dusty Vermont
road "to get a lion for breakfast." That is the true sporting temper! Let
there be but a fine idealism in the quest, and the particular object is
unessential. "A true fisherman's happiness," says Mr. Cleveland, "is not
dependent upon his luck." It depends upon his heart.

No doubt all amateur fishing is but "play,"--as the psychologists soberly
term it: not a necessary, but a freely assumed activity, born of surplusage
of vitality. Nobody, not ever a carpenter wearied of his job, has to go
fishing unless he wants to. He may indeed find himself breakfast-less in
camp, and obliged to betake himself to the brook,--but then he need hot have
gone into the woods at all. Yet if he does decide to fish, let him

"Venture as warily, use the same skill,
Do his best,..."

whatever variety of tackle he may choose. He can be a whole-souled
sportsman with the poorest equipment, or a mean "trout-hog" with the most
elaborate.

Only, in the name of gentle Izaak himself, let him be a _complete_ angler;
and let the man be a passionate amateur of all the arts of life, despising
none of them, and using all of them for his soul's good and for the joy of
his fellows. If he be, so to speak, but a worm-fisherman,--a follower of
humble occupations, and pledged to unromantic duties,--let him still thrill
with the pleasures of the true sportsman. To make the most of dull hours,
to make the best of dull people, to like a poor jest better than none, to
wear the threadbare coat like a gentleman, to be outvoted with a smile, to
hitch your wagon to the old horse if no star is handy,--this is the
wholesome philosophy taught by fishing with a worm. The fun of it depends
upon the heart. There may be as much zest in saving as in spending, in
working for small wages as for great, in avoiding the snapshots of publicity
as in being invariably first "among those present." But a man should be
honest. If he catches most of his fish with a worm, secures the larger
portion of his success by commonplace industry, let him glory in it, for
this, too, is part of the great game. Yet he ought not in that case to pose
as a fly-fisherman only,--to carry himself as one aware of the immortalizing
camera,--to pretend that life is easy, if one but knows how to drop a fly
into the right ripple. For life is not easy, after all is said. It is a
long brook to fish, and needs a stout heart and a wise patience. All the
flies there are in the book, and all the bait that can be carried in the
box, are likely to be needed ere the day is over. But, like the Psalmist's
"river of God," this brook is "full of water," and there is plenty of good
fishing to be had in it if one is neither afraid nor ashamed of fishing
sometimes with a worm.

END: FISHING WITH A WORM.
________________________________________________
Wolfgang
This work is in the public domain. To the best of my knowledge, its
inclusion here does not violate any U.S. or other copyright laws.

note: I've taken the liberty in this piece (and will henceforth continue to
do so) of changing the archaic use of some contractions. In many of these
pieces, for example, what we write today as a single word, "isn't," is here
presented as two words, "is n't," which gives my spellchecker the fantods.