The angler's guide; the most complete and practical ever written by Martin James

Author:Martin, James. [from old catalog]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fishing, Fishing
Publisher: London, G. Cox
Published: 1854-03-25T05:00:00+00:00

But Mr. Bigings had had no experience, and therefore did not understand these distinctions, and being, as we have said, a man of an excellent opinion of his own abilities, he thought that if he were only to go angling, he could catch trout, jack, chub, roach, and dace with the greatest ease, only by adopting the means which Isaac Walton described, forgetting that

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there is a wonderful difference between theory and practice, talking or reading, and doing; he therefore was bent on becoming an angler. And he began to please his good wife with the thoughts of having trout for supper, and she absolutely looked into their old cookery^ book to see how they were to be dressed, and while she was reading the directions, he could not help smacking his lips, for his mouth really watered, as he was remarkably fond of fish, which was not surprising, seeing that he was a Roman Catholic, and a bit of fish was all he dare eat for days and weeks together.

It may, however, be remarked, that he had not been a Roman Catholic all the former part of his life; but he had been into their chapel, gazed on their splendid paintings, their lighted up altar-piece, their gorgeous array, listened to their mystic intonations, their harmonic singing, their pealing organ, and, like ten thousand other weak-minded and superstitious ones, he had become quite infatuated with them, though he knew no more about the doctrines of Romanism than a donkey knows about the science of botany. And, with all due respect to R6man Catholics, we cannot help thinking, and saying, that we are of

opinion that they must all be in a similar state of ignorance, or they never could tolerate a system of religion so full of follies, errors, absurdities and abominations.

The favourite fish of Mrs. Bigings was salmon, but her spouse assured her that a really good trout of five or six pounds was to be preferred, and he was quite sure that she would be convinced of it when he brought two or three brace home. And under such circumstances, if they did not make presents of any of them to their friends, the best plan would be to boil them all and sup off them, and then pickle the rest; and he'd not the least doubt that it would be very far superior to the finest Newcastle salmon in the world.

And then as to jack, and carp, and chub, and all the other fresh-water fish, though some people did say they cared nothing about them, he believed it was only because they could not get them, and he'd wager that if they had a dish of them nicely cooked, they'd pretty soon begin to clear some of their bones, especially if they had been fasting for two or three days previous. And if even the priest declared that they should not have a single modicum of fyt to fry them in, he'd warrant they'd go

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down sweet.

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