that fly-fishing is something of a piscatorial immorality?"

"Not in the least," answered Willibert, warming to his work, "it is a
legitimate appeal, not to the trout's lower instinct, his mere physical
hunger, but to his curiosity, his sense of beauty, his desire for
knowledge. He takes the fly, not because it looks like an edible
insect, for nine times out of ten it doesn't, but because it's pretty
and he wants to know what it is. When he has found out, you give him a
fair run for his money and bring him to basket with nothing more than a
pin-prick in his lip. But what does the bait-fisher do? He deceives the
trout into thinking that a certain worm or grub or minnow is wholesome,
nourishing, digestible, fit to be swallowed. In that deceptive bait he
has hidden a big, heavy hook which sticks deep in the trout's gullet
and by means of which the disappointed fish is forcibly and brutally
dragged to land. It lacks refinement. It is primitive, violent,
barbaric, and so simple that any unskilled village lad can do it as
well as you can."

"I think not," said Cotton Mather, now on the defensive, "just let the
village-lad try it. Why, the beauty of real bait-fishing is that it
requires more skill than any other kind of angling. To present your
bait to the wary old trout without frightening him; to make it move in
the water so that it shall seem alive and free"; ("deception," murmured
Willibert), "to judge the proper moment after he has taken it when you
should strike, and how hard; to draw him safely away from the weeds and
roots among which he has been lying; all this takes quite a little
practice and some skill,--a good deal more, I reckon, than hooking and
playing a trout on the clear surface of the water when you can see
every motion."

"Ah, there you are," cried Willibert, "that's the charm of fly-fishing!
It's all open and above-board. The long, light cast of the fly, 'fine
and far off,' the delicate drop of the feathers upon the water, the
quick rise of the trout and the sudden gleam of his golden side as he
turns, the electric motion of the wrist by which you hook him,--that is
the magic of sport."

"Yes," replied the other, "I'll admit there's something in it, but
bait-fishing is superior. You take a long pool, late in the season;
water low and clear; fish lying in the middle; you can't get near them.
You go to the head of the pool in the rapids and stir up the bottom so
as to discolour the water a little----"