Fishing-Sports For Ladies

(this is a transcript and does not represent my own views of Lady Anglers.

It does however show a side of the Victorians that had not ocurred to me ..)

 

Many of the sterner sex must often have wondered why so few ladies are fond
of fly fishing,considering how suitable to the feminine orgnisation is the
delicacy of manipulation which that sport demands.

It is not without fear of being set upon by angry Maenades the next time we go a-fishing
that we venture to suggest that what to mankind forms the charm of fly-fishing
- its solitary character and the lonely places to which it leads its votaries
-proves its chief disability to the feminine mind.

To support this theory,the fact may be adduced that many ladies do enjoy bottom fishing if the baits -those horrid worms are fastened on for them by someone of the other sex.

To set ourselves right with the ladies this may be put more neatly - it is the sociability of the sport that endears it to them.

So on the Thames or on Ellesmere or in Scottish lochs innumerable angling parties for the two sexes may be seen.

 

 

Fly Fishing for Trout or Salmon however demands persevering attention.
These pursuits tolerate no rivalry in the shape of gentlemen to dance atendance and give lessons.

Fly-fishing is one thing and flirting quite another and the two are incompatible amusements.

Flirting indeed has often been enjoyed under the guise of fly-making but fly-making is a stern even serious amusement and cannot be allowed to degenerate into love-making by the riverside.

Even Cotton (ladies man though he was never) dreamed of such frivolity
and the SCHOLAR it will be remembered is speedily rebuked by Walton when it there seemed a likelihood of his snatching a kiss from Honest Matilda -

(Compleat Angler I.4)

 

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