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Show About Gentle Art t of Fishing: t ! i ; By RING LARDNER .. To the Editor: The undersigned wrote such a masterful mas-terful article on instructions iu regards re-gards to fishing a yr. ago that I have been ust to write another one and try to make it soinewheres near twice as good. I can't be all over the country at once but they say that from now on is the beet time to fish in either fresh or salt water or both at the same time on ucct. of being the open season sea-son fur the new ki.Ws of fish which have been discovered siuce the last fishing article I wrote. In the old days before these things happened, why if a person lived on a fresh water pond or rivulet, why all I they had to do was to bait their hook with spinach and they were practical-' ly sure of drugging in a muskie, a pickerel, a perch, a pestilence, a sword fish, a swage, a serod or a craine.. But cow days since they have found out about the new kinds) of fish you have got to use a whole lot more judgment. That is why I have been approached on all sides with a view to learning the new secrets se-crets in regards to how to fish for the new kind of fish. Would like to exclaim at the outset that I have long been a student of what I sometimes call the hnley tribe and am known around home uy a nick-uame nick-uame I once give myself, namely, the Piscatorial artiste. Lots of people still call me Isaac Newton on acct. of the mastery I have got over the piscatorial profession. Well to make u short story still shorter, the latest fish that can be caught in medium water, that is, half way between salt und fresh and vice verse, is the geffel. The nimrod must first lay on their back and read an evening paper. Along about five o'clock you bait your hook and cast it off the side of the boat or hammock or bicycle or whatever you was iu to -start with. The bait must be sage dressing out of a turkey. It will improve im-prove matters a good deal if the fisherman fish-erman keeps reading the comic pictures pic-tures of the paper and laughing aloud as that makes the geffel think lie is not in earnest. Sometimes it is necessary nec-essary to have two evening papers as the geffel don't always agree on which is the funniest pictures. The first time Commodore Gallagher of the Knickerbocker Yacht club fished for geffel, he had no less than three comic supplements and hua to read one and a Vz before ie even got a nibble. By that time both lie and the geffel was.laugh-ing was.laugh-ing their heads off. That put them both on easy St. Another tiali that has recently been discovered in all kinds of waters and some kinds of milk ij the prone. The word prone means laying down face forwards on your stomach and that is where this scion of the finley tribe gol its name 6u acct. of it always lying ly-ing down face forwards ou its stomach. stom-ach. In o.der to catch them you have got to first wake them up and turn them over and ask theiu why they was laying on theii stomach. It may oi been from cramps or something, but as soon as you find out tlun you know how to fish lor them. If it was cramps you give them some kind of indigestion tablets which I won't mention men-tion no names on acct of free advertising, adver-tising, but if that is what it was, they will get very grateful and iurn over on their side and then is the time to grab them A prone laying on their side is as helpless as one of Tunney's sparring partners. In til is connection It might be of interest to tell othei Isaac Nimrods about my first experience in prone fishery. 1 had been out in a queel boat on Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, for three years, every day, trying to get a prone. They wouldn't even look at me. One day however, one of them got In terrible shape and began to cry in misery and 1 called down to the bottom of the lake what is the matter. The prone rolled ovei and made the remark that it felt kind of out of things as parties had been going go-ing on at the different mansions and cottages around the lake and it had not been invited to one. Well, I says, you and 1 are in the same boat No. says the prone, we ain't but we I will be. 1 With that, he jumped up and got In my boat That is one way of catching a prone. Another kind of fish that everybody every-body is ravenous to grab one of them down our way is the month fish. This j Is four times as long as the weak fish I and it takes four times as long to I catch them but when you catch them you don't half to worry for another month. They are caught vUh a page out of a calender, like for Inst, if you are fishing in September, you bail your j hook with the Ocloher page of the I calendar and they will grab it, thinking think-ing they are going abend soinewheres. A year from now 1 will give you an-j an-j other lesson In what I call the pisca tori al art (fcl bv the Boll Synillcnte. Inc. 1 |