Word: angler
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...summons thoughts of lyrical spring days, when minutes, like dragonflies, hover motionless over water. Perhaps more important are the benefits derived from angling's lack of speed. Unlike any other outdoor sport, it allows the mind to unreel and stretch itself. With luck, and time, and endurance, the angler gets the long-awaited result. Out of dark water, the fish flashes to the surface like a new idea-and in that instant the sport justifies its glorious history...
From the very beginning, the appeal of the fin was irresistible. The very word angling derives from the ancient Greek onkos, or barbed hook. Circa 200 B.C., Cato the Elder (manifestly a non-angler) was astonished by tales of "a city where fish sold for more than an ox." (To the fisherman, the situation is unsurprising; acquiring the fish called for more ingenuity, greater effort and less tenderizer.) History's most prominent fisherman was, of course, St. Peter, who later turned to netting souls. In the years A.D., angling was seen as something more than the mere coaxing...
...Compleat Angler, published in 1653, remains as fresh today as it was in Oliver Cromwell's time. Through Walton, millions of readers have learned to put as much lead "as will sink the bait to the bottom and keep it still in motion, and not more," and that "when the wind is south, it blows your bait into a fish's mouth." Through Walton's American disciple, Washington Irving, millions more have been apprised of the fact that "there is certainly something in angling ... that tends to produce a gentleness of spirit, and a pure serenity...
That something persists today, and it remains one of angling's surest lures. Its name is failure. No matter how fine his equipment, no matter how limitless his patience, it is the angler who is cast most often as the poor fish. The odds, as always, still favor the quarry; yet to the true fisherman that very failure is a kind of triumph. His sport lacks the com pulsive pursuit of hunting, the dizzying zest of mountain climbing. But it grants something else: a philosophy - an acceptance and ultimately a grudging admiration for unyielding nature. It is that philosophy...
Other familiar faces are forward Larry Desmond, Harry Reynolds, and Bob Goodenow. Desmond, a senior, was voted the recipient of last year's Angler Trophy as the most improved player...