by Ernest Thompson Seton
Fisherman
(Gagoiked)
The Degree of Fisherman may be conferred on any one who takes nine of these tests
1. Catch and name ten different species of fish: salmon or trout to be taken with flies; bass, pickerel, or pike to be caught with rod or reel, muskallonge to be caught by trolling.
2. Make a bait rod of three joints, straight and sound, fourteen ounces or less in weight, ten feet or less in length, to stand a strain of one and a half pounds at the tip, 13 pounds at the grip; or else make a jointed fly-rod 8 to 10 feet long, 4 to 8 ounces in weight, capable of casting a fly sixty feet.
3. Name and describe twenty-five different species of fish found in North American waters, and give a list of at least five of the fishes ascertained to inhabit a given body of water.
4. Give the history of the young of any species of wild fish from the time of hatching until the adult stage is reached.
5. Make a net and catch a fish in it.
6. Make a turtle trap and catch a turtle in it.
7. Make a six-foot leader of clean gut, with smooth knots to stand a strain of five pounds.
8. Take with the fly, unassisted, a three-pound trout, landlocked salmon, or bass, or a twelve-pound salmon, on a rod not more than eight ounces in weight.
9. Take on a rod, without assistance in hooking, playing, or landing a trout, black bass, pike (muskallonge), grayling, salmon, bluefish, weakfish, striped bass, kingfish, sheepshead, or other game fish, whose weight in pounds equals or exceeds half that of the rod in ounces.
10. Cast a fly with a rod of five ounces, or less, not over ten feet long, sixty-five feet. Or, with one quarter of an ounce dummy frog, five-foot rod, outdoors overhead casting, tournament style, send it eighty feet if under eighteen, one hundred and ten if over.
11. Swim a hundred yards.
12. Paddle (single) a canoe one mile in fourteen minutes.
13. Row without help one mile in ten minutes.
For "How To" Information, See: The Birch Bark Roll
