Sport: Updating Izaak

One of Izaak Walton's rules was "to make as little noise as I can when I am fishing," and generations of fishermen have put it down as the kind of common sense that only an idiot would disagree with. Fishermen, it appeared last week, had not taken into account the implacable curiosity of science. In San Francisco, University of Michigan Zoologist Karl Lagler reported a 66-day fishing experiment on a quiet Livingston County, Mich, lake (980 man-hours, 1,561 fish). Every other day a colleague buzzed the experimenters in a noisy outboard, but the racket never hurt the catch. Zoologist Lagler's conclusion:...

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