When you are going to get into it, have your canoe securely beside a landing, and then step carefully into the center and middle. Bring the second foot after the first only when you are sure that you have your balance. The next thing is to sit down. Be certain that it is not in the water. The only satisfactory recipe for this delicate act is to do it. No girl should step into a canoe for the first time without some one at the bow to steady it. Very quickly you will learn clever ways of using your paddle to help in keeping the balance. Until you do, you can’t be too careful, or too careful that others should be careful. Take no chances in a canoe. If any are taken for you, hang on to your paddle. It is well to have an inflatable life-preserver, but, best of all, is it to know how to swim. Never move around in a canoe, or turn quickly to look over your shoulder. A canoe is a long-suffering thing, but once “riled” and its mind made up to capsize, heaven and earth cannot prevent that consummation and your ducking or even drowning.
Become skillful in the use of the paddle, and the best way to learn is through some one who knows how. Paddling is an art and a very delightful one, requiring much skill of touch and strength. Although as a girl I cared most for rowing, I have in the last ten years become so devoted to the paddle stroke, to its motion and touch and efficiency, that rowing only bores me. Get some one, a brother, a father, a friend, a guide, to teach you the rudiments of paddling. These once learned, canoeing is as safe as bicycling and not more difficult. It is all in learning how.
The writer is an old-fashioned fisherwoman and goes light with tackle. However, I have noticed that the simplicity of fishing tackle does not in the least interfere with luck. If you are going to fish with worm, hook, and sinker, you will need no advice. Perch, pickerel, black bass, cat-fish, and others to be caught in still fishing, will be your quarry. As a rule you will troll for pickerel and pike, and there is no sport more pleasant in the world than that which is to be had at the end of a trolling spoon: the motion of the boat, the vibration of the line, the spinning of the spoon, and then the sudden strike, with all its possibilities for taking in big fish. I defy anyone to have a more exciting time than netting a salmon from a trolling line and landing it successfully in a canoe. But this is not a thing to be attempted by the novice. Much better let the salmon go and save yourself a ducking.