Lines in Pleasant Places Part 6

ANGLING COUSINS AT THE VICARAGE

The girls seemed to have moderated their zeal for the bicycle, and in truth it was too hot to last. Then they were all for angling, and for this we had to thank certain books recently reviewed and the vicar of Netherbate. It fell to a useful cousin's lot to purchase the books.

The girls were intensely interested in Mr. Dewar's _South Country Trout Streams_, because they knew most of the Hamps.h.i.+re country so pleasantly described, and they liked the photographs, one of the two readers being herself a kodakeer of no mean skill. It was the ill.u.s.trations, too, of Mr. Halford's Marryat edition of _Dry Fly Fis.h.i.+ng_ that pinned their attention to that work for at least two hours. They wondered not a little at the att.i.tude of the dry-fly gentleman as he is photographed doing the overhand cast, downward cut, steeple cast, and dry-switch, and under the vicar's tuition fell in love with the Mayfly plate, not excluding the uncanny larvae likenesses. The reverend monitor, indeed, proposed that they should drive forthwith over to the Trilling, a chalk stream tributary at the further limit of the estate, and dredge in the mud, or whatever their home may be, for the beasts themselves.

To keep to the story, it must be stated that after this interlude the girls came to Lord Grey's _Fly Fis.h.i.+ng_, the attractive _avant coureur_ of the Haddon Hall Library. The vicar, who had dissuaded them from end-to-end reading of Halford's standard book because it was strong meat and they were babes (apologising in his cheery way for talking shop in such a connection), dealt out quite the contrary advice about Lord Grey's book, not because the author is an eminent statesman and t.i.tled, or because it was the best looking, but by reason of its glamorous word pictures of the country. He artfully picked out pa.s.sages that, having no reference at all to fis.h.i.+ng, very poetically touched off the six great blossoms of May, and the singing summer birds easily espied amongst the young leaves and sprouting brushwood; the long days and warm nights of June, when the wild rose is a beauty to be admired, and the distant ma.s.ses of elder have a fine foamy appearance.

These extracts settled Belinda offhand, and she and Lamia laid their heads together and read the book faithfully. They are good girls, spite of the names selected for them by a fanciful parent, and if they are not proud of those names, and prefer being called by their intimates Blind (with a short "i") and Lammy, there is, I hope, no great harm done. That is better no doubt than the Miss Blinders and Miss Lame-ears of the cottage folk.

The practical issue of this study of fis.h.i.+ng literature (for which also cousin had to pay) and this not-minding of his own parochial business by the vicar (dredging hideous larvae, forsooth, when he ought to be a-fis.h.i.+ng of men) may be reckoned at very little change out of a bank note--for cousin. It is true that this is a minor matter, and in a measure a somewhat sordid consideration. Also, I am antic.i.p.ating a little. Perhaps I ought to have at once made it clear that the really practical issue of the aforesaid was an insistence on the part of the girls that they should be taught fly fis.h.i.+ng, and equipped with the correct "things" (their expression not mine), for a new diversion; it must be done immediately, expense not to be considered. The vicar was strong as to the hang-the-cost doctrine, and this he said knowing that cousin would see his ten-pound note no more for ever. Perhaps the reader will comprehend why cousin was pa.s.sing sore; he paid the piper, and the vicar evidently meant to dance to the tune. In plain phrase, he undertook, if cousin would drill them sufficiently into the mysteries of fly fis.h.i.+ng, to lead them into action in earnest during the approaching Mayfly time. Wherefore cousin fitted them out with rods, winches, lines, casts, and flies. But he drew the line at waders, as not being in the department of a mere he-cousin.

With curious indiscretion he brought home a tackle-maker's catalogue, with the "things" which he considered generously requisite. Then the girls consulted the pamphlet, and, backed of course by the vicar, insisted that a silver spring balance in morocco case (to weigh up to or down from 4 lb.), an oil bottle for odourless paraffin, and other small trifles were needful. Cousin gave them all credit for grat.i.tude evinced after his second trip to town, and any reader must give him credit for the honest pleasure that was his recompense. They were satisfied for the time being, as the reader will readily understand.

"A very neat little rig-out indeed, my dear," said B. to L., the vicar corroborating like the sound of a small amen. For a while the donor resolutely declined to buy split-cane rods, deeming high-cla.s.s greenhearts sufficient for beginners, though the vicar argued that it was always wise in tuition to begin as you intend to proceed. This casuistry cousin heeded not.

"Very well, my dear fellow," he said airily, "you know best. We shall have the Mayfly up in about a month; the girls will know how to use a rod by then, and you'll simply have to buy split canes after all.

_You_ use a split cane, _I_ use a split cane, and you must be deplorably ignorant of girl nature if you suppose they will be content with greenhearts two minutes after they have seen our rods put together."

Such an argument the young man respected, and, relenting, he bought split-cane rods. Light gun-metal winches, 30 yards of tapered line, and the regulation etceteras were completed by a couple of waterproof bags of the finest material, as taking more kindly to the female form than a hard, b.u.mping, stick-out creel. As was explained to Blind, there would be always someone to look after the fish caught, if any; the bag was for fly-book, scent bottle, spring balance, and trifles of that kind, never forgetting fine cutting pliers in case of accidents with fingers, lips, noses, or ears hooked foul.

The preliminary lessons being rudimentary and in the nature of drudgery were of course entrusted to cousin. They were to be imparted, to begin with, on the smooth sward of the bowling green. The girls required to be persuaded a little to this humble curriculum, which, in truth, is a comfortable, serviceable, and labour-saving way of mastering the rudiments. Granted it is make-believe, yet not more than practising at a target. The pupils at last were convinced that it was a sensible means to an end, and began with a flower-pot saucer varying yards up the lawn. Blind took almost naturally to the trick of allowing the rod to have its natural way. It was wonderful how after a quarter of an hour she intuitively understood what to do. But that was her nature; as a child she was never fl.u.s.tered, and at the first trial her leisurely sweep, with the needful pause of the line in air behind her, was admirable. She did, in fact, at the outset what many an experienced angler has never thoroughly acquired. Lammy, on the contrary, was hard to coach; that is her nature, too; she always was so impetuous. From the bare line they advanced to a gut cast and hackled fly with filed-off barb, and Blind could deftly drop the palmer into the saucer at twelve yards days before her sister could get out the line with anything like an approach to straightness.

The time arrived for applied science, and cousin director bade the girls don those waders which they had clamoured to use even on the lawn, and come away to the stream. It was fortunate that they had a shallow which, for practical essays in casting, was a nice compromise, as a position for throwing a fly, between the unnatural level of the lawn and the elevated banks of an ordinary trout river. There was a bridge spanning a smart run of knee-deep water, and above a beautiful broad shallow, aglow with white ranunculus blossoms, growing out of yellow sand held together with small gravel perpetually washed by crystal clear water. The damsels had to do their best with shortened walking dresses until certain smart clothes, about which there had been many whisperings, came down from the tailor; and in they went, skirts notwithstanding, like merry children as the stream rippled and gurgled four inches or so above the feet, which were encased in dainty rubber combination waders.

Bless the maiden, how delighted Blind was in delivering her first real cast with a real artificial fly on real water! They had not yet attempted the mysteries of dry fly; a fat alder on a No. 1 hook was honour enough for a beginning. A red spinner, in compliment to one who was a spectator, first chosen, alighted and floated well, but swiftly came down to the fair pract.i.tioner. Some trouble followed in gaining the delicate touch of line and winch, and knack of recovery essential to workmanlike up-stream casting, but the amiable pupil, being a listener rather than a talker, was quick to learn, and the lesson was over when the vicar arrived. To him Lammy soon contrived to explain that she was left on the bank, or, rather, paddling below in the shallow, ignored and lamenting. They were therefore left to operate in company while the others crossed the bridge and sought fresh water a little higher up the shallow.

Though there was no idea of catching fish that evening, fortune smiled upon the placid Blind. Obeying cousin's order to drop the fly between two well-defined patches of weed up-stream, she achieved a neat cast straight and clean to the desired spot. The fly, with the evening light showing it startlingly distinct, had not travelled three inches before something took it fiercely, and the winch was heard as sweet harmony. Neither of the operators had reckoned upon this. Cousin dared not speak at such a momentous crisis. Blind was startled into a little "oh," and, as he might have been sure without protestations, she kept cool, and remembered precisely the order of procedure which he had expounded in theory at odd times on the lawn--point of rod raised, winch left free but still at ready command, fish to be humoured, and no excitement. The battle was really over if she maintained her presence of mind, and in this she failed not.

The rod top was nid-nodding sweetly, the hand gently turning the reel handle, the fish held and guided. All was well. "What shall I do, cousin, now?" she asked. "Take it easy," he answered from the bank; "walk gently out towards me, don't slacken the line, and don't hurry the fish." And successfully done as formulated. Blind was throughout mistress of the situation, and in the absence of a landing net, which had not entered for a moment into calculations, she backed in perfect order up the gentle slope, and the fish docilely followed her up and up till it was high and dry, gasping on blossoms of silver weed. It was only a grayling, to be sure, black, and out of condition; but there it was, admired and petted. Blind would have kissed the creature I do believe if spectators had not been present; anyhow she would not hear of return to the water. What was close time to her? It was the first captive of her bow and spear, and nothing would content her but embalming, and a gla.s.s case.

Lammy was not so happy as her sister that night; the vicar had tried almost in vain to induct her into the art of fis.h.i.+ng up-stream, and her casts across, on wet fly principles, while not so very bad for a beginner, were so obvious a contrast to those of Blind that she was not eager to dwell too much upon the wonderful luck that had befallen.

Much conversation ensued for days as to the approaching Mayfly carnival. The girls demanded the water to themselves during its period, and as Lamia had landed a small trout that had hooked itself down stream on a submerged olive dun, she was soon as much bitten with the fis.h.i.+ng mania as Blind herself. It was comforting to the vicar and cousin to be informed by the girls that they would henceforth accept no services from "hangers-on"--meaning that they would do their own landing and basketing. "We shall see," said cousin to the parson; "meanwhile (after I have bought the correct article in landing nets) we shall be having a lively time, I can perceive, when the old man slouches up some evening to say 'Mayfly be up now, missie.'"

"Aye, they are still faithful to the gentle art." Seasons had flown with that year's Mayflies, and Netherbate and its kindly people had to me become just a pleasant remembrance. But spite of the archidiaconal hat and gaiters I knew the vicar when accidentally met on the platform of York Station, and his reply to one of my questions about the happy people at Netherbate was precisely as I have written it. Of course the calls of romance had been fully answered by the marriage of Lamia to the vicar, and Belinda to cousin, and suns.h.i.+ne had blessed them all in basket and in store. I was now to learn that while the parties were still free they had continued their angling studies and practice, duly progressing from wet to dry fly, from trout to salmon.

"In fact," said the archdeacon, "I have had a letter from your old pal 'Blinders' this very day, telling me that she landed a Tweed fish yesterday above Kelso, and her boy was allowed to hold the rod while the boat rowed ash.o.r.e. Lamia started by the train just now to join in her fis.h.i.+ng, and I am left to the dubious excitements of the Congress.

So glad to see you looking so well! Adieu."

CHAPTER IX

A CONTRAST IN THAMES ANGLING

My personal knowledge of the Thames trout is not profound; but if it has left me somewhat short of the affection which many anglers proclaim, it has inspired a high respect; and if my interest in him is not precisely direct, I always have been able to sympathise keenly with his mult.i.tude of lovers and admirers. On this entrance upon another Thames trout season I have him in my thoughts, and am pleased to know that his status, character, and honour are on the whole nothing diminished as the years revolve. In the past I have, indeed, seen something of Thames trouting, and though I have, by lack of opportunity, not engaged largely in it, yet have formed ideas upon the subject that may be formulated as a seasonable topic. Also I have reason to remember this fish as figuring in one of the curious printer's errors of my early journalism. In a special big-type article in a daily paper I had glorified the breed and the business by the magniloquent demand "Who that has battled with a fine Thames trout in a thundering weir will ever forget, etc., etc.?" The step from the sublime to the ridiculous appeared next morning in the rendering "Who that has _bathed_ with, etc., etc."

The ichthyologists who have made a study of the interesting salmon family have, perforce, unanimously agreed that the Thames trout is of the house of Brown: is in a word a true _Salmo fario_. But these learned gentlemen seem to have overlooked the equally undeniable fact that there are three distinct species of this excellent fish. First comes the Thames trout of the professional fisherman. Of this cla.s.s there is an untold number. Their movements are keenly watched, and often chronicled with surprising minuteness. They are liberally scattered over every likely district from Teddington upwards, and there is a degree of familiarity with their habits, on the part of local observers, that at once whets our appet.i.te and craves our admiration.

You hear about them often by the riverside. At six o'clock yesterday morning a fish of 7 1/2 lb. appeared at the tail of the third stream from the right bank and disported for the s.p.a.ce of an hour amongst the trembling bleak. He was rather short for his weight, and had remarkably white teeth. Later on, another of 5 lb., full weight, with a cast in his left eye, took a leisurely breakfast at the edge of yonder scour. Three trout, that can only be spoken of as "whoppers,"

are beyond question in possession of this pool; others are to be found between four and six of the afternoon at home in hovers, the whereabouts of which are known to a nicety. The gambols and predatory raids of this cla.s.s of Thames trout afford great excitement and pleasure to the observant pa.s.sers-by, and there is no doubt in the world that our friends are not always romancing with regard to them.

Yet it may not be gainsaid that the Thames trout of the professional fisherman is but too often a Mysterious Unknown to the angler, and a creature never to be dissected by mortal fingers.

A second species of Thames trout is that of the unsuccessful angler.

Hieing him blithely in the sweet spring morning to the waterside, the angler beholds this fine specimen to great advantage--by the eye of faith. His step quickens as, in all its magnificent proportions, it flashes before his inner vision. Saw you ever such brilliant vesture, such resplendent fins? By the time the sanguine sportsman has clambered over the rails in the third meadow, the line of hope has run out from the winch of imagination, and he has mentally struck that trout, played it, brought it to the rim of the net, played it yet again, and finally, after a battle heroic in its every detail, beheld it gracefully curved in the friendly meshes, and transferred to a gra.s.sy couch, to be the envy of his club and the boast of his family, even to the third and fourth generation. This also is a numerous species, for there is not a member of the great army of Thames anglers who has not, in this manner, seen specimens during the first three or four hours of that day which witnesses the spiritless return of the bearer of an empty basket.

The third species of Thames trout is of a more substantial kind, and although as to its quality we may allow ourselves to be as enthusiastic as the most hearty of Thames trout wors.h.i.+ppers, we dare not blink at the cruel fact that, as to quant.i.ty, it ranks far below the two other species to which I have so charitably and gently referred.

What it may be to-day I know not, but in my time there was not a more likely spot than Boveney Weir for one of these goodly Thames trout in the flesh. From the sill over which the river churns into a splendid ma.s.s of milky foam, past the island, and for a couple of hundred yards down the water looks as much like the correct thing as any reach can do. But even in fis.h.i.+ng matters, perhaps in them more especially, things are not always what they seem, and, reduced to the practical test of results, Boveney Weir, in the estimation of many practical anglers, is not now what it was, and decidedly not what it ought to be.

On the Sat.u.r.day after a Good Friday, which fell in April, one of the experts, as he worked a delicious little bleak in a most artistic fas.h.i.+on down the middle of the weir, bemoaned himself in my hearing on this account. Yet he could not complain. He had caught a trout on the previous Monday. And it has come to this! A man who evidently understands how to do it takes one fish in the course of a week, and, being conscientious, admits that he will not sin by complaining.

In the course of an hour, four gentlemen, nicely equipped with spinning rods, arrived at the scene of action, and paid out in the orthodox way at the head of the weir. I could see that they had been having brave sport with the above-mentioned species Number Two; but, so long as I remained, that was the sum total of their spoil. One could almost observe, by the gradual melancholy which settled upon their countenances as the time went on with no thrilling rap to make the top of the limber rod dance again, the hopeless fading out of these unsubstantial specimens from even the imagination. The east wind of course had been against everything ever since the trout season opened, and it was not surprising to learn that; though the weir had been well fished from All Fools' day onwards, only six fish had been taken, and they of the smallest size.

A Thames trout of 2 1/2 lb. is regarded as a mere minnow by the man who has drunk the deep delight of landing a fish of the normal weight of 6 or 7 lb.; yet this seemed to have been the average. Put it down to the east wind by all means. An honest Thames trout, properly educated up to the modern standard, would be unworthy of the confidence of the great metropolitan angling clubs if he so violated piscatorial law as to allow himself to be caught under such conditions, and it is but charity to suppose that these legally sizable but morally undersized fish were giddy youths, upon whom the example of the veterans, poising themselves steelproof in the current, yet virtueproof against temptation, was sadly thrown away.

Fish or no fish, it is, nevertheless, worth something to stand awhile at the head of the weir and indulge in those soothing reveries which a running stream provokes. You cross the lock, and by the permission of the lockkeeper (whose good temper is sorely tried these holiday times by the incessant pa.s.sage of pleasure boats, bound for Surley, and maybe Monkey Island) pa.s.s over the pretty island, and enter upon the plankway which communicates with the further bank. The weir is broad, and its construction such that the heavy body of water from above stampedes through at your feet in magnificent force. Shout at your topmost pitch of voice if you would carry on a conversation with the roar of the swirl in the listener's ears. No fewer than seventeen distinct floods are pouring between the beams with never two escaping alike. As different are they as the current of our individual lives; now quietly gliding in, but not off, the racket on either side; now confidently a.s.serting themselves by a semi-turbulent merriness; now all babble and bubble and surface; now dark, deep, and masterful through hidden force under a calm countenance; now tearing, and das.h.i.+ng, and running away with quickly scattered impulse.

Yonder, the sleeping island o'ershadowed by trees on the left, and the high indented bank on the right, seem to gather these diverse streams within their arms and reduce them to something like uniformity of purpose. And then, looking up and around from the seething pool, you see the stately grey towers of Windsor rising above the land, and the level meadows stretching green towards the eminences made picturesque by the woods.

The tradition amongst the fishermen is that Boveney Weir is full of "rum uns." This I take to be a confession of faith in the existence of large trout, and at the same time a delicate compliment to their wariness. All Thames trout are wary, and it is probably their outrageous artfulness which adds to the rapture of circ.u.mventing them.

Old Nottingham George would tell many a tale of cunning trout which had been angled for so often and p.r.i.c.ked so many times that they were supposed to have become as learned in the matter of fishermen and fis.h.i.+ng tackle as humanity itself. The reader may not have read, or, reading, may have forgotten, that the principles of the Thames Angling Preservation Society were very early applied to Boveney Weir, for it is written that William, the son of Richard de Windsor, in the first year of the thirteenth century, gave a couple of marks to the king, in order that the pool and fishery might be maintained in no worse a condition than it used to be under the reign of Henry II.

Spinning for Thames trout, which is undoubtedly the most legitimate way of treating them, seeing that they so little appreciate the beauties of an artificial fly, is an art that requires perhaps more patience than skill. Your bleak, dace, gudgeon, minnow, or phantom, in point of fact, humoured fairly into the stream, does its own work; but anyone who watches the old-timers at such weirs as Eton or Boveney must perceive that there are many degrees of such science as the catching of a Thames trout demands. No doubt it is delightful to sit on a weir-head, reading your favourite author, while the rod is conveniently placed to give early notice of a run. It is delightful, but it is not angling. The most dunder-headed trout of the pool, at sight of a silvery bait racing apparently for dear life half out of water, yet never advancing, must metaphorically place its forefinger along its snout, and with a leery wink sheer off into the deep.

The majority of anglers seem too readily satisfied when their bait spins, whereas their chief aim should be to produce a movement as true to nature as possible, They spin too fast by half, not sufficiently calculating the varying force of the streams, and I am convinced that one of the most common faults of Thames spinners for trout and pike is working too near the surface. "Spin as deep as the character of the water will allow you" will be found in the long run a wholesome rule to follow, and, rather than keep on spinning in the same water, it will pay the angler to cease fis.h.i.+ng for half an hour and begin anew with a bait as unlike its predecessor as he can make it. I can never fully understand the frequent admission, "He was a fine fish, but he got off." The breaking away of a l.u.s.ty trout upon whom the fine line has been too heavily strained, or who has been hooked with rotten tackle, is explainable enough. It is a natural consequence. The "getting off"

of such a fish is quite another matter, and argues something, in nine cases out of ten, radically wrong in the disposition of the hooks. You often see three or four triangles so fixed to the bait that only by accident can one of them get into the mouth of the fish, and not a half of one _deserves_ to get in. There is no sense in having the hooks too small, and, if I may venture to offer one more opinion, no spinning flight for trout is perfect which has not a hook or hooks clear of all impediment at the tail.

About the tackle and methods of fis.h.i.+ng for Thames trout there is nothing new to say. Of late years the use of the live bait with fine snap tackle, and on Nottingham principles, has prevailed to an increasing extent, but the familiar style of spinning from the weir beams still holds its own. It presents a minimum of toil, and the rus.h.i.+ng water helps you so much that it appeals irresistibly to the happy-go-lucky instincts of the fair-weather sportsmen, who are probably, after all, a majority of Thames trout fishers. Our friends are persevering, but they persevere in the wrong way, contenting themselves by fis.h.i.+ng the same water from morning to night, instead of working the bait far and near with constant change of tactics. The Thames trout is particularly cute, and is not such a fool as to be taken in by a little fish that is always twiddling at one place, in a strongly running current, yet never gets an inch forward. A good Thames man spins his bleak everywhere, steadily and naturally, into eddies, close to piles, under trees, near the banks. The glittering object is never at rest, but flutters. .h.i.ther and thither, covering new ground with every yard of advance.

More through lack of opportunity than dislike, intention, or design, I have not, at least to the present time, enjoyed my full share of fis.h.i.+ng from a punt, or in the river Thames. On the few occasions when I have sought it the experience has therefore been a little peculiar, like that of going to school to learn something. Together with the very proper keenness of the fisherman who wants to justify himself with the rod, there have been a spice of inquisitiveness, the wide open eye of inquiry, the sense of something not quite familiar, in such days as I have spent in a Thames punt. My acquaintance with barbel is also so limited that it counts for little. In a well-known barbel hole of the Kennet I fished in vain; once in April I caught a gravid specimen spinning for trout in a Thames weir; while spinning for pike I have hooked small barbel foul by the tail as they stood on their heads at the bottom of a mill pool when the wheel was stopped. This acquaintance, in fact, was intermittent and casual. But I bear in mind one day of close intimacy with the strong, sporting barbel; and on this March morning, when the windows are being bombarded with snow, hail, and sleet, making it, I trust, bad for the Zeppelins, I intend to lose myself in the impressions of that one instance of intimate terms with the fish. It must have been in late autumn, for I seem to hear a sad sobbing of wind from the elms, and a whispered dispersal of decayed leaves, loosened by recent white frosts.

I remember, too, that the professional fisherman, Hawkins, was very hopeful. He said his comrade, Jorkins, on the previous day, with two patrons from town, had had fine sport amongst the barbel, although the fish did not run particularly large, and he added that he had often known before, in previous years, a sudden eruption of cold weather sharpen the appet.i.tes of the fish and bring them on, as he termed it, headlong, for a fortnight or three weeks.

After all, there is something pleasant and soothing to the middle-aged and somewhat lazy man in sitting upon a Windsor chair in a punt, with pleasant objects to look at on either bank, with a tranquilly flowing stream between, and an occasional boat or barge moving up or down. The Castle, the familiar church, and the customary house-tops, were prominent features in the picture; and now and then the distant scream of a railway whistle and rumble of a train came in to save us from imagining that we were altogether in the country. Then, it is not disagreeable to the lazy man to have a fisherman (especially when it is a good handy man like Hawkins) fussing about, and handling the nasty baits, and making himself generally useful, as the deft-handed and willing professional so well knows how to do when afloat. All this, of course, was very well for a while. We looked round upon the prospect, and discussed it. We made inquiries of the fisherman as to whether the swallows had all departed for their winter quarters. We inquired who lived in yonder mansion, and heard a long tale about the owner having made money by inventing a wonderful kind of automatic blacking-brush.

As the story fizzled out, the leger lines having been down for some little time, I thought, and not without reason, that I saw the point of my rod trembling. Surely enough it was a bite, but, as Hawkins suggested (doubtless borrowing the pun from some bygone customer), it might have been an audacious dace. At any rate, the only result we achieved at that particular time was the necessity of affixing another lob-worm to the hook, and the casting out of the bulleted line again.

This story, together with the hearty way in which Hawkins expressed his contempt for the patentee of the blacking-brush and his family, was so interesting and amusing that I looked at him instead of at my fis.h.i.+ng rod; and as he at the same time looked at me, the position was left unguarded, and we were both of us recalled from the realms of scandal by a vigorous plunge of the rod-top. It was a sharp "knock," in fact, followed by a series of tugs, so violent that the rod rattled on the edge of the punt. There was no merit on my part in getting that barbel, for the fish had hooked himself, and had gone down stream at racing speed, before I could get command of him.

This, let me tell the young angler, is a dangerous position to be in.

The handling of a rod under such circ.u.mstances, with a fine line like that with which you always ought to fish for barbel, requires great care. The tendency is to be over excited, and in the agitation of the moment one frequently commits the grave error of striking hard at a running fish. The result is obvious. With a fish going strongly away, and a man striking more strongly perhaps than he imagines in the contrary direction, it is almost a certainty that something or other will give way. However, an old stager at that kind of work gets out of the predicament without any loss, and after the usual resistance secures the fish. The battle was really fought about fifteen yards below the punt.

Why the barbel should choose that particular ground to try conclusions I am not aware. The water I know was deepest there, and, as I afterwards satisfied myself by plumbing, formed a saucer-like hollow, and there were also some obstructions about, of what nature I could not exactly make out. But I shrewdly suspect that there were either stakes or an ugly piece of wood, or some other object that would be dangerous to the line, and that the enemy went straight away for this, having probably tried the dodge successfully before, with the object of boring and boring until he parted from the hook that held him. A barbel is artful and apt to play games of this description, and it is prudent when you find a barbel making for a particular place and again returning to it after he has been brought away, to use every exertion compatible with safety to keep him away. This was not a large fish--something about 6 lb. or 7 lb.--and as he lay in the bottom of the punt for five or ten minutes after he had been turned out of the net, he certainly did present a striking picture of pale bronze colouring and comely shape.

A couple of hours pa.s.sed by without either myself or my friend being fortified by a knock, and by that time we had run through the history of the occupants of every one of the country houses within view of the river at the place where we were pitched. It was now two o'clock in the afternoon, and the cold had increased. We discussed the possibilities, and both of us resigned ourselves to fate, deliberately arriving at a conclusion, almost in resolution form, that we were to have no more sport that day. Hawkins, however, would not hear of such a thing. He said the fish were there, and the fish would come on to bite sooner or later. Then he consulted us as to the advisability of s.h.i.+fting the position a little, and we agreed that if he could do so quietly perhaps it would be well to drop down so that the punt would be a little below rather than above the pollard willow.

This was done and with immediate effect, for our leger lines had scarcely reposed to their mission on the river's bed before both rods were wagging their heads. At one and the same time, and apparently keeping time, the tops of those rods told us that we might both expect a fish. We struck simultaneously; in unison we shouted "I've got him!"

and we were each engaged with a fish that we knew to be not small. As a rule you prefer when in a punt to catch alternately with your friend; that is more like cricket, and indeed there is nothing more risky, unless both anglers are remarkably cool, than two lively fish being played in so small a s.p.a.ce. Whether it is that they have a sympathy with each other, whether it is that the one suspects that he has got into trouble owing to some diabolical treachery on the part of the other and is out of temper; whether it is that they know all about it, and were taught in their childhood that fouled lines are generally broken lines, so much I know not; but be it in sea fis.h.i.+ng or fresh water fis.h.i.+ng, two fish hooked and struggling within sight by instinct often make towards each other.

This happened in our case. My fish was the smaller, and would have been the sooner played out if the barbel that my friend had on his hook would have allowed it; but just as I was winching in, with the intention of getting it into the net with all possible speed, my friend's fish made a deliberate dart to starboard, and the result was a foul. To have attempted playing them with our rods would have been ruin, therefore we dropped them, and by getting the two lines in my own hand and using them as one, I managed to haul in the brace of fish by sheer strength, and the somewhat novel feat was accomplished of getting into the landing net a 3-lb. and a 5-lb. barbel upon lines that were entangled. As our lines were of the fine Nottingham description, and the gut fine also, this was to say the least a piece of good fortune.

There will, I know, be some reader who has been in the predicament here described, and I feel that he smiles at the thought of the fearful work of disentangling those clinging, wet, white, undressed silk lines. I will tell him. We cut them.