62 BRITISH FRESH-WATER FISHES 
Perch are at times so hungry and unsuspicious as to allow 
themselves to be caught in scores by means of the rudest 
tackle. I happen to possess within my park a natural lake 
of about one hundred acres, wherein perch and pike do greatly 
abound. The fishing is free—that is, leave to fish is never 
refused to any respectable angler ; the more they catch, the 
better Iam pleased. What does vex me is that some people 
consider it unnecessary to bring a rod with them, but supply 
themselves instead with an ash sapling cut for the occasion 
from the neighbouring woods. Forasmuch as the straightest 
and cleanest-grown sapling makes the shapeliest rod, the result 
is that I have to pay for this kind of depredation by the loss 
annually of some of the most promising young trees. Howbeit, 
having cut many a rod in the selfsame woods when I was a boy, 
I have not the heart to adopt rigorous measures against this 
manner of pilfering. 
What rapture I used to experience in those far-off summer 
evenings when the water lay dark and tranquil in the reed- 
fringed bays! The rod of green ash had been prepared by 
pruning off the leaves and branchlets; a piece of strong twine 
the same length as the rod served as a line, to which was 
attached a hook on a single strand of gut. A piece of ordinary 
bottle-cork, cut halfway through and bound with thread, made 
a float, and with what Izaak Walton commends as “a lively, 
quick, stirring worm” as a bait, the equipment was complete. 
Then off we glided in the slow, tarry tub of a boat, to some 
bay of high repute, where the trees already cut off the westering 
sun. What tremulous fingers moored the rickety old craft 
to the mossy piles; with what expectation was the bait and 
cork dropped into the water, clear with the mysterious and 
uncertain translucency of black glass!] Then what a period 
of suspense ensued! If there proved to be one perch in that 
bay, assuredly there would be a shoal ; but sometimes the 
precious evening hours ebbed away while we probed one bay 
after another without finding the denizens desired. Generally 
