2 TROUT FISHING 



All the same, I remember that my fishing weir 

 was an ingenious and effective thing. I built it on 

 a tributary of the Tweed one foot wide, and after- 

 wards applied the principle to a more considerable 

 river in Gloucestershire which needed a bucket 

 earnestly used in the after- emptying. But the net 

 result of both engineering feats was only one trout 

 about four inches long, the same which I had marked 

 down in the daughter stream of Tweed, and which 

 set me on the building of my dam. And at this 

 time of day I will not swear that even that trout 

 was not a parr. It had lovely red spots, and I tried 

 in vain to keep it alive in some receptacle as a pet. 

 The Gloucestershire foray was troutless, but not 

 therefore a failure. What eels ! My heart warms 

 to the thought of them. 



Dear reader, if you have never, at the age of nine 

 or thereabouts, pursued an eel about the liquid 

 mud of a nearly baled-out pool in a little Gloucester- 

 shire brook, you have, I assure you, never really 

 lived. Shouting with excitement, a '* mask of 

 mud " (as old-fashioned domestics used to put it), 

 you pursue the creature from corner to corner, from 

 end to end, often getting a sort of grip of him, as 

 often losing it. It is some time before you appreciate 

 the inwardness of eel-catching, which consists in 

 getting your hooked fingers under his middle where 

 he balances and hoisting him promptly ashore. 



