DAYS STOLEN FOR SPORT 153 



pages of TJie Fishing Gazette, in which they were so 

 absorbed. To give advice about fishing is rather an 

 undertaking, for there are fishers to whom guidance 

 is worse than useless, and my descriptions snares, 

 at each and all of which they swear in tuni. To lose 

 seven minnows and get no fish, as happened to one of 

 these, almost excused his language, 



'It has been an open winter with every chance 

 for salmon to ascend the river, and clean fish have 

 been seen in several of the pools,' is the news that 

 has often come during the second week in January-, 

 with the effect of firing the imagination of the waiting 

 sportsman. It is then his memory trots out the 

 doings of days past when early prizes have fallen to his 

 rod and also indistinct shadows of still bigger fish 

 that through some accident, some carelessly undetected 

 flaw in hne or faulty hook, have not reached the bank. 

 Then comes a longing to take a peep, just a peep, 

 at the salmon tackle. I know I shall find my hooks 

 free from rust, my winches clean and their bearings 

 oiled, and the whippings of the rods sound and var- 

 nished; but a new line may be needed in the event of 

 my really determining to go. I have often had to think 

 I ought not to go, but close on the heels of such 

 thinking has come the thought that it would be a pity 

 to break the sequence of so many years of going, 

 and then, to settle the vexed question, I have con- 

 fessed that I have always returned extra fit for work. 

 On the occasion of which I am about to write I found 

 myself unusually hard to persuade, and made it in 

 some measure a condition that Phil, my eldest son, 

 should go. He is a busy man, but I talked to him until, 

 to his astonishment, and somewhat to mine, he con- 

 sented. I gave no chance for a change of mind, but 

 wrote at once to say my son would come to join my 

 friend, Johnson, and myself at the fishing. 



The reply to my letter was a great surprise : *I am 

 very sorry your son cannot fish, as every rod is taken 



