12 AN OPEN CREEL 



for whose better undoing I had to ascend a tree. 

 Seated in the fork, which overhung a deep, still pool, 

 I perceived my friend and others of lesser calibre 

 basking on the surface. A lump of cheese paste was 

 carefully lowered, allowed to hang in the water just 

 before his nose, and taken. The rest is confusion, and 

 I have no clear memory of what happened, except 

 that it was all very exciting, and that the tree, and my 

 rod, and the chub, and I got much mixed up. But the 

 fish came out at last, and weighed I know not what. 

 I used to call him three pounds. The other monster 

 came later than either of the two mentioned, from the 

 Teme, and I remember it chiefly as being the reward of 

 patience. I fished for it persistently for two days, and 

 at last got it on an alder. It weighed three and a half 

 pounds on the scales, and was a great triumph. 



Chub played, on the whole, the most important part 

 in my early fishing, and they were my earliest 

 instructors in fly-fishing. The Thames was the scene 

 of the first exploits, two joints of a relative's salmon 

 rod the first fly-rod, and a one-ounce chub the first fish 

 caught with fly. I visited the same reach again not 

 long ago, and the glory of it is departed. Even the 

 one-ounce chub is no longer to be caught by me, at any 

 rate and the whole scene is woefully altered. It does 

 not do to " revisit Yarrow." Still, one has one's 

 memories, and I shall always think with awe of the 

 three great perch below the footbridge that came up 

 out of the depths after my worm, looked at me, and 

 went down again. On the strength of those perch I 

 laid out three-halfpence in Abingdon on the purchase 

 of a " hook to gimp " silver gimp, I remember, and 



