14 AN OPEN CREEL 



of course the question arose how they were to be 

 caught. The branches and twigs came down so low, 

 and the trees were so close together, that plying the 

 rod was impossible. After much deliberation I cut a 

 withy shoot about four feet long, and tied the gut-cast 

 to it after taking off the float. Then I had an apparatus 

 which was manageable, and with which I could get the 

 thrilling joy of seeing the perch actually take the worm 

 as it sank down among them, or, more often, as it was 

 being drawn up. I do not now remember how many 

 I caught or what they weighed, but my small creel was 

 quite full by the time I had finished, and I think some 

 of the captives must have been over a pound. I learnt 

 more about perch and their ways on that single after- 

 noon than I should have from years of orthodox float- 

 fishing. Even now the lesson that perch like a bait 

 which moves slowly up and down still serves me in good 

 stead sometimes. But I fear I shall never again know 

 quite so fine a rapture as came to me at its first learning. 

 At about the same period I first made acquaintance 

 with the old Priory Pond, a marvellous piece of water 

 in an otherwise fishless part of Gloucestershire; the 

 most desirable spot on earth, it seemed to me, when I 

 had discovered its secrets. It was rectangular in 

 shape, about half an acre in size, and the monks 

 made it ; so, at least, local history averred. A kind 

 of ancient culvert connected the pond with a short 

 creek which joined the brook, and twice every day the 

 water ebbed and flowed under the little bridge which 

 spanned the neck between pool and creek. Why there 

 should be an inland tide of this sort was always 

 something of a mystery in those days. Subsequent 



