i8 AN OPEN CREEL 



and broke the stout gut like cotton. And similar mis- 

 fortunes came afterwards until the thing began to look 

 almost uncanny; no pike could have behaved in so 

 arbitrary and consistent a fashion. Could those 

 mysterious carp have anything to do with it ? But at 

 last an explanation came, as a great writhing eel was 

 dragged up from the bottom by sheer force. It weighed 

 three and a half pounds, but it was a mere infant com- 

 pared with some of the others that had refused to come to 

 the net. Other eels of about the same size were landed 

 on other days, but the monsters always got away. 



Among these distant waters there are only one or 

 two trout streams proper, and they do not provide me 

 with many memories of success. My first efforts with 

 the fly for trout convinced me that the method was 

 quite useless, and that such agile fish could not be 

 hooked with bits of feather. But the year after I 

 caught the one-ounce chublings I rose a trout at any 

 rate the gardener, the first authority in my eyes, said 

 I had done so, and I was very willing to believe him. 

 I fancy it was rather a tame fish, for it lived in a brook 

 running through a garden at Cirencester, and it was 

 never alarmed at me or my ingenuous hurling of the 

 March brown. I do not remember any other trout in 

 that brook, but there were some enormous minnows. 



It was a year or so later when I made my first 

 basket of trout in a little brook running into the Wye 

 near Rhayader. The event followed close on the heels 

 of the capture of the chub from the tree, already re- 

 corded, and was even more satisfactory. My elders 

 and betters had regarded the chub without enthusiasm, 

 which had vexed me ; as they angled themselves 



