20 AN OPEN CREEL 



without fishing, of course, were an impossibility. 

 However, there were circumstances that took away 

 much of the reproach of anticipating the season 

 proper. 



Chief among these was the fact that the brook only 

 contained five trout, in the portion, at least, which it 

 was my privilege to fish. I arrived at this exactitude 

 of knowledge by a process of reasoning based on ex- 

 perience, and by the thoughtful habit that grows upon 

 one when one is accustomed to walk several miles in 

 the evening with an empty creel swinging airily at 

 one's back. One of these five trout I was lucky enough 

 to catch the first March that ever I visited the place, 

 and when I had made no more than six, or it might be 

 seven, expeditions. He took a worm which had been 

 left to fish by itself, while, boylike, I sought distraction 

 and birds' nests, and he weighed six ounces a very 

 fine example of Salmo fario as it seemed to me, and 

 rendered even more estimable by the trouble it was to 

 get him out. He had taken advantage of my absence 

 to entangle himself and the line in the roots of a 

 willow, and it was necessary to wade in and dig him 

 therefrom. 



Over the next two seasons I will draw a veil. They 

 yielded no trout at all, and went a long way towards 

 instilling scepticism, pessimism, and other " isms " 

 that are not taught in schools into the youthful mind, 

 and there is no need to linger over them. But the 

 fourth season I secured a fish in a way that I am sure 

 would have won me an " excellent good " from old 

 Izaak himself, upon whose instructions my actions 

 were, in fact, based. Just below the mill-pound there 



