viii AN OPEN CREEL 



those red-letter days simply will take possession of 

 one's pen but there are other things in it too, things 

 which are practically a negation of fish, floods, bitter 

 winds, droughts, and the like. Now and then, in fact, 

 I have lifted the veil and given a glimpse of those 

 sorrows which we anglers, like other decorous folk, 

 would fain hide from a world that is apt to take its 

 amusement as it finds occasion. Though the open 

 creel sometimes reveals a catch of fish, there are 

 occasions on which it is lamentably empty. 



The worldly hope men set their hearts upon 

 Turns ashes or it prospers 



Fishing is very like the other pursuits of men, com- 

 pact of ill and good, the good being, as we think, not 

 too lavishly bestowed on some of us. The season of 

 any given angler (I except those prodigious fellows 

 who never have a blank, who think in dozens and 

 stones, and who cannot but come to a bad piscatorial 

 end) is a calculable affair. Of the total number of his 

 days, probably two-thirds will give him no results worth 

 mentioning. Three-quarters of the rest will be of the 

 type conveniently labelled as " fair to middling." And 

 there may be two or three days of really fine sport, 

 days about which he at once writes articles. An 

 article or so may be written about days of the second 

 class, but about those of the first there is a grim 

 silence. Hence the number of fish in a book on 

 fishing. 



