176 AN OPEN CREEL 



I have said that a fish of over one and a half pounds 

 is an event at Bibury, but there are bigger ones. 

 There are, for instance, as I found out on a more 

 recent visit, George Washington II. (so named by his 

 acquaintance in compliment to an old original George 

 Washington who was celebrated in the Field some few 

 years ago) and Leviathan. They live in private water 

 below the village at a deep bend beyond a rampart of 

 weeds and within a cage of rushes. One sees them 

 feed, like the lions they are, behind Nature's bars. 

 George Washington II. rises, when Leviathan permits, 

 close above a leaning willow, at other times fifteen 

 yards higher up in a corner of the cage. Here I 

 hooked him at 8 p.m. on a blue-winged olive. Having 

 on a cast specially and hurriedly constructed after the 

 first view of Leviathan, I dared greatly, and hauled 

 him, not without tumult and protest, through the 

 rushes, over the weeds, and into a small clear hole on 

 my own side of the river. Then the fly came away. 

 As he weighs two and a half pounds, and as I had 

 been offering him the contents of my fly-box for an 

 hour, I was sorry. A week earlier he had made another 

 angler sorry by breaking him under the tree. Levia- 

 than weighs I do not know what. He looks about 

 thirty inches long, is always near the surface, rises 

 about once in ten minutes, and will, I think, die in his 

 bed. He looked once at a Wickham, and, having 

 looked, immediately sought out George Washington II., 

 drove him away from his corner, and settled in it 

 himself. Perhaps he thought George better able to 

 resist a Wickham, as he had been hooked the night 

 before, and in consequence was wise beyond his years. 



