208 AN OPEN CREEL 



first one, with a white spot on its tail, and that was the 

 biggest of twenty all lying together in one hole. From 

 this slender store of evidence I deduce it to have been 

 two and a half pounds, because that is commonly the 

 doyen in so numerous a shoal. The monsters do not 

 often crowd so close as a score together. Four and 

 five pounders are, I think, to be observed four or five 

 in company, not more. How it may be with seven- 

 pounders I know not ; likely they swim in pairs, a 

 pair to a mile of river, and that the best mile. I do 

 not know of a pair, but I know of one which a good 

 friend of mine captured in a recent year. It weighed 

 seven pounds and a quarter, and constituted the gravest 

 angling tragedy which has come under my notice in a 

 decade, for the month was May, and my friend is a 

 very honest man. So the monster was gently returned, 

 and some day will no doubt be the father of all the 

 chub. 



Loggerhead is a noble, pleasant fish, of thoughtful 

 habit, and he gives right good sport to those who seek 

 him with discretion, but he has, they say, his weak 

 points. On the table yet is this an angler's matter ? 

 All that concerns Piscator in the treatise of culinary 

 wisdom is surely the first injunction, " First catch him." 

 Caught, I have never found him otherwise than welcome 

 to the descendants of sweet-throated Maudlin. It needs 

 to inquire no further. 



The finest^sport I have ever had with chub was on 

 a kind of April day set by accident in the] middle of 

 August. -.The wind blew with a certain amount of 

 vehemence from the south-west ; it was none too 

 warm, and the lights and shadows caused by alterna- 



