298 AN OPEN CREEL 



he has not abstained wholly from food between those 

 four meals, but one has no knowledge of his actions. 

 And it is absurd to fish for a trout which is never seen 

 to feed. It cannot in his case be as in the case of 

 some of the Thames fish, which undoubtedly feed in 

 the depths, giving no sign of their presence. The 

 Colne fish has no depths to feed in, and there is not a 

 six-foot hole within three hundred yards of him either 

 up or down. 



Nevertheless, absurd though it be, I have several 

 times spent an evening waiting for him to begin. It 

 has been no more unremunerative than my Thames 

 trout-fishing, and that is all there is to say about it. 

 The weir-pool is rather less hopeless than the open 

 water, where this fish has his being but does not move. 

 One does occasionally see a good fish feeding in the 

 foam, and there is just a chance of occasionally tempt- 

 ing one to take something. As a rule, this something 

 is a worm, or has been until recently ; of late, it has 

 seemed to me, from the sorrowful countenances I have 

 observed at the other end of leger-rods, that the worm 

 has lost its fascination for the bigger fish. A two- 

 pounder or so it has accounted for of late, but no more. 

 For some years its list of victims was more notable. 

 But the ^ worm-fisher must needs be a patient man, 

 and the triumphs that have attended him here have 

 been the result of greater perseverance than I, for one, 

 possess. It is no easier to catch the weir-pool trout 

 with worm than with anything else, and it certainly 

 takes longer than most other devices. With the fly or 

 with spinning-bait one covers the water, and one has 

 finished; with the worm one has never finished. I 



