n6 LINES IN PLEASANT PLACES 



the outing and even the sport ; we looked down upon 

 the spoil with satisfaction, and if there was a sort of 

 sense of shame at the back of the mind that was for 

 analysis afterwards. Even as we pondered, perhaps to 

 the degree of gloating, Hawkins was enumerating in- 

 stances of much greater numbers taken by his cus- 

 tomers. Yarrell records 280 Ib. of large barbel in one 

 day, and our old friend, the Rev. J. Manley, who preferred 

 " a good day's leger-fishing for barbel to any other 

 day's fishing within reach of ordinary or even 

 extraordinary mortals," states that he took " thirty- 

 seven fish one day on the Thames at Penton Hook, 

 and there were several over 4 Ib. and one nearly scaled 

 10 Ib." 



But these were the good, the great, the red letter 

 days of a past time. The barbel is extremely capricious, 

 abnormally so of late years in the Thames, and there 

 are plenty of blanks to one fortunate day. There is, 

 however, a fascination in barbel-fishing that is not a 

 little surpising, and men have been known to boast 

 aggressively that it is the only form of angling that 

 appeals to them. It must be confessed that if the 

 barbel is of poor esteem as food, he is the very gamest 

 of the coarse fishes and a fighter to the last. His 

 rushes are fierce and continuous ; and as Providence 

 has provided him with a decided snout, he bores down- 

 ward with dogged persistence, relying apparently as 

 much upon his classical barb appendages as upon his 

 powerful tail for aid in time of trouble ; and an infal- 

 lible sign of his unconquerable spirit is the difficulty of 

 bringing him into the net when he is close to it. There 

 is not to my mind any fish that bolts so often when to 

 all appearance played out. 



The uncertainty of barbel and barbel fishing was 

 illustrated by the sequel to our day on the Thames. 



