20 THE TROUT 



ability to catch, and a moderate proportion of which you had no 

 doubt calculated on transferring to your own pannier. It also 

 sometimes occurs, that when by the water side some underbred 

 fellow accosts you in a manner half surly and half civil, attempting 

 to pump out of you whether or not you have permission to fish, 

 (which by the bye is no business of his,) and trying to hoax you 

 out of as many flies, or any thing else you may be induced to part 

 with, appears, quite unconscious of mischief to pace along close by 

 the water side, looking after the fish as they scud off to a place^ 

 of concealment the instant they catch a view of his person. Now 

 when this occurs, and in ninety- nine cases out of a hundred it is 

 done purposely, I would recommend you at once to lay aside all 

 ceremony, and in the plainest manner possible, desire him to keep 

 farther off, as by approaching so near the edge, he is spoiling your 

 sport. But here my advice ends, for should the miscreant per- 

 severe in his mischievous doings, the ulterior proceedings to be 

 adopted must be entirely guided by circumstances, though I 

 know nothing more likely to tempt an angler to the commission 

 of a breach of the peace, than the mean artifice above alluded to, 

 which is frequently practised by a class of persons, who not 

 having the power to forbid the angler from pursuing his recrea- 

 tion, attempt to mar it by scaring away the fish. Some years 

 since I was informed, and upon pretty sound authority, that a 

 prying young knave the son of a miller who dwelt somewhere 

 on the banks of the Avon got a good sound ducking in that river 

 for gazing too intently over the sides of the stream at the trout 

 and grayling, to the great annoyance of a person fishing there 

 with the permission of the lawful owner of the land. 



I would not, however, recommend this remedy to be always re- 

 sorted to, particularly where the waters are deep, and you are un- 

 certain whether or no the offending party can swim ; though I am 

 willing to make every allowance for the grossness of the provoca- 

 tion, as also to admit that anglers are no longer the quiet and 

 patient men they were in Walton's time, but have their failings of 

 temper in common with the rest of mankind. Professor Wilson, in 

 the part of his most talented work on the Rod which treats on the 

 organs of sight in fishes, observes, that fishes are endowed with no 

 such discrimination of persons as that possessed by birds and beasts, 

 and facetiously remarks, that they " do not know a boy from a bishop, 

 for that he had seen the experiment tried." It would undoubtedly be 



