SECTION V. 



OBSERVATIONS ON THE TENCH, AND HOW TO ANGLE FOR HIM. 



The Tench. 



Although, as I stated in my commencement, I began my angling 

 career at a very early age, I was someway advanced in my teens 

 before I had the fortune to angle for a tench. In the neighbour- 

 hood in which I then resided, and to which my fishing excursions 

 were limited, there was but one pond that contained this species 

 of fish, which belonged to one of the most selfish men in exis- 

 tence ; it is therefore needless to say, that all hopes of obtaining a few 

 hours' fishing there was wholly out of the question : and as the 

 desire of capturing a few of these fishes was considerably inhanced 

 by the difficulty of being enabled even to make the attempt, it 

 was with no small delight that I received an invitation to spend 

 a few days of my Midsummer holidays with a schoolfellow for the 

 express purpose of angling in a pond within a few miles of his 

 residence, and famed for being most plentifully supplied with this 

 much wished for fish. No opposition being offered at home to 

 my accepting the invitation, 1 lost no time in availing myself of 

 it, and arrived at my young friend's house just as the evening was 

 closing in, where I found a good substantial supper, accompanied 

 with tarts, fruit, and other niceties, in which schoolboys so much 

 delight ; yet scarcely one morsel could I swallow, though 

 possessing in general by no means a bad appetite : but which the 

 excitement, caused by the anticipation of the excursion of the 



