PERCH. 45 



We had got but some ten or twelve yards down by this time, when, as I 

 was drawing in my bait, I felt tug, tug, and struck, but to no effect. I drew 

 up, and there followed the bait a grand perch of the old school ; he must 

 have been llb., and his splendid sides and elevated fins actually gleamed 

 in the summer glow. " Ah ! ah ! " said he, "not for Joe, or perch rather ; 

 I'm not to be taken in so precipitate a manner ; besides, who's that fellow 

 with the stick and how about the boat ? ' ' He came up with an 

 important sort of snort, and went down again like a log. I pitched the bait 

 gracefully over where he disappeared, and again he coquetted with the poor 

 struggling little gammarus impaled on the hook. If the perch did 

 not actually speak the words attributed to him, he looked them, and 

 so he looked language, when for the third time he nibbled at the point 

 this time of my hook. I struck, and fixed the keen steel. One might 

 have almost heard the imprecations his lordship transmitted in 

 electrical vibrations to my hand. However, as usual, he found a more 

 confined if not so comfortable a lodging in the well of the punt. The 

 sport after this somewhat slackened, and no other fish was found for 

 some time to play a like part. My friend, however, presently got a nice 

 perch with a cockspur worm. Immediately after this came the grandest 

 fun of the whole day. A likely looking spot being reached, I, as usual, 

 dropped the light bait and web-like line a little ahead of it, and allowed 

 the bait to sink. Directly came a terrific pull, and I was fast into a fish 

 of no ordinary dimensions, who ploughed out into the stream and up. 

 " Let him go," shouted our fisherman, and I did so. Forty yards of the 

 fine Nottingham line must have gone out, and I was beginning to tire of 

 this sort of thing, when the fish doubled and shot back again with incon- 

 ceivable rapidity. I struck a smart blow on the ratchet of my Well's 

 spring reel, and soon had up some of slack line. But the fish, where was 

 it ? Simply and only at home. I caught sight of a web of line rising 

 between twigs and a branch or two. Sure enough, the fish had resumed 

 his former position. Almost miraculously, however, I managed to disen- 

 gage the line, and pitching in a small shower of split shot, I started the 

 fish once more. This time he leaped out of the water, and presented the 

 beautiful sides of a veritable Thames trout. Language fails to describe 

 the tussle which ensued, but he was eventually landed comfortably at. 

 6lb. This was not a perch, but it nevertheless was the keystone of 

 some splendid perch capture. We got fourteen of these fish after, and 

 the day's total results, I remember, plumped the scales down at 231b. 



Before conclusion, and while on the subject, I may here be allowed to 

 jot down a few good takes as a sort of additional lure, if the descrip- 

 tion given be not sufficient, to the embryo angler. Mr. Francis talks of 

 getting 601b. of perch in one day from the Kennet, many weighing 21b^ 



