BASS AND MULLET 187 



baits must be thirty yards away from us. There 

 is a slight check, the merest irregularity, which 

 would not be noticed by anyone new to the game, 

 but which we know so well that instinctively the 

 left hand tightens on the butt, while the right hovers 

 about the reel. There it is ! Down goes the top, 

 no bobbing this time, but a deliberate curve to- 

 the water's edge. Murder ! screams the winch, 

 no half-hearted burr of the check, Jike that evoked 

 by the little fish below, but a sustained crescendo- 

 note, while the line grows so rapidly less on the 

 spinning axle that it looks as if the fish is going to- 

 break me. Once, and only once, thank goodness,, 

 that did actually befall me on this spot. What 

 manner of fish it may have been, I cannot, with- 

 out having got a glimpse of it, positively say. 

 Local opinion favoured a salmon, but more pro- 

 bably it was a monster " cobbler " bass. It 

 simply took the bait down by the lowest buoys^ 

 opposite the cricket-ground, started away at light- 

 ning speed, and, as the song says, " never stopped 

 running till it got home." It ran two yards of 

 gut and one hundred yards of line to their full 

 limit without a pause and then, without apparent 

 effort, went on, fortunately breaking the line so 

 near the hook that my loss of tackle was small. 

 Other bass I have lost in that stream, but that is- 

 the first and last of any size that fought invisible. 

 The fish that I have hooked here by the buoy, 



