DAYS STOLEN FOR SPORT 41 



I have striven so often for the fish I have in mind 

 that we have grown familiar with each other's ways. 

 He will not accept my offerings, but he takes no 

 exception to my visits and rarely fails to give me 

 the welcome tidings of his being still at home. The 

 little fishes fly in terror when he rises to pursue 

 them, my lure at times in their very midst as 

 frightened as the rest, and more than once the huge 

 fellow has flicked my bleak with his tail as he has 

 turned to seize his selected quarry. He is not one 

 of your just-at-daylight-feeding fish that need some- 

 one's sitting up to call you early, but one without 

 set hours for meals, and, if he has a preference, it is 

 to wait for his food until the sun has warmed the 

 day a bit. 



On one occasion I started trying for him at six 

 A.M. It was nearly ten when I got a sight of him. 

 He rose and drove a shoal of bleak to midstream, 

 where, doubtless, he got some satisfaction, for over 

 an hour passed before he rose again ; then scudding 

 leaps of frightened fish that saw his stealthy rise 

 prepared me for his reappearance. He rose to near 

 the surface and made fruitless snatches to his right 

 and left in his onward rush, which brought him so 

 near the punt that I could see his size and colour- 

 ings. This and the flashes of the resplendent 

 creature's sides, as he made half turns to seize his 

 prey, so stamped themselves upon my brain that I 

 could see his likeness in the water long after he 

 had disappeared. 



How many times I have striven to be equal to 

 that fish's capture I do not rightly know, but, for 

 many hours, during many days, oft when the wind 

 was in the east, I have sat, not always feeling very 



