42 DAYS STOLEN FOR SPORT 



warm, and hoped to catch him. I am hoping 

 still. 



Every live bait, from a minnow, attached to the 

 smallest hook and finest gut, to an eight-inch roach, 

 has been tried in turn. That sweet morsel, well 

 liked by trout, a gudgeon, I have shown him often. 

 Favourite phantoms, fresh from victories with the 

 comparatively silly salmon, and other spinning lures, 

 have been cast wide outstream and brought cannily 

 to the spot where he must see them ; but, as yet, I 

 have not got him. How many times during the 

 lovely month of May alone I have striven to catch 

 that trout I fear to say ; what it has cost me need 

 not be counted as the quid pro quo was always 

 everywhere. 



I am a persistent angler, as may be gathered from 

 the statement that fishless days innumerable have 

 fallen to my lot and that when they have come to 

 me in batches of a dozen the thirteenth day has 

 found me hopeful. The red-letter days I have had 

 stand out in bold relief to tune my brain to happy 

 nights in dreamland during which I see, and catch, 

 much larger fish than those which, in vain moments, 

 I have had stuffed and put in cases. 



To-day I am off to meet a fisherman who has a 

 big trout marked down at Clewer Point and a still 

 bigger one in Boveney Weir. He is a clever and 

 enthusiastic professional Thames trout fisher, whom 

 I have often admiringly watched search a pool with 

 a live lure without the aid of what he calls "the 

 disturber." "What do you think, Mr Geen, I 

 say ? When they see that cork being jerked back, 

 why, ask yourself, wouldn't you feel as it was some- 

 thing as was going to hit you ? These old trout 



