DAYS STOLEN FOR SPORT 173 



the time that it would have meant three minnows at 

 three and sixpence each, plus other sundries. Reels 

 do very nicely when the water is broad, pike your 

 prey and plentiful, and the direction the bait may 

 choose to take almost immaterial. I have been 

 told of a winch that is coming which, in answer to 

 the slightest pull, will give the line the utmost 

 freedom for so long as the need remains. That 

 sounds all right, but the maker is slow or his 

 difficulties are greater than he anticipated. It 

 does not seem impossible, this promised perfect 

 winch ; so I can only doubt its coming. 



How much or how little should we tell our 

 friends of where we get the sport of which we 

 write is a question on which opinions seem to differ. 

 While I may not give such information as would 

 cause the owner of a private fishing who, perhaps, 

 has been generous to me, to be bothered with 

 applicants, I feel somewhat bound to assist my 

 readers to go where I have been and do as I have 

 done when the fishing is public or to be purchased. 



There are ready unbelievers in what is written, 

 even of fishing, about which it is so easy to dis- 

 criminate between daylight truth and midnight 

 dreams ; therefore I have reason to feel flattered 

 that what I have written has been so very generally 

 believed that I have now to take part in drawings 

 of lots for beats on rivers where before I wandered 

 at will from pool to pool. One Spring some of 

 the new-comers to the Lyon fishing were so fully 

 occupied with studies of a secret nature that it 

 was difficult to get speech with them and impos- 

 sible for many days such was their caution to 

 get an inkling of what they studied. I imagined 



