A PECK OF TROUBLES 225 



fashioned a sling out of a piece of string, and tried 

 to get the net out of it in a hurry pity me also. 

 On another day I forgot my spring balance, and, 

 of course, it chanced that I was then on a water 

 where weight, not length, is the criterion by which 

 fish are judged. There may be men outside fish 

 farms who can say for certain whether a fish is 

 one pound nine ounces or one pound seven ounces, 

 but I am not one of them. There are others who 

 would be quite happy to guess, happier, indeed, 

 but I am not one of them either. The sad shake 

 of a keeper's head would annihilate me. So I 

 probably returned several quite sizeable fish. 



On the third day I did an extraordinarily foolish 

 thing. Invited to fish on a fine Mayfly water, 

 I turned up equipped with two bedraggled winged 

 flies, three very spent gnats, of which only one was 

 in even fair condition, and one straddlebug that had 

 seen better days. These were the occupants of my 

 hat-band. Boxes full of admirable flies of all kinds, 

 bursting with flies, lay on a table miles away. The 

 fish proved to be in one of their very particular 

 moods that day, so you can imagine me ringing my 

 miserable changes with equally miserable results. 

 Besides, I very soon lost the best of the spent gnats 

 in a tree. On the fourth day of the series I set out 

 in the morning for a nice long day with the grayling, 

 with hope of a brace of trout if I was lucky. It was 



