A BOOK OF FISHING STORIES 



dace over i lb. from the Kennet, and I know other anglers 

 who have been similarly fortunate. When the fish are rising 

 well you can, on some reaches of the river, keep up a high 

 average weight. I see from my fishing diary that on a July 

 day of 1906, 1 kept nine dace weighing 7 lb., which is an average 

 of over f lb. ; and in September of the same year I one day 

 kept eight, of which two weighed i lb. 2I oz. and i lb., and the 

 others from 10 oz. to 13 oz. But I have never known these 

 fish to reach such an average size anywhere else. 



Every species of coarse fish has, I think, given me some- 

 thing pleasant to remember ; but the memory is not always 

 quite what might be expected — the first memory that comes, 

 anyhow. When I think of tench, for instance, my mind 

 always wanders back to that long narrow pond of my boyhood, 

 whose water was almost hidden from view by a great hedge 

 of rhododendrons, whose glowing flowers made a pageant of 

 the scene. You had to wade through long mowing-grass to 

 get to it. Butterflies danced about you, bees hummed drowsily 

 in your ear, and the cooing of doves in the beech-tree at the 

 corner of the garden invited to repose. Tench ? I caught no 

 tench. I did not even know what tench were ; but I had been 

 told that the pond contained them, and I imagined some rare 

 exotic fishes worthy of the scene. I never expected to catch 

 any with my useless angle ; but I fished all the same, and the 

 impressions have never been effaced. 



Another pond comes before my eyes with the mention of 

 carp, a very different pond, set in the corner of a farmyard, 

 and filled with a sort of viscous mud which it would be erro- 



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