A BOOK OF FISHING STORIES 



gut will give you ten minutes of anxiety, or more, if the hook 

 has taken hold under a pectoral fin, as sometimes happens. 



I have hinted that my chief ambition lies in the haunt of 

 great perch, and I must own that on the perch is my warmest 

 affection bestowed. No fish that swims piques or interests 

 me more. After no fish have I pursued more ardently, and, 

 on the whole, from no fish have I had results so poor in pro- 

 portion to the effort expended. I think good perch, over i| lb. 

 let me say, are harder to come by nowadays than good speci- 

 mens of any other species. Possibly this may be due to the 

 disease which swept many of the southern rivers thirty years 

 or so back, and which may have made the fish much scarcer 

 now than they would have been ; possibly the cause is to be 

 found in the ease with which immature specimens can be 

 caught, and in the consequent slaughter of innocents. Any- 

 how the fact remains that good perch to me have become a 

 rare and much esteemed quarry, and memories of occasional 

 success with them are correspondingly precious. 



The very last perch I caught was a fish of i lb. 14 oz., which 

 I hooked in a deep swift portion of the Kennet with a worm 

 used in trout fashion ; that is to say, cast out without any float 

 and allowed to travel downstream with the current. I do not 

 think I have ever found a better fighter, weight for weight, 

 than that fish. A sea trout or a rainbow of the same size might 

 have been more acrobatic, but I do not think it could have pulled 

 harder or tested the fine gut more severely. A perch has a 

 disconcerting habit of " jiggering " like a lightly-hooked salmon, 

 and if the gut be frayed and weak that procedure is apt to find 



216 



