DAYS WITH BASS 



loosened the obstruction that, to my delight, the latter began 

 sliding slowly down the line, and continued so doing until it 

 was brought up by the small lead only a little way above the 

 fish, which was soon in the net and has spent the past ten years 

 in a glass case along with its companion in misfortune of the 

 previous day. As has been said, the dawn of a new era of fish- 

 ing from boats at anchor in the tideway, which either calls for 

 the use of stouter tackle than I care to use, or else throws on 

 light gear a strain greater than I like subjecting it to, bids fair 

 to banish me from the estuary in future, even though I live 

 within a few hundred yards of it, but it will be long ere I lose 

 the memory of those delectable July mornings, with the sun 

 just peeping over the roofs of silent houses, and sleepy seamen 

 of many nationalities coming on deck and peering down at the 

 lunatic who could willingly forego his sleep to catch fish. 



It was amid scenes very different that I caught far finer bass 

 than Devon's best away in Asiatic Turkey, splendid fellows of 

 fifteen, sixteen, and seventeen pounds that fought nobly in the 

 shallows of the lovely Gulf of Ismidt that, opening out of the 

 Marmora, penetrates the sanjak from which it takes its name 

 as far as the city itself. On either side, though nearer neigh- 

 bours on the south shore, towered the mountains of Anatolia, 

 their lower slopes crimson at that season with the cherry or- 

 chards that filled a daily fleet of caiques loaded at Deirmen- 

 d^re and sailed across the blue gulf to the little station of Tutun 

 Chiflik, where the luscious fruit would be transferred to trains 

 on the Bagdad Railway, waiting to take it to the markets of 

 Stamboul. This Gulf of Ismidt is a wonderful fishing ground, 



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