62 In Pursuit of the Trout 



troubled his head about matters of this kind. 

 To put a fish back in the water because it 

 happened to be under a pound or under ten 

 inches he would, no doubt, have regarded as 

 a bit of bumptiousness and 'side.' He kept 

 them all -, and yet the watchful water-keeper 

 might have searched his creel and his person 

 five days out of six without finding a single 

 undersized fish. The keeper seemed, some- 

 how, to be aware of this, and never thought 

 of troubling our friend to show the inside 

 of his fishing-creel. 



He could fish by the book as well as most 

 men, and was full of ingenious theories in 

 respect especially to the best way of improv- 

 ing a fishery. His favourite proposition was 

 that the first thing to do with your water 

 was to put on a minnow and clean out the 

 big trout from the deep pools ; this he laid 

 down again and again in the dining- and 

 the smoking-room of every angling inn he 

 entered. Thus somebody eventually named 

 him the Minnow Man. A better name would 

 have been, perhaps, the Upright Angler. 



