COTTON AND HIS CONTEMPORAEIES. 79 



usually by an attendant. Landing nets are 

 first mentioned by Dennys in 1613, and were in 

 general use in Walton's time. The triangular 

 net now so common is first shewn in a French 

 book, the Ruses Innocentes of Frere Frangois 

 Fortin, concerning whom I have already 

 written in Chapter IV. Venables tells you that 

 the screw handle of your landing net should be 

 able to take a gaff as well as a net, and that 

 you are to carry two other hooks to fit the same 

 socket, one to cut weeds and the other to pull 

 out snags. 



Catches were big, but not excessively so : 

 bigger perhaps than now, but certainly no 

 bigger than in the nineteenth century. Cotton 

 mentions thirty-five to forty trout as an excep- 

 tional take, and indeed this number from the 

 Dove, where I suppose the average would not 

 be much under a pound, is a good day. It 

 seems to have been exceptional, for when his 

 pupil catches six trout and three grayling, 

 Cotton calls it a pretty good morning's work. 

 Barker does not give the number of his mighty 

 draught. Cotton, inventor of the clear water 

 worm, says that if you will wade and fish the 

 worm upstream you can catch as many fish as 

 you like. Records are scarce; but altogether 

 the impression left on the mind is not one of 

 big bags. Walton and his pupil in the only 

 day's fly fishing recorded caught no more than 

 ten, and his brother Peter and Coridon five 

 between them. Compare these with more 



