SMALL GAME FISHES OF ENGLAND 



the hundreds of anglers are catching. Lord Granville Gordon 

 says in the fine work on sports in Europe, edited by Mr. Aflalo, 

 ' It often makes me smile to watch the Thames anglers on a 

 Sunday morning, sitting and watching hour after hour with a 

 quill float thrown out some yards from the bank in hopes that 

 a roach or perch may take a fancy to the worm on the hook.' 

 So then, it is roach or perch these Sunday anglers are trying for, 

 but if the truth was told, these scores of men are hoping for a big 

 pike, or a big Brown trout of ten pounds, that Mr. Somebody 

 of somewhere caught on a certain day in June in some year, no 

 one knows when. 



If all anglers devoted themselves to the same fishes, they 

 would soon be exhausted ; but we are proAdded with a catholicity 

 of tastes, and it is well that scores of anglers like the perch and 

 dace and carp, as they certainly have a restful time in the attempt 

 to take them, and that is what anglers need. The majority of 

 these Sunday anglers on the Thames, and the Seine and Ehine 

 are doubtless hard-working people, who look forward to the day 

 with unfeigned joy. They need perfect and complete change 

 and rest, and what more restful occupation is there than angling, 

 and that particular angling described by Lord Gordon ' sitting 

 and watching hour after hour, ... a quill float thrown out some 

 yards from the bank ' ? 



Some of the cleverest anglers in England, inventors of mysteri- 

 ous and wonderful tackle, had their training on the Thames not 

 far from London ; and I never think of it, but the story of Mr. 

 R. B. Marston occurs to me. Two London working men wandered 

 into that strange land, the country, and dropped into an inn 

 to get a glass of something, this being the only sport with which 

 they were familiar. 



' Why don't you go a-fishing ? ' asked the landlord. 



But they had never fished, so the kindly host loaned them 

 his own rods and line with two wonderful balloon-shaped red 

 and green floats, the kind I fished with as a child in New England. 

 Eeaching the water, they baited the hooks and cast out. 



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