THE BARBEL. 261 



beauties with a live-bait, or in any other way except by 

 scientific spinning, as little better than a poacher or pot- 

 hunter. There is your roach-fisher with his ground-bait, 

 his twelve-foot rod and single horsehair and other appur- 

 tenances of his craft en regie, a good stock of patience and 

 a light hand, who considers that no line of angling except 

 his own is worthy of the name of an art. There is your 

 paternostering perch-fisher. There is your dace-fisher, 

 who deftly casts his delicate fly over the sparkling 

 shallows ; and your chub-fisher, who throws his ponderous 

 humble bee, cockchafer, or " Marlow crow," beneath the 

 willow boughs, and looks on bottom-fishers with supreme 

 contempt. There is your jack-fisher, who confines his 

 attentions to Esox lucius, and thinks it hardly orthodox 

 to be seen on the Thames till November, when the weeds 

 have partially died down. Then there is Paterfamilias, 

 the happiest of all fishermen, who throws his whole soul 

 into gudgeon-fishing, and delights to fill his punt with 

 " Missis and the kids," who all join in the sport, and 

 frequently kill more fish than Paterfamilias himself, though 

 he insists on instructing his party in the art of capturing 

 this toothsome little morsel. And, lastly, there is your 

 barbel-fisher, as enthusiastic as to his branch of angling 

 as any of the preceding, and perhaps more so, looking on 

 a good day with this fish as par excellence the sport of the 

 Thames. I do not mean that there are no " general " 

 fishermen who frequent the river, and who, when one kind 

 of angling does not pay, try another, according to the 

 season. There are many such; but, as a rule, Thames anglers 

 seem to make one particular fish the special object of their 

 capture, and swear by the particular kind of angling to 

 which they mainly devote themselves. 



