272 NOTES ON FISH AND PISHING. 



dearly-purchased or with-difEculty-collected quarts of 

 worms in the morning, twenty-four hours before I fish, 

 rather than in the evening, twelve hours previously. 

 If you throw your worms in just before night, the 

 " vagrom " eel gets more than his fair share, and does 

 not yield you a fair percentage on your outlay by getting 

 caught in the morning. 



I am "free to confess " that I enjoy a good day's leger- 

 fishing for barbel to any other day's fishing within reach 

 , of ordinary, or even extraordinary, mortals. It may be 

 bad taste piscatorially — so "pity me, pity me, my 

 friends" and brotherranglers ! but I cannot help it. 

 The barbel has a special fascination for me, and perhaps 

 no inconsiderable element in this fascination is the fact 

 that I have had but poor success hitherto at barbel-fishing. 

 I have pursued it for thirty years on the Thames — " on 

 and off" — but the grand days have been " few and far 

 between;" and even the grand days have not been very 

 grand in comparison of some my friends, and enemies too, 

 have had. True, I took thirty-seven fish one day, on the 

 Thames, at Penton Hook, and there were several over 

 4 lbs., and one nearly scaled lOlbs. ; and twenty a little 

 below Monkey Island, in about an hour and a half, on 

 another; and a dozen in about the same time one after- 

 noon in the Old river, between Datchet and Old Windsor 

 Lock, the largest scaling 8 lbs. — and so forth ; but what of 

 all this compared with the scores of days I have devoted 

 myself to barbel-fishing on the Thames, and the tons (I 

 had almost said) of worms I have expended in the pursuit ? 



To speak plainly, barbel-fishing is almost as uncertain 

 as big carp-fishing ; and a Thames or Trent barbel-fisher 

 may as well make up his mind that, if he gets a good or 



