the rod and came near me. I tried to unship my landing-net from my
button-hole. Vain labour! I twisted and turned the handle, it would not
budge. Finally, I stooped, and attempted to ladle the trout out with the
short net; but he broke the gut, and went off. A landing-net is a
tedious thing to carry, so is a creel, and a creel is, to me, a
superfluity. There is never anything to put in it. If I do catch a
trout, I lay him under a big stone, cover him with leaves, and never find
him again. I often break my top joint; so, as I never carry string, I
splice it with a bit of the line, which I bite off, for I really cannot
be troubled with scissors and I always lose my knife. When a phantom
minnow sticks in my clothes, I snap the gut off, and put on another, so
that when I reach home I look as if a shoal of fierce minnows had
attacked me and hung on like leeches. When a boy, I was--once or twice--a
bait-fisher, but I never carried worms in box or bag. I found them under
big stones, or in the fields, wherever I had the luck. I never tie nor
otherwise fasten the joints of my rod; they often slip out of the sockets
and splash into the water. Mr. Hardy, however, has invented a
joint-fastening which never slips. On the other hand, by letting the
joint rust, you may find it difficult to take down your rod. When I see
a trout rising, I always cast so as to get hung up, and I frighten him as
I disengage my hook. I invariably fall in and get half-drowned when I
wade, there being an insufficiency of nails in the soles of my brogues.
My waders let in water, too, and when I go out to fish I usually leave
either my reel, or my flies, or my rod, at home. Perhaps no other man's
average of lost flies in proportion to taken trout was ever so great as
mine. I lose plenty, by striking furiously, after a series of short
rises, and breaking the gut, with which the fish swims away. As to
dressing a fly, one would sooner think of dressing a dinner. The result
of the fly-dressing would resemble a small blacking-brush, perhaps, but
nothing entomological.