"Then we had better go out at once."
They got into the punt and rowed off after the toy balloons, which were floating swiftly before the breeze. The first they came up to had a small perch on. The next burst just as they reached it, and they saw the glimmer of a big fish in the water. There were twenty balloons set on the water, and it took them a long hour's work before they could recover all that were to be recovered. Out of twenty they only brought in ten. The rest had burst, and the lines were lost. Of the ten which they recovered five had small perch on, which were not worth having. So Jimmy's grand scheme turned out a failure, as so many grand schemes do. The others chaffed him very much about it, as a punishment for losing the lines, and for doing anything on his own hook without consulting the others.
After a wet week in July it was resolved to have a good day's bream fishing. The broad itself was more adapted for perch and pike, for it had a clear gravel bottom; and the river was always considered the best for bream, because its bottom was more muddy, and bream like soft muddy ground. The boys collected an immense quantity of worms, and taking on board a bag of grains for ground-bait, they sailed one Friday evening down to Ranworth and selected a likely spot in the river on the outside of a curve. They proceeded to bait the place well with grains and worms, and then went to sleep, with a comfortable certainty of sport on the morrow.
The white morning dawned and made visible a grey dappled sky, the silent marsh and the smooth river, off which the mists were slowly creeping. Small circles marked where the small fish were rising, but all about where the ground-bait had been put the water was as still as death. The fish were at the bottom, picking up the last crumbs and greedily wishing for more.
Frank was the first to rise. "Now then, you lazy fellows, it is time to begin. There is a soft south wind and the fish are waiting. We will just run along the bank to have a dip away from our fishing-ground, and then we will begin."
After their bathe their rods were soon put together. Dick fished with paste made of new bread and coloured with vermilion. Jimmy had some wasp grubs, and Frank used worms. They tossed up for stations, and Dick was posted at the bows, Jimmy, amidships, and Frank at the stern. The hooks were baited, and the floats were soon floating quietly down the stream. Frank had a float which gave him a longer swim than his companions. It was made as follows. The stem of the float was of quill (two joined together) eight inches long, and was thrust through a small round cork which was fixed in the middle of it. The upper end of the float was weighted with shots, so that it lay flat on the water. The weight at the hook end was so placed, that when a bite took place the float sprang upright and remained so, this calling attention to the fact of a bite at a great distance. Frank was thus able to let his float swim down the river much farther than he could have done with an ordinary one, because he could distinguish a bite farther off.
Before the floats had completed their first swim, Dick cried "I have a bite."
"So have I," said Frank.
"And so have I," added Jimmy.
"How absurd," said Frank, as they were all engaged with a fish at the same time. All three fishes were too large to land without a landing-net, and Dick held Frank's rod while he helped to land Jimmy's fish, and then Jimmy helped to land the others.