The hotel at Cookham is right down on the water's edge, and from its lawn a charming view is gained of the main stream breaking into its many channels, with the wooded island of Formosa in the middle. All about here is a favourite place for anglers, and many a punt is moored across stream with its ridiculous chairs on which sit two or three solemn elderly men, content to sit, and sit, and watch the dull brown water rush beneath for hour after hour, without once raising their eyes to see the green of the witching trees, or listening to the hum of the joyous life around them. To an onlooker they appear to be quaffing the flattest part of the sport, having missed all its head and froth. How different the punt fisher's day from that of the man who starts off up-stream, through many a low-lying willow-fringed meadow, who reaches over to land his fly in the deep brown pool into which the stream falls. Punt fishing, like loch fishing, must have its fascinations, or few would do it, but it lacks all the sparkle expressed in such a song as that of Walton's, for instance:
In a morning, up we rise,
Ere Aurora's peeping,
Drink a cup to wash our eyes,
Leave the sluggard sleeping.
Then we go
To and fro,
With our knacks
At our backs,
To such streams