The shoal below took time to reflect upon the circumstance of which they had no doubt been witnesses, and we had no further touch of them for several minutes. Then they came on again with an inspiring regularity, distributing their favours alternately to myself and friend. For an hour a barbel came to net every five minutes; and there was no chance of loss, as the fish simply gulped at the worms and went off with them at once, and the hook had to be removed sometimes with a disgorger. In the very midst of the sport I thought I would make an experiment in the matter of baits. I had my own box of gentles. One, I suppose, never goes afloat or engages in any bottom fishing whatever without this reserve, if the maggots are in season. Hawkins also happened to have a small supply of stale greaves.
"Don't do it, mister!" Hawkins pleaded pathetically, when he saw me stringing on a bunch of gentles. "Leave well alone, mister! You carn't better the business, and you may change the luck if you don't stick to the lobs."
But I was obstinate, and was very glad that I tried the experiment. It was not the first time I had discovered that when the fish are really "on" they do not distinguish much between this and that bait. Even in fly fishing I have successfully tried the experiment, during a mad rise, of putting on a fly that was the most opposite I could find to what was on the water. The barbel took the gentles as freely as worms, and greaves as freely as gentles, but I noticed that the fish were smaller.
It will be concluded that our prowess on this occasion came somewhat into the slaughter zone. So at any rate it occurred to one of us as we landed, and in the grey mist spreading over land and water, saw the dead fish laid out decently and in order upon the grass. There were two dozen and one barbel, the largest 7 lb. and the smallest 3 lb., the average being about 4 lb. With a few accidental dace and chub thrown in, there would therefore be over a solid hundredweight of fish. Was this a thing to be proud of? Though I ask the question I do not answer it myself. We had enjoyed the outing and even the sport; we looked down upon the spoil with satisfaction, and if there was a sort of sense of shame at the back of the mind that was for analysis afterwards. Even as we pondered, perhaps to the degree of gloating, Hawkins was enumerating instances of much greater numbers taken by his customers. Yarrell records 280 lb. of large barbel in one day, and our old friend, the Rev. J. Manley, who preferred "a good day's leger-fishing for barbel to any other day's fishing within reach of ordinary or even extraordinary mortals," states that he took "thirty-seven fish one day on the Thames at Penton Hook, and there were several over 4 lb. and one nearly scaled 10 lb."
But these were the good, the great, the red letter days of a past time. The barbel is extremely capricious, abnormally so of late years in the Thames, and there are plenty of blanks to one fortunate day. There is, however, a fascination in barbel-fishing that is not a little surprising, and men have been known to boast aggressively that it is the only form of angling that appeals to them. It must be confessed that if the barbel is of poor esteem as food, he is the very gamest of the coarse fishes and a fighter to the last. His rushes are fierce and continuous; and as Providence has provided him with a decided snout, he bores downward with dogged persistence, relying apparently as much upon his classical barb appendages as upon his powerful tail for aid in time of trouble; and an infallible sign of his unconquerable spirit is the difficulty of bringing him into the net when he is close to it. There is not to my mind any fish that bolts so often when to all appearance played out.
The uncertainty of barbel and barbel fishing was illustrated by the sequel to our day on the Thames. Our adventures were told to the members of a certain society on the evening of our return, and no doubt they were envious, miserable, or glad as it might happen. We can only speculate as to that, but what can be told is that by the first trains next morning six brethren from different quarters of London went down and made their way to Hawkins. They had not whispered their intentions to one another, and looked rather sheepish as they stood in a cluster to receive the announcement from the fisherman's wife that H. was not at home. They looked a little more sheepish when they took boat to the pollard tree swim and found two very young gentlemen with Hawkins seated in a punt. But they smiled again on learning that there had not been a touch at either of the three lines, which had been out since daylight. That swim was diligently tried after our visit, but I had reason for knowing that not another barbel was taken there during the entire winter.
CHAPTER X
TWO RED LETTER SALMON
It is not often that the angling clubs which encourage prize-taking offer booby consolations for the smallest fish, but I have known exceptions, especially at the holiday competitions by the seaside. The biggest fish are another matter altogether. Sooner or later the world is bound to hear of them. And who dare say us nay? That man was not a fool who wanted to know, if you did not blow your own trumpet, who was to blow it? Blowing it need be neither boasting nor defiance. In this honest belief I shall try for a while to forget the butcher's bill in Flanders by recalling the capture of my biggest salmon, and that of a still bigger one by a friend during the same bygone back-end on Tweed, leaving the general memories of autumn days on the great Border river for future revival.