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