ish
and whenever rebaiting is necessary. This I am aware is the regulation
mode amongst Thames and Lea roach anglers; but its clumsiness always
forbade my cultivating it. A light rod and fine running line were more
to my fancy, even though I had occasionally to pay for its indulgence
by losses.

On this particular day the roach were, in angler's parlance, "on the
feed"; and the water was of the precise degree of cloudiness suitable
for the operation. The Nawab and his son had selected a reach of water
where the current was sluggish, and they undoubtedly took the finest
roach. I had chosen a favourite swim at the tail of a rapid, and
commanding an eddy, where you could generally make sure of picking up
an odd chub or wandering dace; and it was my fate to have a good deal
of amusement with the latter. A logger-headed chub of 3 lb. or
thereabouts ran down to pay homage to the Nawab, but I contrived to
check its career before it intruded itself into the presence, and the
capture of this fish was watched and criticised with much eagerness by
my neighbours. About three-and-twenty pounds' weight of fish fell to
my share that day, and the distinguished strangers had ten pounds or so
more. Roach fishing is not an exciting phase of sport, but it is by no
means the tame or simple pursuit many persons affect to think it, and
it is not unworthy of the name of high art. Moreover, it is a most
pleasure-yielding occupation, and, amongst London anglers at least,
furnishes, it cannot be denied, the greatest happiness for the greatest
number.

Best-day memories of this fish should assuredly take us back to the
far-off schoolboy times when we used to "snatch a fearful joy" by
surreptitious visits to the mill stream, and when, with a little hazel
rod, length of whipcord, and rude hooks whipped to twisted horsehair,
we would hurry home to breakfast with a dozen roach strung through the
gills upon a twig of osier. They were all best days then.

I should be the most ungrateful of anglers if I did not acknowledge my
indebtedness to the dace. It so happened that, whatever else fortune
denied me, it gave me opportunities, of which I could without hardship
avail myself, for dace fishing; and, whatever sins of omission I may in
my old age have to bring forward in self-accusation, I shall never be
able to plead guilty to neglecting any opportunities soever in the
matter of angling. For the dace, therefore, as a fish whose merits I
hav