t impossible to see
the hook. A short half hour's fishing only, and behold nearly twenty
good trout derricked into a basket until then sadly empty. Your
rigorous fly-fisherman would have passed that grass-hidden brook in
disdain, but it proved a treasure for the humble. Here, indeed, there
was no question of individually-minded fish, but simply a neglected
brook, full of trout which could be reached with the baited hook only.
In more open brook-fishing it is always a fascinating problem to decide
how to fish a favorite pool or ripple, for much depends upon the hour
of the day, the light, the height of water, the precise period of the
spring or summer. But after one has decided upon the best theoretical
procedure, how often the stupid trout prefers some other plan! And when
you have missed a fish that you counted upon landing, what solid
satisfaction is still possible for you, if you are philosopher enough
to sit down then and there, eat your lunch, smoke a meditative pipe,
and devise a new campaign against that particular fish! To get another
rise from him after lunch is a triumph of diplomacy, to land him is
nothing short of statesmanship. For sometimes he will jump furiously at
a fly, for very devilishness, without ever meaning to take it, and
then, wearying suddenly of his gymnastics, he will snatch sulkily at a
grasshopper, beetle, or worm. Trout feed upon an extraordinary variety
of crawling things, as all fishermen know who practice the useful habit
of opening the first two or three fish they catch, to see what food is
that day the favorite. But here, as elsewhere in this world, the best
things lie nearest, and there is no bait so killing, week in and week
out, as your plain garden or golf-green angleworm.

Walton's list of possible worms is impressive, and his directions for
placing them upon the hook have the placid completeness that belonged
to his character. Yet in such matters a little nonconformity may be
encouraged. No two men or boys dig bait in quite the same way, though
all share, no doubt, the singular elation which gilds that grimy
occupation with the spirit of romance. The mind is really occupied, not
with the wriggling red creatures in the lumps of earth, but with the
stout fish which each worm may capture, just as a saint might rejoice
in the squalor of this world as a preparation for the glories of the
world to come. Nor do any two experienced fishermen hold quite the same
theory as to the best mod