lso to
be had about here," but there the _Angler's Guide_ is wrong. Jack and
perch may _be_ about there. Indeed, I know for a fact that they are.
You can _see_ them there in shoals, when you are out for a walk along the
banks: they come and stand half out of the water with their mouths open
for biscuits. And, if you go for a bathe, they crowd round, and get in
your way, and irritate you. But they are not to be "had" by a bit of
worm on the end of a hook, nor anything like it--not they!

I am not a good fisherman myself. I devoted a considerable amount of
attention to the subject at one time, and was getting on, as I thought,
fairly well; but the old hands told me that I should never be any real
good at it, and advised me to give it up. They said that I was an
extremely neat thrower, and that I seemed to have plenty of gumption for
the thing, and quite enough constitutional laziness. But they were sure
I should never make anything of a fisherman. I had not got sufficient
imagination.

They said that as a poet, or a shilling shocker, or a reporter, or
anything of that kind, I might be satisfactory, but that, to gain any
position as a Thames angler, would require more play of fancy, more power
of invention than I appeared to possess.

Some people are under the impression that all that is required to make a
good fisherman is the ability to tell lies easily and without blushing;
but this is a mistake. Mere bald fabrication is useless; the veriest
tyro can manage that. It is in the circumstantial detail, the
embellishing touches of probability, the general air of
scrupulous--almost of pedantic--veracity, that the experienced angler is
seen.

Anybody can come in and say, "Oh, I caught fifteen dozen perch yesterday
evening;" or "Last Monday I landed a gudgeon, weighing eighteen pounds,
and measuring three feet from the tip to the tail."

There is no art, no skill, required for that sort of thing. It shows
pluck, but that is all.

No; your accomplished angler would scorn to tell a lie, that way. His
method is a study in itself.

He comes in quietly with his hat on, appropriates the most comfortable
chair, lights his pipe, and commences to puff in silence. He lets the
youngsters brag away for a while, and then, during a momentary lull, he
removes the pipe from his mouth, and remarks, as he knocks the ashes out
against the bars:

"Well, I had a haul on Tuesday evening that it's not much good my telling
anyb