actor, say winch and line, behind you. To
have brought the winch that does not fit your rod may be got over by
binding on with a piece of your line; but the general variety of winch
fitting is certainly a common trouble for anglers. Nor is it any good
to boast of bringing your handle if you have overlooked the net; nor to
take gigantic pains to buy live baits in London only to find that the
water has leaked out long before you leave the train in Leicestershire.
I have known a fly-fisher wretched for a whole day because he had not
brought the bit of indiarubber with which he was in the habit of
straightening out his cast; and a roach-fisher refuse to be comforted
because his plummet was not.
You cannot, however, control the wind and weather; yet some men seem to
be under a climatic curse. Any landowners whose crops require rain
have only to invite them down for a day's fishing; there will be rain
enough and to spare. No hankerer after an east wind should be without
them. It shall breathe southwest balm when they start for the fishing;
they will be met at the waterside by a blustering Boreas with
out-puffed cheeks. Yesterday the wind would take the fly where wanted;
to-morrow it will do the same; to-day it is dead down-stream or in the
angler's face. This is no doubt inveterate ill-luck, and the victim is
to be commiserated. You can quite believe him when he says that if he
takes a fishing for August there will be no water; if for September,
perpetual flood; and when, the week after his return to town, he greets
you with a sickly smile and volunteers the information that the day
succeeding his departure the river at once got into ply, you deal
gently with the young man, for this verily is tribulation major, and it
may be your turn to meet it round a corner next year. I suppose there
are men in all grades of sport, as in all grades of work, to whom the
cards invariably fall awry, and the worst of the case is that there is
only one piece of advice to tender--forswear the cards, or grin and
bear. The angler ought to hold by the latter clause. The retrieving
chances that may happen; the many useful objects turned up even when
the philosopher's stone is never reached; the assets to the right if
there are deficits to the left--these may be philosophically set off in
the general account.
How many acquaintances, are there not, who burden themselves by over
much comfort, or, what comes to the same thing from my point
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