“’Tis a perfect fishing-day,” Patsy pronounced, shipping his oars and letting the boat drift gently. “If there was a little more wind itself ye’d soon have a tremenjious basket of fish.”
Patsy’s predictions were by this time well known to the Australians. He suffered, as Wally said, from enthusiasms, and all his geese were swans; so that his cheerful forecast raised no throb of hope in their hearts. He had been as cheerful on other mornings, when they had fished in vain.
“I don’t quite see the fascination of it,” Wally commented, after ten minutes of steady whipping the water. “It’s so continuous; and you get nothing for it.”
“Give me a good sinker and a plump slab of clam for a bait—and the schnapper on the bite,” Jim responded. “I don’t believe these trout know how to bite at all.”
“You don’t say bite—it’s ‘rise,’” said Norah, gloomily.
“I don’t know. Perhaps because they don’t bite. They certainly don’t.”
“They do not,” Wally agreed. “Perhaps they rise and saunter past this queer collection of sham insects that we dangle on the face of the waters: and if you have luck you hook them as they go by. Only we don’t have luck.”
They fished on, sadly, casting with a precision that won commendation from Mr. Burke, and to which long practice with a stock whip had probably contributed. Nothing occurred, except the end of the lough: whereupon Patsy resumed the oars, rowed to the end whence they had started, and began up drift again.
“Do people do this all day—for weeks?” Norah demanded.
“Well, what do they do it _for_?” Norah said, desperately. “I don’t see any fun at all. I’m going to take the oars presently, Patsy, and you can have my rod.”
“If ever I put hard-earned pay into contraptions like this again!” Jim uttered, gazing despondently on the dainty ten feet green-heart rods, new and workmanlike with their fresh tackle. “They looked just top-hole in the shop, and they do still; but that’s all there is about them. I vote we go and scramble over a heathery mountain or two, and stop whipping this old lough.”
“Hear, hear!” said Wally. “Let’s get Patsy to put us ashore at the lower end, and we’ll leave the trout to some one else. I’m blessed if I fish again until we get back to the creek at Billabong—with a worm and a sinker, and a nice little cork bobbing on the top of the water. No science, but you get fish. These old Irish trout—my aunt!”