[Illustration: "Probing the bottom in front of you with the handle of your landing-net."
Going some distance for three days' fishing, on the two first of which there is bright sunshine and no wind, and then finding that the third, which opens with "a southerly wind and a cloudy sky," is the day which a neighbouring farmer has fixed upon for washing two hundred sheep on the shallow where you expected to have the best sport.
Being allowed to have one day's fishing in a stream, the windings of which are so many, that it would require half a dozen different winds to enable you to fish the greater part of it, from the only side to which your leave extends.
Finding, on taking your book out of your pocket, that the fly at the end of your line is not the only one by many dozen which you have had in the water, whilst you have been wading rather too deep.
Wading half an inch deeper than the tops of your boots, and finding afterwards that you must carry about with you four or five quarts in each, or must sit down on the wet grass whilst your attendant pulls them off, in order that you may empty them, and try to pull them on again.
Jumping out of bed very early every morning, during the season of the May-fly, to look at a weathercock opposite to your window, and always finding the wind either in the north or east.
[Illustration: "You must sit down on the wet grass whilst your attendant pulls them off, in order," &c.
Having just hooked a heavy fish, when you are using the blowing-line, and seeing the silk break about two feet above your hand; then watching the broken end as it travels quickly through each successive ring, till it finally leaves the top of your rod, and follows the fish to the bottom of the river.
Receiving a very elegant new rod from London, and being told by one of the most skilful of your brother anglers, that it is so stiff,--and by another, that it is so pliant, that it is not possible for any man to throw a fly properly with it.
Being obliged to listen to a long story about the difficulties which one of your friends had to encounter in landing a very fine trout which has just been placed on the table for dinner, when you have no story of the same sort to tell in return.