Three Men in a Boat

by Jerome K. Jerome

  CHAPTER XVII.

  Washing day.--Fish and fishers.--On the art of angling.--A conscientiousfly-fisher.--A fishy story.

  [Picture: Washing line] We stayed two days at Streatley, and got ourclothes washed. We had tried washing them ourselves, in the river, underGeorge's superintendence, and it had been a failure. Indeed, it had beenmore than a failure, because we were worse off after we had washed ourclothes than we were before. Before we had washed them, they had beenvery, very dirty, it is true; but they were just wearable. _After_ wehad washed them--well, the river between Reading and Henley was muchcleaner, after we had washed our clothes in it, than it was before. Allthe dirt contained in the river between Reading and Henley, we collected,during that wash, and worked it into our clothes.

  The washerwoman at Streatley said she felt she owed it to herself tocharge us just three times the usual prices for that wash. She said ithad not been like washing, it had been more in the nature of excavating.

  We paid the bill without a murmur.

  The neighbourhood of Streatley and Goring is a great fishing centre.There is some excellent fishing to be had here. The river abounds inpike, roach, dace, gudgeon, and eels, just here; and you can sit and fishfor them all day.

  Some people do. They never catch them. I never knew anybody catchanything, up the Thames, except minnows and dead cats, but that hasnothing to do, of course, with fishing! The local fisherman's guidedoesn't say a word about catching anything. All it says is the place is"a good station for fishing;" and, from what I have seen of the district,I am quite prepared to bear out this statement.

  There is no spot in the world where you can get more fishing, or whereyou can fish for a longer period. Some fishermen come here and fish fora day, and others stop and fish for a month. You can hang on and fishfor a year, if you want to: it will be all the same.

  The _Angler's Guide to the Thames_ says that "jack and perch are also tobe had about here," but there the _Angler's Guide_ is wrong. Jack andperch 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 thebanks: they come and stand half out of the water with their mouths openfor biscuits. And, if you go for a bathe, they crowd round, and get inyour way, and irritate you. But they are not to be "had" by a bit ofworm on the end of a hook, nor anything like it--not they!

  I am not a good fisherman myself. I devoted a considerable amount ofattention 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 realgood at it, and advised me to give it up. They said that I was anextremely neat thrower, and that I seemed to have plenty of gumption forthe thing, and quite enough constitutional laziness. But they were sureI should never make anything of a fisherman. I had not got sufficientimagination.

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

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

  Anybody can come in and say, "Oh, I caught fifteen dozen perch yesterdayevening;" 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 showspluck, but that is all.

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

  He comes in quietly with his hat on, appropriates the most comfortablechair, lights his pipe, and commences to puff in silence. He lets theyoungsters brag away for a while, and then, during a momentary lull, heremoves the pipe from his mouth, and remarks, as he knocks the ashes outagainst the bars:

  "Well, I had a haul on Tuesday evening that it's not much good my tellinganybody about."

  "Oh! why's that?" they ask.

  "Because I don't expect anybody would believe me if I did," replies theold fellow calmly, and without even a tinge of bitterness in his tone, ashe refills his pipe, and requests the landlord to bring him three ofScotch, cold.

  There is a pause after this, nobody feeling sufficiently sure of himselfto contradict the old gentleman. So he has to go on by himself withoutany encouragement.

  "No," he continues thoughtfully; "I shouldn't believe it myself ifanybody told it to me, but it's a fact, for all that. I had been sittingthere all the afternoon and had caught literally nothing--except a fewdozen dace and a score of jack; and I was just about giving it up as abad job when I suddenly felt a rather smart pull at the line. I thoughtit was another little one, and I went to jerk it up. Hang me, if I couldmove the rod! It took me half-an-hour--half-an-hour, sir!--to land thatfish; and every moment I thought the line was going to snap! I reachedhim at last, and what do you think it was? A sturgeon! a forty poundsturgeon! taken on a line, sir! Yes, you may well look surprised--I'llhave another three of Scotch, landlord, please."

  And then he goes on to tell of the astonishment of everybody who saw it;and what his wife said, when he got home, and of what Joe Buggles thoughtabout it.

  I asked the landlord of an inn up the river once, if it did not injurehim, sometimes, listening to the tales that the fishermen about theretold him; and he said:

  "Oh, no; not now, sir. It did used to knock me over a bit at first, but,lor love you! me and the missus we listens to 'em all day now. It's whatyou're used to, you know. It's what you're used to."

  I knew a young man once, he was a most conscientious fellow, and, when hetook to fly-fishing, he determined never to exaggerate his hauls by morethan twenty-five per cent.

  "When I have caught forty fish," said he, "then I will tell people that Ihave caught fifty, and so on. But I will not lie any more than that,because it is sinful to lie."

  But the twenty-five per cent. plan did not work well at all. He neverwas able to use it. The greatest number of fish he ever caught in oneday was three, and you can't add twenty-five per cent. to three--atleast, not in fish.

  So he increased his percentage to thirty-three-and-a-third; but that,again, was awkward, when he had only caught one or two; so, to simplifymatters, he made up his mind to just double the quantity.

  He stuck to this arrangement for a couple of months, and then he grewdissatisfied with it. Nobody believed him when he told them that he onlydoubled, and he, therefore, gained no credit that way whatever, while hismoderation put him at a disadvantage among the other anglers. When hehad really caught three small fish, and said he had caught six, it usedto make him quite jealous to hear a man, whom he knew for a fact had onlycaught one, going about telling people he had landed two dozen.

  So, eventually, he made one final arrangement with himself, which he hasreligiously held to ever since, and that was to count each fish that hecaught as ten, and to assume ten to begin with. For example, if he didnot catch any fish at all, then he said he had caught ten fish--you couldnever catch less than ten fish by his system; that was the foundation ofit. Then, if by any chance he really did catch one fish, he called ittwenty, while two fish would count thirty, three forty, and so on.

  It is a simple and easily worked plan, and there has been some talklately of its being made use of by the angling fraternity in general.Indeed, the Committee of the Thames Angler's Association did recommendits adoption about two years ago, but some of the older members opposedit. They said they would consider the idea if the number were doubled,and each fish counted as twenty.

  If ever you have an evening to spare, up the river, I should advise youto drop into one of the little village inns, and take a seat in th
etap-room. You will be nearly sure to meet one or two old rod-men,sipping their toddy there, and they will tell you enough fishy stories,in half an hour, to give you indigestion for a month.

  George and I--I don't know what had become of Harris; he had gone out andhad a shave, early in the afternoon, and had then come back and spentfull forty minutes in pipeclaying his shoes, we had not seen himsince--George and I, therefore, and the dog, left to ourselves, went fora walk to Wallingford on the second evening, and, coming home, we calledin at a little river-side inn, for a rest, and other things.

  We went into the parlour and sat down. There was an old fellow there,smoking a long clay pipe, and we naturally began chatting.

  He told us that it had been a fine day to-day, and we told him that ithad been a fine day yesterday, and then we all told each other that wethought it would be a fine day to-morrow; and George said the cropsseemed to be coming up nicely.

  After that it came out, somehow or other, that we were strangers in theneighbourhood, and that we were going away the next morning.

  [Picture: The trout] Then a pause ensued in the conversation, duringwhich our eyes wandered round the room. They finally rested upon a dustyold glass-case, fixed very high up above the chimney-piece, andcontaining a trout. It rather fascinated me, that trout; it was such amonstrous fish. In fact, at first glance, I thought it was a cod.

  "Ah!" said the old gentleman, following the direction of my gaze, "finefellow that, ain't he?"

  "Quite uncommon," I murmured; and George asked the old man how much hethought it weighed.

  "Eighteen pounds six ounces," said our friend, rising and taking down hiscoat. "Yes," he continued, "it wur sixteen year ago, come the third o'next month, that I landed him. I caught him just below the bridge with aminnow. They told me he wur in the river, and I said I'd have him, andso I did. You don't see many fish that size about here now, I'mthinking. Good-night, gentlemen, good-night."

  And out he went, and left us alone.

  We could not take our eyes off the fish after that. It really was aremarkably fine fish. We were still looking at it, when the localcarrier, who had just stopped at the inn, came to the door of the roomwith a pot of beer in his hand, and he also looked at the fish.

  "Good-sized trout, that," said George, turning round to him.

  "Ah! you may well say that, sir," replied the man; and then, after a pullat his beer, he added, "Maybe you wasn't here, sir, when that fish wascaught?"

  "No," we told him. We were strangers in the neighbourhood.

  "Ah!" said the carrier, "then, of course, how should you? It was nearlyfive years ago that I caught that trout."

  "Oh! was it you who caught it, then?" said I.

  "Yes, sir," replied the genial old fellow. "I caught him just below thelock--leastways, what was the lock then--one Friday afternoon; and theremarkable thing about it is that I caught him with a fly. I'd gone outpike fishing, bless you, never thinking of a trout, and when I saw thatwhopper on the end of my line, blest if it didn't quite take me aback.Well, you see, he weighed twenty-six pound. Good-night, gentlemen,good-night."

  Five minutes afterwards, a third man came in, and described how _he_ hadcaught it early one morning, with bleak; and then he left, and a stolid,solemn-looking, middle-aged individual came in, and sat down over by thewindow.

  None of us spoke for a while; but, at length, George turned to the newcomer, and said:

  "I beg your pardon, I hope you will forgive the liberty that we--perfectstrangers in the neighbourhood--are taking, but my friend here and myselfwould be so much obliged if you would tell us how you caught that troutup there."

  "Why, who told you I caught that trout!" was the surprised query.

  We said that nobody had told us so, but somehow or other we feltinstinctively that it was he who had done it.

  "Well, it's a most remarkable thing--most remarkable," answered thestolid stranger, laughing; "because, as a matter of fact, you are quiteright. I did catch it. But fancy your guessing it like that. Dear me,it's really a most remarkable thing."

  And then he went on, and told us how it had taken him half an hour toland it, and how it had broken his rod. He said he had weighed itcarefully when he reached home, and it had turned the scale atthirty-four pounds.

  He went in his turn, and when he was gone, the landlord came in to us.We told him the various histories we had heard about his trout, and hewas immensely amused, and we all laughed very heartily.

  "Fancy Jim Bates and Joe Muggles and Mr. Jones and old Billy Maunders alltelling you that they had caught it. Ha! ha! ha! Well, that is good,"said the honest old fellow, laughing heartily. "Yes, they are the sortto give it _me_, to put up in _my_ parlour, if _they_ had caught it, theyare! Ha! ha! ha!"

  And then he told us the real history of the fish. It seemed that he hadcaught it himself, years ago, when he was quite a lad; not by any art orskill, but by that unaccountable luck that appears to always wait upon aboy when he plays the wag from school, and goes out fishing on a sunnyafternoon, with a bit of string tied on to the end of a tree.

  He said that bringing home that trout had saved him from a whacking, andthat even his school-master had said it was worth the rule-of-three andpractice put together.

  He was called out of the room at this point, and George and I againturned our gaze upon the fish.

  It really was a most astonishing trout. The more we looked at it, themore we marvelled at it.

  It excited George so much that he climbed up on the back of a chair toget a better view of it.

  And then the chair slipped, and George clutched wildly at the trout-caseto save himself, and down it came with a crash, George and the chair ontop of it.

  "You haven't injured the fish, have you?" I cried in alarm, rushing up.

  "I hope not," said George, rising cautiously and looking about.

  But he had. That trout lay shattered into a thousand fragments--I say athousand, but they may have only been nine hundred. I did not countthem.

  We thought it strange and unaccountable that a stuffed trout should breakup into little pieces like that.

  And so it would have been strange and unaccountable, if it had been astuffed trout, but it was not.

  That trout was plaster-of-Paris.