An Angler at Large/Chapter 27
And while I am concerned with Chavender and Wickham, let me tell you a thing. On their last night I brought in a trout. I declared it at one pound and three-quarters; this on the authority of my weighing machine. Chavender said, "Nonsense." I swore it. I produced my weighing machine. I hung the trout on it. The thing dipped to one and three-quarters. "Amazing!" said Chavender. I was nettled. There is nothing amazing in my taking a trout of a pound and three-quarters. I have had several this season already. "I suppose," I sneered, "you would only allow it a pound and a half." But I had done this sterling fellow an injustice. He shook his head. "I could have sworn," he said, "that this fish is over two pounds." He weighed it in his hand. Then he produced his own weighing machine and hung the trout. Then he pointed to the needle, which pointed to two pounds and a quarter. "Your balance," said he, "weighs short by half a pound. The spring is far too strong." There is something superhuman about such conduct.
Now, it is impossible and would be ungrateful to doubt the correctness of the weighing machine used by a fisherman so notable as is Chavender. It would also be idiotic. I have accepted his verdict upon my balance without a murmur.
So I have been catching great fishes all summer. I have been returning to their stream trouts a pound and a half heavy as beneath my consideration, and only the greatest anglers do this. My rare two-pounders have been two-and-a-half-pounders, and as all two-and-a-half-pounders really weigh three, three pounds has been the actual weight of these fishes. Yes, I have been enjoying my sport far more than I have done. I am vastly beholden to Chavender. And I find that I must revise the sport of a lifetime. Mine is an old weighing machine, and surely it is reasonable to suppose that the older a spring is the slacker it gets. Now all my fishes have been weighed on this spring. Who knows how grossly it was out five or six years ago. I daresay as much as a pound or a pound and a half. This proves some of the fishes which I caught in those days to have been colossal. Hitherto I have boasted of nothing heavier than three pounds. I can safely call that greatest trout a four-and-a-half-pounder. If not five.
In a few more years my weighing machine will be old enough to make it six.
And may I not safely conclude that the incorrectness of this too powerful spring varies with the weight of the fishes. If a pound fish, for instance, is really one of a pound and a half, I expect a half-pound fish is no more than three-quarters of a pound. But a two-pounder is really three, a three-pounder four and a half, and a five-pounder seven.
This is obviously the only safe way to reckon.
A bright future opens before me.