this trout, the truth was not in him. But after slaying a fish of half his measurements, I should have been delirious for a month. Therefore I obtained further and better particulars, not of the trout's size, but of its situation, and thus furnished, after bestowing a smile upon James, son of Joe, I approached the lair of this prodigy.
On peering over the bridge rail, as suggested by James, I perceived a chub of about three pounds weight lying in the water.
I thought that I had known every fish in this piece of the river, but I was mistaken. Hitherto our chevin has escaped my vigilance. But he is certainly the only one of his breed in the neighbourhood. Pike we have, a few, eels abound in certain places, crayfish are found on the drag-net in September, of minnows we have the finest head of any water in England, and there are dace and roach. But we have never previously got down to chevins.
It would of course be impossible for me to catch this creature. First of all I could not, for I am not sufficiently crafty. But this entirely apart, it would be a gross error even to angle for him. To throw a fly or flies to our chevin (I have no chub-flies) would be to do that thing which of all others he most ardently desires. For to be taken for a trout, that is the chevin's ambition.
