I have accompanied Chavender while he has been fishing, and from observations made I have come to the conclusion that the best angler is not the man who combines the finest casting with the greatest knowledge, the rarest patience with the deadliest guile, the most unyielding resolution with the brightest enthusiasm, but simply he who makes the fewest mistakes.
Chavender catches fish to which I have cast easily (at the fifth trial when they were no longer there), for whose capture my knowledge should have been adequate, which have not unduly tried my patience, nor made great demands on my craftiness, nor my resolution. As for enthusiasm, mine has burned high just before I have failed to catch these fishes. A chalk-stream trout is often to be found the day after one has put him down, in the same place, rising to the same kind of fly, under the same kind of conditions. Such trout I have indicated to Chavender, and he has grassed them. Why? Because he has made no mistake. He has waited for a cloud, he has waited for a lull, he has taken note of the weed-beds, he has taken note of the probabilities of drag, he has made a rough guess at the number of duns which that fish lets go by; in short, he has made his dispositions, reducing the chances of failure to the minimum. Then, deliberately, he has cast and, everything
