I had a somewhat similar experience in Switzerland a few years later. The little crater lakes on the summit of the Gothard Pass are well stocked with trout, and the landlord of the hotel where we lunched advised me to accept the services of the chef, who was reckoned locally a very mighty exponent of the piscatorial art. But when my comrade observed my methods and noted the results, he very speedily returned to his kitchen: “_Oh! là, là ça, vous savez, je ne comprends pas du tout. Bon jour, monsieur_,” and so we parted. I think every sportsman-born has in him something of the poacher. Certainly one of the keenest and most skilful fishermen of my acquaintance has made confession to me of occasional lapses into the most illicit practices when fairer means had failed. In our earlier essays among the hills of Westmoreland and Cumberland my brother and I were frankly unscrupulous, in so far at least as our limited skill permitted. There was a little pool in the hills above Thirlemere called Harrop Tarn which was so completely surrounded by a quaking morass that fishing from the bank was almost impossible. And yet we contrived to extract many a good trout from that same tarn by the poachers’ device of cross-lining. Joining our casts together, we were able, by letting out the line from either rod, to reach the very centre of the sheet of water, and when a fish was hooked we reeled in and drew him to the one little bit of firm land on one side or the other where he could be safely brought to the basket. I knew nothing of the literature of the art when I first learned to fish at the age of twelve, and it has often amazed me since to note what wondrous feats of skill can be performed--in books. How to cast in the teeth of a facing wind, how to avoid the sagging of the line in a swift stream, how to clear a spreading bush immediately behind you--there are exact and precise receipts for all these accomplishments, but they do not always serve you by the water-side. There was a time when the written record of such triumphs of skill made me feel that I scarcely deserved to rank as a fisherman at all, but it has been my fortune occasionally to see some of these bookmade anglers at their work, and the result in nearly every case has been to restore to me a measure of self-esteem.