Fit as Fiddles and as Hard as Nails

Barbed wire, anchors, cables, tentpegs, sandbags, foodstuffs innumerable were some of the varied commodoties that, one morning were being un-loaded on the banks. Sometimes I attempt a gentle fishing in the Evening. One day we set off for a spot, at the junction of a shallow tributary with the main stream, where we had seen the fish feeding in enormous shoals. We were armed with different weapons of offence; an iron spike, a spear, a gaff, a strokehaul and put every effort into the attack, but, though the waters boiled with the splashings of mud-fish, we met with no success: I think a small harpoon would have been a better weapon.