Hi Everyone!! This article will share A Fishy Story Questions & Answers.
It is an abridged extract from ‘Three Men in a Boat’ by Jerome K Jerome. In my previous posts, I have shared the questions and answers of The Last Leaf, The Tea Trail, Where Love Is God Is, The Brook and The Luncheon so, make sure to check these posts as well.
A Fishy Story Questions & Answers
Question 1: Read the extract and answer:
(a) According to people, what was the only thing required to become a fisherman?
Answer: According to people, all that is required to become a good fisherman is the ability to tell lies easily.
(b) Why wouldn’t the twenty-five percent formula work well for the young man?
Answer: The twenty-five percent formula wouldn’t work well for the young man because the greatest number of fish he ever caught in one day was three and one can’t add twenty-five per cent to three in fish.
(c) What did the young man do when the twenty-five percent formula didn’t work?
Answer: When the twenty-five percent formula didn’t work, the young man would just double the quantity.
(d) Give the synonym of the word ‘lie’.
Answer: Falsify
Question 2: What story did the local carrier tell the author about the trout?
Answer: The local carrier told the author that he had caught the trout nearly five years ago just below the lock – leastways. He further said that it weighed twenty-six pounds.
Question 3: Why could the author not become a great angler?
Answer: The author was an extremely neat thrower, had plenty of gumption and quite enough constitutional laziness. However, to become a great angler, he would require more imagination, more power of invention and the ability to tell lies easily.
Question 4: Describe the neighbourhood of Streatley and Goring.
Answer: The neighbourhood of Streatley and Goring is a great fishing centre. The river abounds in dace, pike, gudgeon, roach and eels. All day, one can sit and fish for them. Some people do but they never catch them.
A Fishy Story Questions & Answers
Question 5: What story did the old fellow tell the author about the big trout?
Answer: The old fellow told the author that he had caught the trout just below the bridge with a minnow and it weighed eighteen pounds six ounces. He further added that one didn’t see many fish that size about there then.
Question 6: What formula did the young man finally use to exaggerate his haul satisfactorily?
Answer: The young man began counting each fish that he caught as ten and to assume ten to begin with. Then, if he really caught one fish, he called it twenty, while two fish would count thirty and so on.
Question 7: How did the landlord respond to the various histories he learnt about the trout from the author?
Answer: When the author and his friend told the owner the various histories they had heard about the trout, he told them the real history of the fish. He said that he had caught it when he was quite a lad.
Question 8: How did the author find out that the trout was made of plaster-of-Paris?
Answer: The trout excited George so much that he climbed up on the back of a chair to get a better view. Then the chair slipped and the trout case came down with a crash. The trout lay shattered into a thousand fragments. That’s when they found out that the trout was made of plaster-of-Paris.
Question 9: Read the extract and answer the questions:
(a) What does ‘it’ refer to in the above extract?
Answer: ‘It’ refers to the trout in the glass case.
(b) Why did George climb up on the back of the chair?
Answer: George climbed up on the back of the chair to get a better view of the trout in the glass case.
(c) What happened when the chair slipped?
Answer: When the chair slipped, George clutched wildly at the trout-case to save himself and down it came with a crash, George and the chair on top of it.
(d) Find a word from the extract which means the same as ‘felt great wonder’.
Answer: Marvelled
A Fishy Story Questions & Answers
Question 10: Describe the false tales of catching the trout.
Answer: One day when the author and his friend George were in a parlour, they began chatting with an old fellow there. Then the old fellow said that the trout weighed eighteen pounds six ounces and he had caught him just below the bridge with a minnow. Then, the local carrier, who had just stopped at the inn, said that it was nearly five years ago that he had caught that trout below the lock and it weighed twenty-six pounds. Five minutes later a third man came in and described how he had caught it early one morning bleakly. After he left, a middle-aged individual came in. He told the author and his friend how it had taken him half an hour to land it, broke his rod and weighed thirty-four pounds. Finally, the landlord came and told the real history of how he had caught it when he was quite a lad.
Question 11: How was the truth behind the huge trout finally discovered?
Answer: The author and his friend George has heard all the false stories and shared them with the landowner. The landowner in turn told them the real history behind the trout. After the landowner left the room, they again turned their gaze upon the fish. The more they looked at it, the more they marveled at it.
To get a better view of it, George climbed up on the back of a chair. And then the chair slipped and George clutched wildly at the trout-case to save himself and down it came with a crash, George and the chair on top of it. That trout lay shattered into a thousand fragments. They thought it strange and unaccountable if it had been a stuffed trout, but it was not. That trout was plaster-of-Paris. Thus, the truth behind the huge trout was finally discovered.
Question 12: Do you think the title of the story is justified? Give reasons.
Answer: ‘A Fishy Story’ is an appropriate title for the story due to the pun intended on the word ‘fishy’. It is fishy because the whole story revolves around a magnificent trout which fascinates every onlooker who enters the inn. Secondly, every villager spins a fishy or suspicious story claiming to have caught the trout and thus impress the narrator and his friend. Lastly, the fishiest thing about the whole story is the trout itself – it is an artificial one made of plaster-of-Paris, as the narrator and his friend discovered at the end.
So, these were A Fishy Story Questions & Answers.