112 ANGLERS' EVENINGS. 



at once, and after a patient trial of about two hours, was 

 rewarded by a settled conviction that there was not 

 another fish like the one in question left, and that it must 

 have eaten all the little ones. Yet it was not a pike, or a 

 trout, or a grayling ; it may have been a chub. 



The last time I went to try the upper part of the 

 Irwell I saw the only pike I ever saw in that river. It 

 was about twenty yards below Agecroft Bridge, and I was 

 on a small island of sandy gravel. The fish was about the 

 size of a herring, and swam round me, looking as if it was 

 seeking food. I caught no fish that day. I think it would 

 be about the year 1830. I had before this fished and 

 caught fish in some other streams, notably the Irk at 

 Crumpsall and Blackley, the Medlock at Ardwick, and 

 the Derwent at Rowsley. On a day kept as a fete day 

 on account of the passing of the Reform Bill, some time 

 late in 1832, I went with a companion to fish in the 

 Mersey below Irlam. We caught very few fish ; but we 

 saw some ten or twelve men at various favourite holes, 

 each of them with a good dish of fish beside him, some 

 twelve to twenty in number, very uniform in size, and 

 mostly dace about as big as herrings. 



This is the last of my remembrance of fishing in the 

 Irwell, but I had previously seen and caught fish at Mode- 

 Wheel mill -tail, at the Crescent, Salford, the weir below 

 the Crescent, and various other places. Perhaps about 

 1828 I saw a man catch a trout nearly two pounds weight 

 at the mill tail below the Crescent, Salford, and I once 

 met a man with six trout caught in the Irwell, at the 

 foot of a small streamlet near Kersal Moor ; but I never 



