42 ANGLING IN GREA T BRITAIN. 



is work for none but accomplished artists, and there are 

 upon the river a few renowned specialists who day by day, 

 and week by week, pursue their sport with untiring devo- 

 tion, though a fish or two per week throughout the season 

 would be considered very excellent sport. The Thames 

 trout, however, is a gallant battler when once he feels the 

 little triangles in his palate. While the rush lasts he 

 outdoes even the salmon in his fierce charges and desperate 

 tactics, so that, if he be discovered but rarely, when he does 

 make a grave error he is a foeman worthy of the best steel 

 ever fashioned into a fish-hook. 



The game goes on until the 15th September, but 

 the bloom is taken off the sport in a couple of months 

 from the opening day. Every weir is spun persistently, 

 and every weir, perhaps, if it could reveal its secrets, 

 would testify to fish that had broken away, been pricked, 

 or otherwise put upon their guard. Thus the trout, 

 already cunning, get exceedingly wary, and hard to 

 catch. Once upon a time the Thames anglers never 

 dreamt of looking for trout in other than weirpools and 

 rough, swift water, but modern men have found out that in 

 reaches of the river where their presence was never sus- 

 pected, an occasional lusty patriarch, retired from the noise 

 and perpetual motion of lasher and weir, has taken up a 

 quiet haunt ; and as, in his more lively foraging expe- 

 ditions, he is certain, sooner or later, to let his whereabouts 

 be known — since the Thames is not hid in a corner — the 

 process of live-baiting is applied to him, and not infre- 

 quently with fatal results. 



