46 ANGLING IN GREAT BRITAIN. 



There are in these waters roach and perch and pike, bream 

 and rudd, in untold quantities, but the reed thickets surround- 

 ing them are so dense that the pike are not generally enticed 

 out of them until the winter, when the other kinds have 

 retired to the deeps. The bream are so numerous that they 

 are reckoned by the stone rather than by the brace or 

 dozen, and although they are not highly-esteemed for table 

 purposes after they are caught, they furnish a good deal of 

 fun in the catching. This operation is somewhat disagree- 

 able to a fastidious person. The angler provides himself 

 with a huge bucket containing a sloppy mixture of grains 

 and meal, and he protects himself from stray debris by 

 wearing a white apron. This compound is thrown broadcast 

 into a particular pitch — it should be done overnight — and 

 the bream collect in herds around it. The hook is baited 

 with a worm or with gentles, and the fish, when they are 

 fairly on the feed, bite without cessation until the store net, 

 which the East Anglian angler keeps suspended over the 

 side of the punt, is full of large broad-sided, bronze-coloured 

 bream, averaging 3 or 4 lbs. 



These broads are also a favourite hunting-ground 

 of the rudd, a fish often confounded with the roach. 

 It is confined to a comparatively few localities, and 

 there is no mistaking its lovely golden jacket and carmine 

 fins and irides. Though commonly angled for on the 

 same principle as roach, it will rise very freely at a 

 fly in hot weather. In the quiet evenings, after the sun 

 is down, I have moored my rude boat to the reeds that 

 border one of these meres, and whipped out two half- 

 pound rudd at a time, as fast as I could introduce to the 

 shoal my small black gnat or red palmer, with a gentle on 

 the tip of the hook. You could see the whole shoal rising 

 at the small insects that were humming in the summer air. 



