Sport in the Stour 
playing in the current. Immediately 
I hooked a large perch, which must 
certainly have seen the whole apparatus 
from below. 
It was in the Stour that I caught my 
first roach, and nearly fainted with hor- 
ror when he loudly croaked in my face. 
It was a horrid sound, and I could not 
disguise from myself that I had com- 
mitted a murder. I felt as I had done 
on a former occasion when, walking by 
the water, I idly thrust my stick into a 
little holeinatree. All at once I heard 
a bitter wail, and found I had wounded 
a baby bat. The tiny face was terribly 
human, and the cries piteous to the ear. 
I could only put it back and trust that 
nature might restore the hurts caused 
by my careless blow. 
No doubt the full-fledged salmon 
fisher will look upon all this much as 
the foxhunter does upon the accom- 
plishment of rat-catching, but it should 
be remembered that pike and perch 
fishing come in at a time when salmon 
either do not run, or else are protected 
from the seductive devices of the angler 
by the decrees of the law. 
~ This, at least, is the case in the Stour, 
which is a very early river, where the 
salmon are mighty particular, and 
often refuse to rise to the fly at all. I 
can remember the days, not so very 
long ago, when all that was known of 
salmon fishing in the Stour was a dark 
oral tradition handed down respecting 
the hooking of a huge one while troll- 
ing for pike with adace. Need I say 
that this monster was never brought to 
land, but disappeared into that limbo 
where all the enormous fish we lose re- 
tire for ever, looming bigger as they 
recede into the fog of years? It was 
against the credibility of the story that 
its author had a reputation for indulg- 
ing in the ancient art of archery, and, 
289 
personally, I did not believe it. The 
event in question was supposed to have 
happened before an attempt was made 
to work an iron-stone reef off Hengist- 
bury Head. After part of it had been 
removed, it was found that the lie of a 
bar of sand stretching across Christ- 
church bay and out as far as Highcliffe 
had suddenly altered, thus affecting 
the mouth of the Avon and Stour, 
which join a little higher up and fall 
into the seatogether. This sand bank, 
which fad existed for years, was washed 
away in a few weeks, and from that 
time the Stur blossomed out into a 
salmon river, just as sometimes a hope- 
less ‘‘ detrimental ” may become a faréz. 
Those who had loved the little river in 
its old days, when it played very second 
fiddle to its elder brother, the salmon- 
bearing Avon, now held up their heads 
and had no cause to be ashamed of their 
affection. For once the obstacle re- 
moved which had displeased their, 
fancy, up came salmon by the hundred, 
bright as silver outside, pink and 
creamy inside. Most of them, alas ! 
ended their exploration in the nets at 
the Run, disastrously as other explorers 
have done before them, but some crept 
through, and others were well advised 
enough to choose for their journey 
those hours between mid-day Saturday 
and Monday morning when netting, 
happily for the rod-fishers, is illegal. 
Be this as it may, instead of one 
(mythical) salmon during countless 
ages, the Stour, in that part of it only 
which lies between Iford and about a 
mile above Throop Weir, now began to 
produce about eighty fish in the season. 
This was indeed a change for the bet- 
ter, especially as the fish were mostly 
very heavy and in splendid condition. 
I recollect an almost Homeric com- 
bat between myself and a beautiful 
