98 NOTES FOR THE 



may easily be seen when the weather is calm, 

 covered with a long weed which grows most 

 luxuriantly, and contributes no doubt to feed 

 the quantity of fish with which the lake abounds. 

 Fortunately the fish here are entirely trout ; 

 no perch or pike dispute possession of the 

 waters, which in some measure accounts for 

 their abundance. Their average weight is three 

 to the pound, or rather better. Thus I have 

 memoranda of 33 fish weighing 12^1bs. ; 44 fish 

 13lbs., &c. The best average for weight was 

 one morning in 1847, when I killed 18 fish, 

 weighing rather over 91bs. I have heard of 

 trout weighing three or four pounds being taken, 

 but until lately never believed it, as after fishing 

 the lake regularly for ten seasons I never killed 

 or saw a fish that weighed fully one pound, until 

 the autumn of 1851, on one day of which I killed 

 one which weighed exactly a pound. The same 

 afternoon Mr. Cooke, a gentleman staying at the 

 inn, killed one the same weight; and the next 

 morning I took a third. They all weighed a 

 pound to a feather, or, perhaps, I ought to say, to 

 a scale. This same year Mr. Pring, the curate, 

 killed a fish which weighed nearly four pounds ; 

 it was, however, a diseased fish ; almost dead 

 when he took it, and so rotten that it had to be 

 buried immediately. 



