ELAN LAKES— WILD SOUTH WALES 



they will nowhere rise to a fly, and are only taken 

 in small numbers by spinning or the like, the river 

 doesn't count in this sense. So I presume it doesn't 

 much matter if the sheep farmers scoop out enough 

 in autumn to smoke for their own use as a change of 

 winter diet. It merely lies between them and the 

 licensed net owners who do business right up to 

 Welshpool, and, I suppose, strictly speaking, between 

 them and the law, which without any local rod interest 

 to back it up is, I should imagine, tolerably slack. In 

 any case the effect of the tribute levied is, I dare say, 

 trifling, and a good many people in the locality which 

 breeds the fish get what they consider a table delicacy ; 

 for there is no accounting for taste ! 



The Llanidloes opinion on the trout question used 

 to be very much that of the men of Rhayader towards 

 the nobler salmon, but has vastly improved of late. 

 A few years ago they were incorrigible trout-netters. 

 Now the worst elements are dying out or suppressed, and 

 an angling association of a democratic nature has been 

 formed, with rights over thirty miles of the upper Severn 

 and its tributaries — bright mountain streams, all of 

 them, threading valleys that are worth exploring even 

 without a rod. Llanidloes is pulling itself together 

 in this respect, and laying itself out to catch a portion 

 of the tourist stream that leaves it in the lurch and 

 races over the Pass of Talerddig to the Dovey valley and 

 the coast watering-places. If the summer passengers on 

 the Cambrian knew Llanidloes and its mountain back 

 country as well as I do, there would be a surprising 

 boom in the building trade of that Arcadian market 

 town;^ whither most of the fleeces of the Plinlimmon 



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