THE DEVONSHIRE AVON 



best fisherman I knew upon the Avon, have occupied 

 a pocket of my fly-book for the last twenty years, on 

 ' in memoriam ' account alone. His generation never 

 dreamed of fishing without one. It is certainly a 

 wonderful fly there in early summer, the fish taking 

 it under water as freely as on the surface. 



The decline in the number of fish, probably in a 

 majority of rapid rivers, is, I think, an accepted fact, 

 and is certainly a perennial source of discussion among 

 anglers, and that, too, in rivers where neither poach- 

 ing nor over-fishing can have had anything to do with 

 the trouble ; for in such cases there is nothing to discuss 

 or theorise about. The Avon is a case in point. I 

 am pretty sure there are as many fish as there were 

 twenty years ago, and in fact there are quite enough 

 for any reasonable person. It was, roughly speaking, 

 in the twenty to thirty years before that period that 

 the change was effected by some mysterious agency, 

 here, as in other streams known to me in many parts 

 of the west and north. In a long spring and summer 

 — for other brief visits are not worth considering — 

 I spent upon the Avon, I never killed more than five- 

 and-twenty sizeable fish in a day. And I am quite 

 certain that much larger baskets were not then made 

 by any one, nor indeed would an occasional exception 

 alter the case. But in the sixties thrice that number 

 were frequently taken. There was some correspond- 

 ence in the Field many years ago as to the baskets 

 made here in these brave old days by local worthies, 

 country parsons and suchlike — how they filled their 

 creels and then their pockets, till even these last over- 

 flowed, obviously not from any mysterious super- 



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