CLEAR WATERS 



excellence, for many an expert, more efficiently armed 

 and with finer tackle, has fished the river since these 

 days. I have good reason, however, for knowing that 

 these tales are absolutely true. The contrast between 

 the then and now, or rather between the then and 

 twenty years ago, must be looked for in this case as in 

 many others to some natural cause. Nothing con- 

 cerned with fishing, legal or illegal, has brought it 

 about ; that, at any rate, is pretty certain. The theory 

 of improved drainage which carries off flood water 

 and its store of feed in a day instead of several days 

 seems to me the most worthy of consideration ; a 

 theory which may be applied to scores of rivers like 

 the Avon with plausibility, for there really is no other. 

 The Barle of my boyish Exmoor days, for instance, is 

 another case in point. There is nothing like the 

 stock there was then. The casual, unobservant person 

 goes on repeating in all these cases that there are more 

 fishermen than of old. This sounds reasonable, but 

 it is not always true, and even were it so, amounts to 

 nothing when the fecundity of trout and the frac- 

 tional toll taken with a rod and easily estimated in 

 protected rivers, is totted up. 



A curious coincidence occurred during the last visit 

 I paid to the Avon, and if the hero concerned catches 

 sight of these lines, I hope he will forgive me. Now 

 on the Welsh border there was, and possibly still is, a 

 certain cleric who enjoyed a tremendous and justly 

 earned reputation as an angler. Though a native, 

 his cure of souls happened to lie in a county in which, 

 from my knowledge of it, I should say there is not a 

 trout but such as have been recently introduced into 

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