340 TROUT FISHING. 



confines of New York and New Jersey, in the Greenwood Lake 

 in the same region, and in some other ponds in Orange County, 

 Brook Trout have been occasionally taken of the same unusual 

 size — one fish I saw myself on last New Year's Day, which, 

 shameful to tell ! had been caught through the ice, near New- 

 burgh. This fish weighed an ounce or two above five pounds, 

 and was well-fed, and apparently in good condition — but, as I 

 said before, all these must be taken as exceptions, proving the 

 rule, that Trout in American waters rarely exceed two or three 

 pounds in weight, and never compare in size with the fish 

 taken in England, and still less with those of the Scotch 

 and Irish waters, in all of which the regular, red-spotted, 

 yellow-finned Brook Trout are constantly taken, with the fly, 

 of ten pounds weight and upward ; and sometimes, in the 

 lakes of Ireland and Cumberland, in the Blackwater, Coquet, 

 and Stour rivers, attain to the enormous bulk of twenty-six 

 and thirty pounds. 



" With regard to the second point of distinction, I have never 

 heard of a Trout being taken at all in the Hudson ; never in 

 the Delaware, even so far up as Milford, where the tributaries 

 of that river abound in large and well-fed fish ; never in the 

 lower waters of the Connecticut, or any Eastern river, so far as 

 the Penobscot, although the head waters of all these fine and 

 limpid rivers teem with fish of high colour and flavour. In 

 Great Britain, on the contrary, it is to the larger, if not to the 

 largest, rivers that the angler looks altogether for good sport 

 and large fish ; and it is there as rare a thing to take a fish a 

 pound weight in a rivulet or brook, as it is here to catch a Trout 

 at all in a large river. 



