22 TROUT FISHING 



few minutes with a spade would improve the tiny 

 shallows; here and there it would be a good thing 

 to remove some mud. When one had worked faith- 

 fully for a week or two it would pay to introduce 

 some more trout, yearlings if one had patience to 

 await their growth. And in the end, with a small 

 rod and, say, a ten-inch limit, one might have very 

 pretty sport and occasionally capture a fish of 

 good size. On the brooklet where my chief capture 

 was the minnow some one once had a four-pounder, 

 and several have been taken over two pounds. The 

 stream is certainly one of the smallest which optim- 

 ism could associate with trout at all. 



I do not know how many small trout streams of 

 this kind there are in the flatter portion of England, 

 but I think they must be quite numerous, a large 

 proportion of them being hardly realised. Travel 

 out of London in any direction, and you will see 

 frequent lines of willows which mark the course 

 of some streamlet of the same type. It may, of 

 course, be polluted and useless, or it may be too 

 nearly allied to some coarse-fish river to give the 

 nobler species a chance. But in, I believe, the 

 majority of cases every such brook is potentially 

 a trout stream and capable of giving sport of a kind 

 not to be despised. For the moment, of course, 

 I speak of districts away from the chalk. In the 

 chalk districts the trout-bearing possibilities of 



