170 TROUT FISHING 



tendency to deteriorate at an age when brown trout 

 would still be putting on ounces. I caught one 

 once at Ravensthorpe Reservoir, the lake which is 

 famous as one of the early proofs of what results 

 can be got from trout culture in water storage lakes, 

 which was rising just like that Blagdon fish, with 

 heavy deliberation suggestive of great size. And 

 it was a big fish, or rather it had been once. It 

 was shaped more like an eel than a trout, and, even 

 so, it weighed two and a half pounds. I have no 

 doubt that in Imppier days it had been at least 

 twice as heavy. 



But, as I have said, it has been my luck to meet 

 wath that sort of fish very frequently, so an instance 

 more or less no longer surprises me. I could wish 

 that I was less favoured with regard to big ones of 

 that type. 



I do not remember ever hooking and losing the 

 sort of trout that makes history, or at any rate the 

 sort of trout that I honestly believed would have 

 made history. I am not exempt, of course, from the 

 common fisherman's failing of estimating " the big 

 one that got away " on a perhaps too generous 

 scale. The biggest trout that I ever hooked, of 

 which I am certain, I was fortunate enough to land. 

 It came from the famous weirpool at Uxbridge 

 and weighed two ounces under eight pounds. It 

 took a dilapidated metal spinning bait of the Devon 



