64 Ifctnss of tbe 1Rofc, Iftifle, anfc Gun 



perceived that my bait had sunk deep, but, not re- 

 collecting the additional force the fish acquired thereby, 

 imagined him of very great magnitude. My tackle 

 was not to be surpassed, I had plenty of water to work 

 him and no trees or roots to trouble me, but he made 

 the rod at every exertion bend to the water. After 

 much trouble he was secured in the landing-net and 

 proved to be a perch of about seven and a half pounds. 

 I never saw so fine a fed fellow, and what had given 

 him additional power and had deceived me was, as I 

 found, his being hooked by the belly part, which gave 

 him the full strength of his head and tail. Fish so 

 hooked have deceived me and no doubt many brother 

 anglers before." 



The precise weight of the fish is subsequently given 

 as 7 Ibs. 3 ozs., and I need hardly say that the annals 

 of angling cannot show many bigger perch than that. 

 It is not however, the largest on record. Pennant, in 

 his " Survey of London," tells of an 8-lb. perch 

 taken in the Serpentine. And there are also two other 

 authenticated instances of perch of 8 Ibs. being taken 

 in England, one in the Wiltshire Avon and the other 

 in Dagenham Reach, Essex. A 6-lb. perch was taken 

 by Mr. Hunt, of Brades, Staffordshire, out of the 

 Birmingham Canal, and I have heard of one of 5 Ibs. 

 which fell to the rod of an angler in Bala Lake. After 

 such monsters the sJ-lb. perch which the present writer 

 took forty years ago out of a private lake near Halifax, 

 in Yorkshire, seems but " small pertaters " ; it is the largest 

 however, that has ever come under my own experience. 

 Izaak Walton, indeed, declares that he knew of one 



