IGl 



THE ITCHEN. 



There are many worse ways of spending an angling 

 holiday than by putting in a week on the Itchen. Even a 

 couple of days are not to be despised, if you cannot manage 

 a longer time. Winchester is within easy reach of town, 

 and the fishing in this old cathedral city is, as a consequence, 

 much sought after. The lengths of the " old barge " river 

 and the mill-stream, shown in our illustration, are fishable 

 by half-cro^vn day tickets, and I have had some very fair 

 sport on them both, in the month of May, and also later 

 in the season. One late evening rise upon the mill-stream 

 will long linger in my memory, because I had some good 

 fun in the twilight, and basketed several capital fish. The 

 day had been exceedingly hot and sultrj^, and the trout were 

 too lazy even to wag their tails. I had mooned the day 

 away, hunting the ditches in the water meadows, and sav- 

 ing mj'self up for the evening. This is a practice which 

 I strongly recommend to other brothers of the craft, because 

 there is many a man who leaves off, weary and disgusted, at 

 the very time when the fish come on to feed. Well, I had 

 put in a thoroughly idle day, and, when the sun went down, 

 I was as "fresh as paint and keen as mustard." 



But here let me turn aside, and beguile the time until the 

 trout come on, by some discursive remarks upon evening 

 rises in general. They are uncertain things to save your- 

 self up for, because the more cocksure you are about getting 

 a " mad " rise, the more likely are you to find the river per- 

 fectly dead, and not a fin moving ! I am very often tempted 

 to ask, are the habits of our chalk-stream trout chang- 

 ing, or is their indifference to an evening meal of surface- 

 food due to abominable north and easterly winds ? What- 

 ever the cause, the fact remains that those of us who catch 

 last trains home, and even go to roost in village hostelries 



