2 SOUTH COUNTRY TROUT STREAMS 



Ireland, Wales, and the Northern counties of 

 England from Derbyshire to Northumberland — a 

 great number of beautiful trouting waters. The 

 southern counties do not contain nearly so many 

 trout waters as those other parts of the country I 

 have referred to ; and perhaps this may have a 

 good deal to do with the notion that, south of, say, 

 Derbyshire or Yorkshire, England is not a land of 

 trout streams — this and the fact that fly fishing for 

 trout, salmon, and grayling has come to be 

 associated in many minds with more romantic 

 scenes than the counties which this little work will 

 deal with can boast ; with the wild moorlands and 

 uncultivated districts, and with the pure strong air 

 of the mountains. 



We have less streams in the south, and as for 

 lakes we have practically none ; but, for all that, 

 I do not in the least hesitate to assert that a good 

 deal of the finest trout fishing in the United 

 Kingdom is actually in or hard by the counties or 

 shires of the southern seaboard. Some of it is 

 within three hours of the heart of London, by 

 which I mean that a man, if he has the right to fish 

 and the time and desire, may leave his hom.e 

 within a mile or two of one of the great London 

 railway stations after a moderately early breakfast and 

 before midday be angling in the purest and sweetest 

 oi' genuine trout streams. He can accomplish 

 the feat in two hours inclusive in a certain number 

 of cases ; and, in a very few, perhaps well within 

 that space of time. The trout of some portions 

 of the Cray are, alas, as extinct almost as the 

 salmon of the Thames, once so dreaded by the 

 apprentices of London, the wild fowl of Pimlico 

 Marshes, or the woodcock that old-time sportsmen 



