92 SOUTH COUNTRY TROUT STREAMS 



and it is found very difficult to successfully get 

 them out by netting. Here, as elsewhere on the 

 lower Kennet, the artificial fly is not of much 

 service as a lure for the trout. The angler's head- 

 quarters on the Kennet are Marlborough, Rams- 

 bury, Hungerford, where there is a capital old 

 angling inn — The Three Swans, Kintbury, New- 

 bury, and Aldermaston. The Swan Inn, just 

 outside Newbury, is made headquarters by a 

 good many anglers who fish the Newbury Fishing 

 Association's waters on the Kennet. and Lam- 

 bourne. It is a comfortable and clean house, if a 

 small one. 



The Kennet has long been famous for its fish. 

 Evelyn wrote of it as being " celebrated for its 

 troutes," and Pope alludes to the stream as " the 

 Kennet swift, for silver eels renowned." The old 

 Kennet trout was, and still is, an exceptionally 

 handsome fish, often golden-hued and always with 

 a fine red flesh. The trout of the little Dun are 

 also very pretty, and I have taken some late in the 

 season as bright almost as copper. But of course 

 many strains alien to the river have been intro- 

 duced in re-stocking. 



The Lambourne is a beautiful trout stream 

 flowing into the Kennet a mile below Newbury and 

 The Lam- close to the Swan Inn. It rises near 

 bourne Lambourn and has a course of twelve 

 miles, passing the villages of Eastbury, East 

 Garston, Great Shefford, Boxford and Donnington. 

 Rare among rivers, the Lambourne has more 

 water in summer than in winter, a fact first 

 mentioned by Best in his work on angling published 

 a hundred years or so since. All through the 

 summer there is a jjood stream in the higher 



