SHELTER FOR FISH NECESSARY 9 



thereby be not only of a greater average weight, 

 but they will be better in health and condition. 

 It is a somewhat difficult matter to induce owners 

 of fishings to accept the truth of all this, and 

 there are some points upon which they are often 

 most obstinate. One person will insist upon 

 cutting away all shelter afforded by bushes, trees, 

 weeds, etc. ; -another going to the opposite ex- 

 treme, and refusing to remove what is useless and 

 detrimental to sport. In many rivers there is not 

 sufficient attention paid to the spawning-beds. 

 Rivers, especially those whose banks are soft and 

 spongy, alter their course at times very con- 

 siderably, and what one year is a spawning-bed 

 may, through neglect, in the course of a year or 

 two, become overgrown with reeds and rushes, 

 especially if the summer is a dry one ; and so, 

 by degrees, the spawning-beds are insufficient for 

 the stock of fish. Where such alterations take 

 place, the channel of the river is for a time 

 narrowed ; but after a few floods the opposite 

 bank becomes unduly worn away, and so the 

 river takes from the one side what it loses on the 

 other. The deep side invariably becomes deeper 

 than it was previously, and so affords no com- 

 pensation in lieu of the spawning-bed which has 

 gone. 



Trout must have shelter to hide in, and 

 where they can lie unobserved without the undue 



