A HISTORY OF SUFFOLK 



Broad Fish Preservation Society practically ceased 

 to exist owing to lack of funds and want of local 

 support. Doubtless acts of poaching occur at the 

 present day, but the rewards are hardly com- 

 mensurate with the risk. By-laws passed under 

 the Act forbid fishing otherwise than bv rod and 

 line for any trout between 10 September and 

 25 January inclusive, or for any other kind of 

 fish between I Marcli and 30 June inclusive, 

 smelts, bait, and eels excepted. An order made 

 on 9 August, 1890, forbade the use of bow-nets, 

 drag or seine-nets, liggers or trimmers, night 

 lines, snares, guns, spears (except eel-spears), 

 snatchers and wires, with exceptions in respect 

 of smelts, bait, and eels. No regulation has 

 ever been enforced regarding size or weight 

 of fish. 



When considering the inland fishing of the 

 county it must be remembered that at Great 

 Yarmouth, the main outlet of the Waveney, the 

 rise and fall of tide, barely six feet on the 

 average, is, witli the exception of that on the 

 Isle of Wight coast, about the smallest in the 

 United Kingdom. Further, owing to the two 

 miles of contracted neck from the junction of the 

 three rivers (Waveney, Yare, and Bure) and 

 Breydon Water to the Bar, the tide there and at 

 Southtown Bridge varies as much as 2 ft. Fifty 

 years ago, before steam dredges were used, the 

 tide ran up these rivers in only half its present 

 volume, whilst Breydon was 2 ft. or 3 ft. deeper. 

 Now the salt water makes itself felt several 

 miles further up stream, and the water at Burgh 

 St. Peter is quite brackish ; four miles higher up 

 it is pure enough to drink. A south-east wind 

 will let the water run abnormally low, but if the 

 wind suddenly veers round to the north-west the 

 tide comes up with a rush and kills many fish 

 which have travelled too far down the rivers on 

 the low ebb. These unusual disturbances are, 

 however, almost invariably accompanied by rain, 

 and freshets counteract what might otherwise 

 prove disastrous. 



The Waveney is navigable some 20 miles up 

 to Beccles by vessels of 9 ft. draught where the 

 tide does not rise much more than 1 2 in. But 

 so many steamers and motor-boats now ply on 

 these waters that the fish have become very shy. 

 Occasionally bull-trout are taken. Some ex- 

 cellent swims for roach, dace, perch, bream, and 

 rudd occur between Beccles and Geldeston Lock 

 and in the higher reaches of the upper river 

 below Bungay. 



The netters are aptly called ' skinners ' at 

 Beccles. 



Almost within a stone's throw of St. Olave's 

 Priory is the celebrated Fritton Lake, which with 

 Lound Run is about three miles in length. Col. 

 H. M. Leather records in 1874 that an enormous 

 pike took as a bait a 1 2-lb. jack which had been 

 caught on a ligger, the larger fish being between 

 five and six feet long(!). In 1880 this gentle- 

 man and two friends caught 1,133 fish > n tnr ee 



378 



days, 5 1 7 of which were secured in one day. At 

 the present day the lake is so stocked with bream 

 that in summer their working in the mud makes 

 the water quite thick ; this, however, is pre- 

 judicial to the other angling. Fifteen stone of 

 bream to two rods in one day would be con- 

 sidered a good basket. Flixton Lake is very 

 similar to Fritton, only much smaller. It lies 

 some five miles higher up the river, with which 

 it is connected by a narrow dyke. Twenty- 

 eight stone of bream were taken here by two rods 

 in one day about 1885. 



Some seventeen miles from the mouth of the 

 Waveney is Oulton Broad, a magnificent stretch 

 of water which, prior to 1828, was connected 

 with Lake Lothian ; now a lock divides the two 

 and Lake Lothian is open to the sea. Oulton 

 Broad offers excellent coarse fishing all the year 

 round, the best being for roach, pike, perch, and 

 bream. Until thirty years ago several of the local 

 inhabitants obtained a good living from fish and 

 wild fowl, but these industries are now things of 

 the past. In 1878 torrential rains of unpre- 

 cedented volume fell in Suffolk, and most of the 

 low-lying towns were flooded out. On 16 July 

 the Beccles bank broke and the pent-up flood 

 swept down the Waveney valley, turning the 

 entire level into one vast lagoon. The river 

 banks, erected to keep the water off the marshes, 

 kept the floods in, and the enormous amount of 

 decaying vegetable matter produced a most dis- 

 astrous effect upon the fish in the river. It was 

 estimated that there was one large fish per yard 

 lying on either bank for ten miles between 

 Oulton Dyke and Beccles. Every really big 

 fish seemed to have perished. It was astonishing 

 to see the quantity floating on the surface, or 

 gasping in the reeds. The smaller fish, though 

 affected, survived. The little eels seemed to 

 suffer most, and it was common to see two or 

 more lying on each leaf of a water-lily. The 

 rands (swampy ground between the river and the 

 river walls) were in places packed with eels, and 

 one could walk there ankle deep in water and 

 pick up as many as desired. The foul water 

 daily pumped up from the flooded marshes into 

 the river by the steam and wind drainage mills 

 which line the banks maintained this state of 

 affairs for some two months. Mr. Frank Buck- 

 land, accompanied by the late Mr. A. D. 

 Bartlett, director of the Zoological Gardens, 

 made searching investigation, but the real secret 

 of the disaster does not seem to have been dis- 

 covered. The decaying vegetation brought into 

 being animalculae quite visible to the naked eye 

 if a sheet of white paper was held a few inches 

 below the surface of the affected water. A few 

 of the dykes adjoining the river which contained 

 a spring or inlet of pure water offered refuges up 

 which the fish crowded. In one of these the 

 writer counted upwards of forty pike, besides 

 other fish, squeezed close together as if in an 

 overcrowded fish trunk. It was thought at 



