Notes and Sport of a Dry-Fly Purist. 1 ( J3 



Trout fishermen on April the First, after a long 

 winter's weary waiting, are all alert to commence 

 their season on the Thames, and in a wide range 

 elsewhere, and no less so on many of the private 

 fisheries of our southern rivers, including the Itchen, 

 but in a portion of the latter, i.e., in the weirs, the 

 public have a legal right to fish from February 14th, 

 and over which there is much need of a conservancy 

 board, or other controlling power to prevent it. 

 Consequently local rods avail themselves of the 

 opportunity, and chiefly by bait fishing with bread 

 pellets, boiled shrimps, caddis grubs, &c., or 

 occasionally by malpractices such as snatching at 

 fish with naked triangle hooks, greatly depopulate 

 this most perfect trout stream before April sets in, 

 and the patiently enduring fly-fisher (for the past 

 six weeks restrained by his more sportsmanlike 

 instincts from capturing trout thus early and in 

 doubtful condition) makes a beginning. 



This part of the river has never been stocked by 

 alien fish bred in captivity by pisciculturists, and 

 although in the heart of the old city of Winchester, 

 and surrounded by habitations, a considerable number 

 of the indigenous trout work up to it at spawning 

 time. For example, on January the 9th, 1907, about 

 thirty were seen on the redds between Marsh Mills 

 and Blackbridge. And next day fifty brace were 

 counted in the short length of the narrow, shallow 



o 



