CHAPTER VII. 



July 



RUDD FISHING IN OUSE WATERS. 



THE rudd is greatly neglected in works on fishing; 

 in fact, most angling authors hav; treated it with 

 scant courtesy, under the impression that Izaak 

 Walton did so in his " Compleat Angler." There 

 is no clear evidence, however, in the pages of the master 

 that he had any knowledge of the rudd at all. He, 

 indeed, mentions " a kind of bastard roach," speaking of 

 its being called " rud," which some editors have concluded 

 to be a reference to this species ; however, there is no 

 internal evidence that he referred to the rudd (Leuciscus 

 erythrophthalmus). Indeed, it seems more than probable 

 that he had no knowledge of the distinction between 

 these fishes (seeing that he attributes the saw-like teeth 

 of the rudd to the roach), and that the reference was to 

 one of the roach-bream crosses so common in this 

 country. The rudd does not come to its highest 

 perfection in ponds any more than does the roach, the 

 finest conditioned and heaviest fish being taken in the 

 deep, slowly-running reaches of many of our great rivers. 

 The largest, but not so well-conditioned, are taken in the 

 shallow, reed-bordered broads of Norfolk and Suffolk, 

 while small, flat-sided specimens are common in the 

 ditches and dykes in the Southern counties of England. 

 It is to be regretted that our modern authors have 

 evidently had but little personal experience of the art of 

 large rudd catching, as seen from the character of their 

 instructions. " Rudd take the same bait as roach and 



lOi 



