FISH FOUND IN MAYO. 79 



proportion. These seldom exceed a herring size ; but they, 

 too, have exceptions, and perch of three or four pounds 

 weight have been sometimes seen. Within fifty years, 

 this latter fish has increased prodigiously, and, in the 

 lakes and rivers where they abound, trout have been 

 found to diminish in an equal ratio. If any doubt 

 remained touching the fecundity of the perch, some of 

 the Mayo waters would prove it satisfactorily. Half 

 a century since I have been assured that pike and perch 

 were almost unknown in the rivers of Belcarra and 

 Minola, and the chain of lakes with which they com- 

 municate, and that these waters were then second to 

 none for trout fishing. Within ten years, my cousin 

 tells me that he often angled in them, and that he 

 frequently killed from three to six dozen of beautiful 

 middle-sized red trout. Now, fly-fishing is seldom 

 practised there. The trout is nearly extinct, and 

 quantities of pike and perch infest every pool and 

 stream. The simplest methods of taking fish will be 

 here found successful, and the lakes of Westmeath will 

 soon be rivalled by the loughs of Mayo. Mr. Young 

 mentions that, at Packenham, Lord Longford informed 

 him, respecting the quantities of fish in the lakes in his 

 neighbourhood, that the perch were so numerous, that 

 a child with a pack-thread and a crooked pin would catch 

 enough in an hour for the daily use of a whole family, 

 and that his Lordship had seen five hundred children 

 fishing at the same time ; that, besides perch, the lake 

 produced pike five feet long, and trout of ten pounds 

 each. 



Of the great Western lakes, Conn and Carra belong 

 to Mayo ; Corrib to Galway ; and Mask lies between 

 both counties. The most northerly, Lough Conn, 



