FISHES AND FISHING. 139 



Park, in Walton Meadows, near the bridge, a piece 

 of water, which, during the floods, cannot be distin- 

 guished from the Thames, and being a little distance 

 from the impetuous torrent, in the time of the an- 

 nual floods many fish take shelter in that more quiet 

 water ; but when the river retires within its bank?, 

 they cannot get back to the stream from whence they 

 came. A gentleman, I am credibly informed, being 

 told there were some pike in that water, went with 

 plenty of gudgeons, and absolutely killed forty-one 

 fish in two days, some of them from nine to ten 

 pounds weight each ; he used snap hooks, in conse- 

 quence of the quantity of weeds in the water. 



I was at my paternal home during about eighteen 

 or twenty months, and devoted all my leisure to 

 catching fish in every possible way, except netting ; 

 I had eel pots, grig pots, and laid trimmers. I had a 

 skifl^, and a punt ; and probably a few observations 

 upon these subjects may be useful to those having 

 waters of their own, who may wish to entrap eels or 

 pike. The mode of preparing the bait for a trimmer, 

 it is not necessary to enlarge upon, as most know how 

 to do that ; but as was the case with our waters, 

 where anybody could walk on one side of the stream, 

 though they could not fish, it was necessary to lay 

 trimmers so that no person could see them. The 

 trimmers I used were made of a forked stick cut 



