410 SALMON AND TROUT. 



THAMES TROUT-FISHING. 



LOOKING at the dear old Thames from an angler's point of view, 

 I must admit that within my memory the range of ' fish-able ' 

 water has been considerably reduced. I have made many a 

 good basket of roach and dace off the piles under Putney 

 Bridge, where the water was then clear enough to support a fair 

 sprinkling of barbel, and I have caught half-a-dozen different 

 kinds of fish off the bank of Ranelagh House, where I lived as 

 a boy, from grounds lately united to those of the Hurling- 

 ham Club. The roach-fishing at Battersea Bridge, if I 

 remember, only ceased about the year 1827, and from that date 

 the limit of rod-fishing gradually receded up the river. There 

 has, however, since the formation of the Thames Embankment 

 been a re-appearance of scale-fish down the estuary, and though 

 the increased traffic forbids the renewal of punt-fishing, yet in 

 certain states of the water resolute urchins contrive to extract a 

 few of them as low down as Chelsea Bridge. From Teddington 

 upwards the angling may not be quite what it was in my boy- 

 hood, but if we could have an authentic summary of all the 

 fish taken in the course of a year between the tidal boundary 

 and Wallingford, the number, weight and variety of the cap- 

 lures would, I think, astonish some facetious contemners of 

 Thames fishing. 



My present concern, however, is with one only of its 

 numerous branches ; the one, perhaps, which has suffered 

 least from increased traffic and the disturbance of the stream. 

 The haunts of the Thames trout lie for the most part outside 

 the course of lighters and steam-launches, and where the run 



