HOW AND WHERE TO SPIN. 117 



trout, of almost unequalled size. The pursuit of these affords 

 a keen excitement to a number of first-rate fishermen, both 

 trailers and fly-fishers men whose skill, which has been 

 considered unequalled, is only surpassed by the patience with 

 which, day after day, and even week after week, they will 

 pursue some one of these historic leviathans, pitting their 

 brains against his (perhaps almost as highly educated !) and at 

 last hauling him gurgling into the net, after a death struggle 

 the excitement and triumph of which has been multiplied in 

 an exactly corresponding ratio to the number of hours of toil 

 and thought they have expended in achieving the result. The 

 capture of one of these monster Thames trout is indeed, par 

 excellence, the ' blue riband ' of angling ; and it is probable that 

 there is no other feat, not even the killing of a 4o-lb. salmon, 

 which is so often looked back upon with pleasure, and re- 

 counted with pride in after days. It seems really almost 

 doubtful, therefore, whether a slight increase in the number of 

 these great trout would produce a corresponding increase of 

 pleasure, as whatever tended to diminish the difficulty would, 

 of course, equally diminish the honour and gratification. If 

 this should sound somewhat Quixotic let it be borne in mind 

 that the Thames trout-fisher in very many, probably, in the 

 great majority of cases, is not a tyro or Cockney angler, far 

 less a mere pot hunter. He has probably had his surfeit of 

 the best sport, whether with trout or salmon, that the three 

 kingdoms and perhaps Norway and Canada also can offer. 

 He has wetted his flies in the swirling pools of the Blackwater 

 or the Thurso, or filled his creel to his heart's content by the 

 teeming waters of the Driffield or the Itchen, the Test or the 

 Teme ; and therefore he is satiated with slaughter, or he is 

 getting old, and ' with stiff limbs and frosty pow ' cannot 

 shoulder, as of yore, his twenty-foot Castle Connel ; but at any 

 rate, he requires a peculiar class of fishing to give him any 

 peculiar pleasure, and that pleasure he finds in killing a big 

 Thames trout. And therefore, as I have said, it really seems 

 doubtful whether anything that tended to diminish the difficulty 



