8 FLIES AND FLY FISHING. 



do not attend sufficiently to the preservation of the brooks 

 flowing into the main streams, and of course, when trout 

 are up these, they are very easily taken. 



Besides the great difficulties the keepers lie under from 

 the laxity or uncertainty of the law on fish poaching, they 

 have also many minor ones to contend against ; for 

 instance, men fishing who have no right to do so, but who 

 have always some plausible excuse, such as that they had 

 permission from some man who rents about fifty yards or 

 so of land on one side of the river, and that they did not 

 know they had left his land, they being, when detected, 

 perhaps a couple of miles off. Now, numbers of men who 

 fish with this excuse ready should they be caught, are 

 inveterate poachers, and can at all times obtain you fish ; 

 and on club waters it is so impossible, or at any rate so 

 difficult to get the sole right of fishing on the whole extent 

 of water the club is supposed to hold, that they are often 

 able to fish almost with entire impunity. 



In some places, poaching at night with the wasp grub 

 is carried on to a very great extent, and, in those places, 

 many men poach during the wasp grub season who never 

 do so at any other time. It is something quite wonderful 

 the amount of fish that a clsver performer with this bait 

 can sometimes kill during a good night. I have often 



