SALMON FISHING IN THE NOTTINGHAM STYLE. 127 



CHAPTER VII. 



SALMON FISHING IN THE NOTTINGHAM STYLE. 



WHEN I first struck out the lines and put my rough notes 

 into shape for this little volume on bottom fishing in the 

 Nottingham style, I had not the slightest intention of giving 

 the novice any instructions at all on fishing for salmon ; but 

 this famous style is rapidly getting into universal use and 

 increasing popularity in many of the fishing districts of this 

 empire ; so in the hope that it may prove interesting and 

 useful to those anglers who can occasionally indulge in a 

 little sport of this kind, I am tempted to add a short chapter 

 on the subject ; but it will only be a very short one. just giving 

 the outlines of worm fishing and spinning as it is practised 

 on the Trent for those fish. 



At the outset it is only right and fair to say that I am 

 only a working-man angler, whose experience of fishing is 

 almost exclusively confined to the lower Trent ; I have not 

 travelled all over the three kingdoms in my search for sport ; 

 consequently I cannot say whether this plan would answer 

 well on the famous salmon streams of the north. Being a 

 navigable river, and in some parts of its course winding 

 about most wonderfully, the Trent has a remarkable diver- 

 sity of surface and streams ; at some points there are long 

 deep stretches that flow on calmly and gently ; at others it 

 goes rippling along over the gravelly shallows ; then anon 

 it is compressed into its narrowest bounds, and the water 

 goes surging through in a strong current ; then again it 

 widens out very considerably, and forms those still and quiet 

 lagoons that is the home of the bream and the pike ; or after 

 weeks of dry weather when the parched and thirsty earth has 

 been cracking open in all directions, then our river is as 

 sluggish as possible, and can be fished in most places with the 

 very lightest of tackle ; or when the scene changes, and constant 



