THE BREAM. 149 



Charlie Hudson, who lives somewhere against Dunham 

 Bridge, within easy distance of one of the deepest, if not the 

 deepest, bream swims on the Trent, viz., the celebrated Dun- 

 ham Dubs, is about as good a bream fisher as any I know. 

 He often pilots gentlemen to that hole, and assists them in 

 landing some " pluggers," as he calls them. He makes it his 

 especial business to keep that hole well baited during the 

 autumn ; and for this purpose I know he often uses whole 

 bucketsful of worms. If any strange angler was to see 

 Charlie's landing-net for the first time, he would probably 

 think that there were some rare-sized fish when that thing 

 was wanted, for the hoop of it was at one time round a fair- 

 sized barrel, only he had cut it and bent the two ends down 

 a bit, and then nailed it fast on a twelve-foot clothes-prop, 

 and the net itself looked as though it had some time or other 

 been part of an old strong eel net. I shall have to go down 

 and see Charlie before long, as it is now a long time since I 

 saw him, or heard anything about him and his exploits among 

 the bream. 



A friend of mine was telling me an anecdote the other 

 day about a man who lived on the borders of a very big pond 

 or lake that had a large quantity of big carp bream in its 

 waters. As soon as August got well in he used to begin to 

 bait up a swim or two, and for this purpose he used to mix 

 together a ground bait, most queer in its construction bul- 

 lock's blood, brewers' grains, boiled potatoes, scratchings, bran, 

 and barley flour being mixed up into a stiff pudding, and 

 thrown in, and this process he used to repeat for a few days, 

 until he had thrown in something like a big wheelbarrow 

 load altogether. He used the tail end of well-scoured lob- 

 worms for his hook bait, and my friend assured me that that 

 man has taken as many as two hundredweight of fine bream 

 in a single day's fishing, and that the sport has continued 

 some seasons every day for a fortnight, or more. His swims 

 were generally a nice distance from the bank, and a night or 

 two before he fished he used to anchor his old boat in the 

 proper position for fishing his favourite pitch, and go back- 

 wards and forwards to it by means of another small boat. 

 While fishing he used to wear a huge apron reaching from 



