162 BOTTOM FISHING IN THE NOTTINGHAM STYLE. 



Trent we;J caught on a night-line at Collingham, with a 

 nest of young blackbirds for bait. The two weighed a trifle 

 over fifteen pounds ; one was eight pounds and the other 

 seven. I have seen several six pounds each ; but these big 

 ones, when you come to cook them, are very oily. The best 

 for the table are those from a pound to two pounds; they, 

 are very rich and luscious. The poet truly says, 



" The Trent hath such eels, and the Witham pike, 

 That in England there is not the like." 



In Italy I have heard that the eel will reach the extraor- 

 dinary weight of twenty pounds, but I believe the biggest 

 that was taken in English waters weighed a trifle over eleven 

 pounds. The yellow-bellied or non-migratory eels in the 

 Trent very seldom exceed a pound and a half ; though in 

 some lakes and ponds they range considerably over this. In 

 Balderton ballast-hole, for instance, eels of this species are 

 taken of the weight of three or four pounds. 



There is hardly a piece of water of any description in 

 England, even a muddy horsepond, or ditch, that does not 

 contain eels of some sort. They are found in almost any place, 

 in the foul, muddy, and stagnant water of a cutting, or in the 

 boiling waters of a weir. The eel gets under stones, in holes 

 in the bank, or in the brickwork of an old wall, or among the 

 piles and old rotten wood of a landing-stage ; and sniggling an 

 old eel out of these places, when the weather is hot, and other 

 fish refuse to feed, is not bad fun. Eels are caught in various 

 ways : in baskets, bucks, hives, &c., &c., and when they are 

 running they are caught in very great quantities in the nets. 

 Mr. Thorpe, at the Water Mill, Newark, once took three 

 tons in his nets in a single night, a most extraordinary catch. 

 It was a few years ago, and the catch has not been equalled 

 there, either before or since. Eels are for the most part 

 nocturnal fish, and it is at night that they do their " running," 

 and that the big ones are caught. Some aver that the eel 

 will travel over land, from one pond or lake to another, and a 

 correspondent, recently writing to the Fishing Gazette, said 

 that an old fisherman told him that the eels came out of the 

 river during the night, and picked up the worms on the 



