A BOOK OF FISHING STORIES 



all the hours of daylight ; but it is only necessary during 

 a month or six weeks in spring. If it pays a farmer 

 to herd rooks off his corn, surely it is worth the while 

 of the owner or lessee of a salmon fishery to scare away 

 marauders from his precious shoals of potential twenty- 

 pounders. 



Artificial propagation of trout is quite a different matter. 

 There you have the fish under your eye, so to speak, from 

 the ovum to maturity. There is no limit to the number of 

 trout that can be turned out of a hatchery, and the parents, 

 unlike salmon, can be kept in captivity until ready to shed their 

 precious burden in the boxes. I confine these observations 

 to trout, because fly-fishing for trout ranks next in quality to 

 fly-fishing for salmon ; indeed there are not wanting good 

 sportsmen who declare that it is the higher branch of the craft. 

 Moreover, trout adapt themselves to almost any character of 

 water, running or still, provided pike can be excluded. That, 

 indeed, is a very serious proviso. Next to the wholesale 

 pollution which has been allowed to ruin some of the finest 

 angling waters in the United Kingdom, the presence of pike 

 is the chief hindrance to the maintenance of a good trout 

 fishery. There can be no doubt that we owe the wide dis- 

 tribution of pike in British and Irish waters largely to the 

 piscicultural energy of ecclesiastical communities. It is safe 

 to say that there is not a stream or natural lake in the 

 United Kingdom below the 2500 or 3000 feet level which 

 did not at one time contain trout. One of two agencies, 

 pike or pollution, must be held to account for their dis- 



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