A BOOK OF FISHING STORIES 



there to escapes from monastic and domestic stew-ponds in 

 pre-Reformation times. Trout-fishing in these waters is now 

 so highly esteemed and commands such handsome rents that 

 the pike are well looked after. Hundreds are whipped out 

 every year with a wire noose at the end of a long bamboo, 

 and very interesting it is to watch the astonishing dexterity 

 of an adept at this beneficent business. He adjusts the snare 

 over the snout of a jack six or eight inches long with as perfect 

 accuracy as when dealing with a heavy fish. 



But more than dexterity is required in fighting this foe. 

 Vigilance and industry must never be relaxed, else your 

 fishery will be overtaken by the fate that has been allowed 

 to ruin one of the most prolific trout streams whereon I ever 

 floated a fly — to wit, the Gade in its course through Cassiobury 

 Park. I chose this water, on 3rd June 1897, f^^ ^ pioneer 

 experiment with the heretical Mayflies, which my lost friend 

 Andrew Lang dubbed Bloody Marys and Blue Devils. My 

 purpose was to test the colour sense in chalk-stream trout, or, 

 at least, to ascertain whether they really are so fastidious as 

 to the exact shade and tint of a fly as many good fishers believe 

 them to be ; so to attain that purpose I had a quantity of May- 

 flies dressed of the usual materials, but dyed — some a scream- 

 ing blue and others a flaming scarlet. The result of this 

 experiment, and of a subsequent one in a less populous water, 

 has been described elsewhere.^ Suffice it to say here that I 

 landed that day thirty-one trout, whereof only one weighed 

 less than a pound ; and, had I chosen to persevere, might have 



^ Salmon and Sea-trouty by Sir Herbert Maxwell, pp. 129-137. 



132 



