104 THE ANGLING CLUBS AND PRESERVATION 



statement, hastily and rashly made. One moment's con- 

 sideration will suffice to impress any thoughtful man's mind 

 with an assurance of its truth. A pike wirer, it is true, 

 may kill a female fish, ripe and full of ova, and hence many 

 thousands of future pike are lost to the fair fisher. But 

 where he kills one or two fish without detection, the steam 

 launches are perpetually and everlastingly ploughing 

 through the water, not only washing away the ova de- 

 posited upon the weeds and sheltering roots, but destroying 

 thousands upon thousands of tiny just-hatched fry, which 

 would otherwise have probably grown up, and made in time 

 mature fish, the source and foundation of good sport to the 

 fair fishermen. 



In those far-off days of the past there were such delight- 

 ful and fishful nooks as one misses nowadays. Com- 

 paratively speaking the Thames was a great stretch of 

 maiden water, where the unharried fish dwelt in a sense of 

 the most perfect security. Their chief enemy was then, 

 probably, the village poacher, with his rude, yet none the 

 less dangerous, ash pole and bit of dangling copper wire. 

 Lazy and idle as indeed some few perhaps of the village 

 loungers of to-day may be this worthy would stroll 

 down to the- river side, where mayhap, amongst bonny 

 sweet-smelling hay-fields lined with meadow-sweet, and 

 where glorious purple loosestrife bounds the river's marge, 

 he met not a solitary living soul the whole summer's day. 

 Here he would pry about, until he might haply descry, 

 basking amongst the water weeds, a big pike, with the tip 

 of his nose and tail clear of the water, or the dorsal fin of a 

 great lumbering carp. Then the fatal noose would be 

 brought into play, and towards night, when reeling home 

 from " The Haymakers," the gloriously happy fellow might 

 possibly reflect, and withal possessed of an infinite sense of 



