ELAN LAKES WILD SOUTH WALES 



associated with trout, it is not so bad as it sounds, the 

 stock of fish in the lakes being so plentiful. And what 

 are four or five thousand, which is the average recorded 

 number taken per annum out of the whole basin ? 

 practically nothing ! And what again are the two or 

 three hundred captured, at any rate fairly, from the 

 Elan, out of the thousands which doubtless run up 

 and deposit their countless young ? 



The pounders of Dol-y-mynach have no such easy 

 voyage up the rugged bed of the Claerwen, or anything 

 like such a length of spawning-grounds there. For 

 within a mile or less they encounter a natural water- 

 fall, a beautiful one it is too, that the most persistent 

 trout may not surmount. The Claerwen is auto- 

 matically in the corporation preserve, and that there 

 is some evil as well as much good in close preservation, 

 as I have always ventured to think, seems in this stream 

 to find some confirmation. The Claerwen is nowa- 

 days very little fished, for it contains mostly fingerlings, 

 though last summer I did see a trout of two and 

 three-quarter pounds on its way to be stuffed, that had 

 been killed on it above the falls with a fly, an accident 

 of course. But as regards degeneracy in size, an old 

 local angler, who fishes the lakes regularly, and has no 

 cause for bias, tells me that in former days before these 

 were made and the Claerwen was an open stream 

 moderately poached with nets by the sheep farmers 

 who live on it, there was excellent fishing there, and the 

 trout ran nearly four to the pound, with the plentiful 

 sprinkling of half-pounders that such an average in- 

 dicates. Now it is full of sprats, a sign, no doubt, 

 that there is not food enough to go round. In some 



185 



