ELAN LAKES WILD SOUTH WALES 



they will nowhere rise to a fly, and are only taken 

 in small numbers by spinning or the like, the river 

 doesn't count in this sense. So I presume it doesn't 

 much matter if the sheep farmers scoop out enough 

 in autumn to smoke for their own use as a change of 

 winter diet. It merely lies between them and the 

 licensed net owners who do business right up to 

 Welshpool, and, I suppose, strictly speaking, between 

 them and the law, which without any local rod interest 

 to back it up is, I should imagine, tolerably slack. In 

 any case the effect of the tribute levied is, I dare say, 

 trifling, and a good many people in the locality which 

 breeds the fish get what they consider a table delicacy ; 

 for there is no accounting for taste ! 



The Llanidloes opinion on the trout question used 

 to be very much that of the men of Rhayader towards 

 the nobler salmon, but has vastly improved of late. 

 A few years ago they were incorrigible trout-netters. 

 Now the worst elements are dying out or suppressed, and 

 an angling association of a democratic nature has been 

 formed, with rights over thirty miles of the upper Severn 

 and its tributaries bright mountain streams, all of 

 them, threading valleys that are worth exploring even 

 without a rod. Llanidloes is pulling itself together 

 in this respect, and laying itself out to catch a portion 

 of the tourist stream that leaves it in the lurch and 

 races over the Pass of Talerddig to the Dovey valley and 

 the coast watering-places. If the summer passengers on 

 the Cambrian knew Llanidloes and its mountain back 

 country as well as I do, there would be a surprising 

 boom in the building trade of that Arcadian market 

 town, whither most of the fleeces of the Plinlimmon 



ZOl 



