CLEAR WATERS 



much better feeding than Red tarn, for numbers of 

 small ' sikes ' from wide-stretching, boggy slopes run 

 into it ; while Red tarn is wholly fed by springs or 

 short, tiny rills from precipitous cliffs, so there may 

 well be an insufficient lack of bottom feed to support 

 many trout. But why are there none in the other ? 

 Can it be an utter lack of spawning ground, and why 

 is Angle tarn, physically a duplicate of this larger one, 

 as full of trout as it can hold ! Nor must I by any 

 means forget to mention that in Red tarn there are 

 some of those strange fish like a fresh-water herring, 

 precisely the same species, I think, as are found in 

 Bala, and known as Gwyniad in Wales and Skellies in 

 the Lake country. They are rarely seen and never 

 caught on a line, though sometimes in the nets, but 

 being very tender are frequently killed by the dashing 

 of the waves upon a rocky shore and thrown up dead. 

 I have seen them at Bala, and they have been picked 

 up at Red tarn. There used to be plenty of them in 

 Ullswater and other lakes, but I think they are now ex- 

 tinct. There were once quantities of char in Ullswater ; 

 now there is not one. As they mainly haunt deep 

 waters and rise but little to the fly, the angler as such 

 has no particular reason to regret their disappearance. 

 This is said to be due to the lead pollution of the Glen- 

 ridding beck, not from any effect which the latter had 

 upon that corner of the lake, which, as already men- 

 tioned, does not affect the trout, but because the said 

 beck was the old spawning-ground of the char. Trout, 

 when deprived of one spawning-ground seek another, 

 but it seems that char lack this initiative, or instinct. 

 Since writing the first portion of this chapter, 

 284 



