152 COARSE FISH. 



whence it would seem impossible that they should 

 be able to return to the main river. They certainly 

 have the sense to get out of the rush of the main 

 stream into water they can stem comfortably, and 

 to return with it when it falls. After the great 

 floods of 1 894, when the Lower Thames Valley was 

 like an inland sea, I walked over miles of meadows 

 when the water subsided, searching for fish, and 

 only found them in one place, a small but deep 

 depression near Chertsey ; and the stragglers were 

 nearly all small perch with hardly a roach amongst 

 them. All this tends to show that roach are not 

 unable to take care of themselves, and I cannot 

 remember having found any large roach stranded 

 after floods, the stray fish being very small. I 

 have had excellent sport in eddies adjoining the 

 main stream ; little, shallow places, where the find- 

 ing of big roach might well be deemed impossible. 

 The angler should never neglect to try such spots 

 when the water is very high and thick ; a depth of 

 two feet is ample, and the fish are usually greedy. 

 I have caught roach under the lee of fences, palings 

 or tree-trunks, in flood water, fishing on the grass 

 with the tail of a lobworm, or a red worm, for bait, 

 or if the water was very thick indeed, with large 

 lumps of white bread-paste, the last-named being 

 more easily seen by the fish. 



Roach are handsome, shapely fish when in good 

 Appear- condition ; the eyes of golden-red, and 



ance the ana j anc [ ventral fins tinged with red. 

 The pectoral fins are not so deeply tinted. When 

 in his prime, a roach is deep and thick ; his 

 bright scales looking like burnished silver in the 

 winter sunshine, the scales smooth. In a bad- 

 conditioned fish, on the other hand, the scales are 



