104 THE ANGLER'S GUIDE. 



respectable merchant or firm. You must, 

 however, have an order from a Director to 

 fish in the Blackwall Basin, and an order of 

 more weight than the general one to fish in 

 the Import docks. We have fished in them 

 all many times, and had very good sport, 

 taking bream sometimes weighing upwards 

 of three pounds, and thirty or forty pounds' 

 weight of roach at a sitting. In the Black- 

 wall Basin, the fish feed more frequently than 

 in any of the other deep docks ; and in the 

 Timber Basin more frequently still, it being 

 more shallow, and not taking so much sun 

 to warm the water, &c. The fishing in the 

 docks, however, is by no means so good as 

 it used to be, and various are the opinions 

 of anglers as to the cause of it. And several 

 times lately the fish have been seen in them 

 in a sickly state, very near the top of the 

 water; and when that is the case they will 

 never feed. Some persons think that, at such 

 times, they have been rendered sickly by some 

 poisonous food that has been thrown into the 

 water by some poaching persons, in order 

 that they may have the opportunity of taking 

 them out. But that is quite a wrong idea, 

 because if it were so, it would only be the 



