THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 197 



Hoaches be accounted much better in the river than in a 

 pond, though ponds usually breed the biggest. But there is 

 a kind of bastard small roach, that breeds in ponds, with a 

 very forked tail, and of a very small size ; which some say is 

 bred by the bream and right roach ; and some ponds are 

 stored with these beyond belief; and knowing-men, that 

 know their difference, call them ruds ; they differ from the 

 true roach as much as a herring from a pilchard. And these 

 bastard breed of roach are now scattered in many rivers ; but 

 I think not in the Thames, which I believe afford the largest 

 and fattest in this nation, especially below London Bridge.* 



* I know not what roaches are caught below bridge, but above I am sure 

 they are very large, for on the 15th of September, 1754, at Hampton, I caught 

 one that was fourteen inches and an eighth from eye to fork, and in weight 

 wanted but an ounce of two pounds. The season for fishing for roach in the 

 Thames begins about the latter end of August, and continues much longer 

 than it is either pleasant or safe to fish. It requires some skill to hit the time 

 of taking them exactly ; for all the summer long they live on the weed, which 

 they do not forsake for the deeps till it becomes putrid, and that is sooner or 

 later, according as the season is wet or dry ; for you are to know, that much 

 rain hastens the rotting of the weed : I say it requires some skill to hit the 

 time ; for the fishermen who live in all the towns along the river, from Chiswick 

 to Staines, are about this time nightly on the watch, as soon as the fish come 

 out, to sweep them away with a drag-net ; and our poor patient angler is left 

 baiting the ground, and adjusting his tackle, to catch those very fish, which 

 perhaps, the night before had been carried to Billingsgate. The Thames, as* 

 well above as below London-bridge, was formerly much resorted to by the 

 London anglers, and which is strange to think on, considering the unpleasant- 

 ness of the station, they were used to fish near the starlings of the bridge. This 

 will account for the many fishing-tackle shops that were formerly in Crooked- 

 lane, which leads to the bridge. In the memory of a person, not long since 

 living, a waterman that plied at Essex-stairs, his name John Reeves, got a 

 comfortable living by attending anglers with his boat ; his method was, to 

 watch when the shoals of roach came down from the country, and when he had 

 found them, to go round to his customers and give them notice. Sometimes 

 they settled opposite the Temple, at others, at Blackfriars or Queenhithe, but 

 most frequently about the Chalk-hills, near London-bridge. His hire was two 

 shillings a tide. A certain number of persons who were accustomed thus to 

 employ him, raised a sum sufficient to buy him a waterman's coat and silver 

 badge, the impress whereof was, himself with an angler in his boat, and he had 

 annually a new coat to the time of his death. H. Sir J. Hawkins adds as 

 follows : " Before I dismiss the subject of Thames fishing, I will let the reader 

 know, that formerly the fishermen inhabiting the banks of the Thames, were 

 used to inclose certain parts of the river with what they called stops, but which 

 were in effect, weirs, or kidels, by stakes driven into the bed thereof, and to 

 these they tied wheels, creating thereby a current, which drove the fish into 

 those traps. This practice, though it may sound oddly to say so, is against 

 Magna Charta, and is expressly prohibited by the twenty-third chapter of that 

 statute : in the year 1757, the Lord Mayor Dickenson sent the water-bailiff up 

 the Thames in a barge well manned and furnished with proper implements, 

 who destroyed all those inclosures on this side of Staines, by pulling up the 

 stakes and setting them adrift." II. 



[Roach has long disappeared from all parts of the Thames in the vicinity of 



