HAUNTS OF THE SEA-TROUT 59 



trees, the branches are usually so extensive that to throw 

 a fly is scarcely practicable. 



I am acquainted with a pool of the latter character, 

 and there is only one spot where a fly can be cast satis- 

 factorily in a length of some hundred yards, and that is 

 where an opening of a couple of yards across the water 

 is due to a branch having been lopped. Throughout the 

 season you can at night hear the hefty plops of specimen 

 fish turning over in this pool, and at the place which I 

 have indicated many a redoubtable beauty has been 

 played to the net. From my experience I am prepared 

 to guarantee that on every night, when the conditions 

 are propitious, the chance of hooking a fish there is real. 



Notwithstanding that an appreciable proportion of sea- 

 trout escape capture and live to return to the estuary, 

 numbers find their way up small tribuatries and tiny 

 branch streams, there to meet destruction at the hands of 

 poachers. 



After a spate in the spawning season I have heard of 

 a pool, barely twelve feet square, at the head of a side 

 stream, being literally packed with both salmon and sea- 

 trout. The " locals/' at such times, enjoy a remunerative 

 harvest by " snatching " these fish. The modus operandi 

 for this game is to cast across the pool to the far side a 

 a metal spinner furnished with several trebles, allow the 

 contraption to sink and then reel it in slowly. The fish 

 are so congested that the failure to foul-hook one is 

 nearly an impossibility. 



In spite of the diligence of the fish-keepers, this illegal 

 business proceeds merrily, as for the spoil there is always 

 a market, be it only a black one, and the big sea-trout 

 are sold as salmon to unsuspecting customers. 



True, there is nothing new under the sun, and I re- 

 member, in the days of my boyhood, the wholesale attacks 

 that were made on shoals of grey mullet which took up 



