FISHING YARNS 287 



and landed a 20-lb. salmon does not know what the real 

 joy of fishing is. Whilst personally I consider a single 

 lb. trout, taken fairly with the fly, worth a dozen lbs. of 

 bream or barbal or roach. Heaven forbid that I should 

 claim for votaries of the fly a superiority over those who 

 worship the worm — though it is not without a quiet 

 chuckle of satisfaction that I feel my withers unwrung by 

 the great Lexicographer's definition of angling as " a rod 

 with a worm at one end and a fool at the other." 



The fly-fisher's noblest quarry is, of course, the salmon ; 

 and I believe the record salmon taken with the rod in 

 these islands is 54^ lbs., though Sir Hyde Parker eclipsed 

 that in Sweden with a fish of 60 lbs., and the Earl of Home 

 landed one of 70 lbs. in Norway. But to few mortals have 

 such catches been granted, and the man who can boast 

 (veraciously) of having taken a 25-lb. salmon with the rod 

 is a person to be envied. Even so successful a fisherman 

 as Mr Cholmondeley-Pennell has never had the good 

 fortune to take one of more than 23 lbs. The largest 

 salmon ever taken in the nets weighed 83 lbs., and was 

 exhibited in a London fishmonger's shop in the summer 

 of the year 1821. 



The Thames can boast of the largest trout, though they 

 are rare. Fish of 23^ lbs., 21 lbs., and i6| lbs., have been 

 taken in the "silver streaming Temmes" within the last 

 ten years. Other rivers, though unable to show anything 

 like such an average of large trout as the Thames, have 

 beaten it in individual instances. For example, in 1889, a 

 trout weighing 27 lbs. was taken in the Hampshire Avon, 

 and another of 25 lbs. two years previously. A 21 -lb. trout 

 was taken twenty years ago from the Trent ; and in the 

 preserves of Sir Home Popham, near Hungerford, where 

 the trout are artificially fed on chopped liver, fish of 23 lbs. 

 7 ozs. and 18 lbs. respectively have been taken. 



Colonel Peter Hawker, the famous wild-fowl shooter, 

 killed some 30,000 trout in a score of seasons, but I daresay 

 that record has been beaten by others. The New Sporting 

 Magazine for July 1834 says that Dr R. Robertson, one of 

 the best fishers in the county, took in one day, in August 

 1833 at Ballater, 36 dozen of trout, and a friend killed 



