452 NOTES ON FISHING WATEES. 



THE THAMES. 



%* Note. When the term preserved is used in the following pages, 

 as regards the Thames, it must not be understood that angling is pro- 

 hibited, but that the waters are protected by stakes and bailiffs against 

 poaching, and fishing during .the fence months. The conservators of 

 the Thames, and the various protecting societies, exercise no other 

 jurisdiction, at least as regards the angler. This is mentioned because 

 a recent book professing to be a guide to fishing-waters, mistakes pre- 

 served waters as prohibitions to the angler. 



THE THAMES is undoubtedly head-quarters for the London angler, 

 and is not exceeded for the abundance and variety of its fish by any 

 river in England. Steam-boats, gas-works, common-sewers, and an 

 enormous traffic, have driven the fish to a considerable distance from 

 the metropolitan portion of the river, and it would now be useless to 

 fish, as was the common practice once upon a time, at London, Black- 

 friars, or Westminster Bridge : fish could not live in those now 

 poisonous waters for an hour. Indeed, excepting in two or three of 

 the docks, which have as yet partially escaped the contamination, 

 tolerable angling hardly commences east of Kichmoud Bridge. We 

 begin with the DOCKS. 



THE SURREY CANAL DOCK, at Rotherhithe, is a subscription water 

 at a guinea a-year, or a shilling a-day. It is well stocked with jack, 

 pearch, roach, bream, eels, and there is occasionally a carp or tench. 

 The waters here as well as in the other docks are in most parts of them 

 inconveniently deep. 



THE COMMERCIAL DOCKS, also at Rotherhithe, (where floating timbers 

 are sometimes stationary for years,) used to abound with pearch, roach, 

 and large bream, but they have greatly diminished. Tickets for the 

 season may be procured, without charge, by application to the dock- 

 master, or one of the directors of the company, or at the company's 

 office at Leadenhall-street. The best baits are shrimps, alive or in 

 pieces. 



THE EAST INDIA AND THE WEST INDIA DOCKS, (one east, the other 

 west of Blackwall) afford very tolerable pearch and bream fishing, and 

 there are also roach, dace, eels, and pike, but they are daily becoming 

 fewer. Orders to fish may be obtained, without difficulty, from Mr. 

 Collins, secretary, at the company's house, Billiter-square. Trains leave 

 the Blackwall station five minutes before every quarter, and boats to 

 the East India Docks leave London Bridge every quarter of an hour. 

 The bream in the East India docks have sometimes weighed 7 Ibs., 

 pearch 3 Ibs., and not very long since a pike was caught in the West 

 India Docks which weighed 28 Ibs. 



There are probably fish in some of the private docks, but in ST. 

 CATHERINE'S and the LONDON DOCKS where there is much traffic and 

 change, the sportsman is not likely to find anything but eels. Indeed 

 these are pretty well poisoned by copper bottomed vessels. 



As much local knowledge is required for successful fishing in the 



