i8 A BOOK ON ANGLING 



and best roach-fishers to be a most unusual prize ; for what 

 the trout is to the country gentleman the roach is to the 

 Londoner ; and the Thames, Lea, and Colne are eagerly 

 sought by shoals of roach-fishers every day in the week from 

 June to December, and of late years I am sorry to say almost 

 until June again, and under such wholesale, regular, and 

 systematic persecution, there is no doubt but that the stock 

 of good roach must diminish.* The process, however, can 

 hardly be other than a slow one when we consider the large 

 roe and the wonderful fecundity of the roach. I am not in 

 possession of any actual facts proven by experiment as regards 

 the rate of growth of the roach, but I should conceive a half 

 pound roach, under a fair proportion of feeding, etc., to be a 

 fourth year's fish ; and, in the interests of angling, none but 

 half-pound fish or thereabouts should be taken. Roach- 

 fishing is very pretty sport, requiring the exercise of much skill, 

 patience, quickness of apprehension, and ingenuity, com- 

 bined with a thorough knowledge of the habits of the fish. 

 No greater mistake can be made than to fancy the roach is a 

 simple fish. When he is half-starved, and seldom fished for, 

 he is no doubt easy to capture. When about to spawn or just 

 spent he loses much of his caution and shyness ; but when 

 he is well fed, in high condition, and sees many rods, he 

 becomes amazingly shy of the hook. I am the tenant of a 

 portion of a river in which thousands of splendid roach may 

 be seen in great shoals. I have tried them by every con- 

 ceivable kind of baiting for two or three years, both in fair 

 and foul weather and fair and foul water, but I have never 

 succeeded in taking more than three or four at the same time, 

 and those I took one evening with very fine Nottingham 

 tackle, striking them at least fifty yards off. I have also had 

 some of the best roach-fishers in London down to try them, 

 and they have had no better success. Sometimes in dirty 

 water late in the winter a few good takes of splendid fish 

 are made, but at all other times the roach are exceedingly 

 wary. But this is rather an exceptional case ; and, seated 

 on a stump, under the shade of an old pollard willow, by 

 some deep, quiet hole on the Lea or Colne, the fisherman 

 may enjoy agreeable sport, and while watching his float with 

 a mundane eye to the main chance, to dream or moralise to 



* Since this was written the Freshwater Fisheries Act, 1878, established a 

 close time, i$th March till i5th June, both inclusive, for all kinds of fresh- 

 water fish not of the salmon order, with exception in regard to certain 

 districts, ED. 



