EXPERIENCES & REMINISCENCES. 7 



Either in 1884 or 1885, Mr. Hopper forgets which, he was 

 fishing, with a friend in a boat, a very fine pool in the Trent, 

 when, a few minutes after one of the Trent navigation steamers 

 had passed with several well-laden barges in tow, there was 

 suddenly an immense upheaval of water in the centre of the 

 pool, and what must have been many hundredweights, if not 

 several tons, of flannel weed came to the surface of the water. 

 Curious to state for quite half to three-quarters of a minute 

 numerous fish of very large size were struggling in the 

 eddies on the surface of the water. From enquiry made it 

 was ascertained that the occurrence was not an unknown one 

 in dry seasons ; it is surmised that the flannel weed floats down 

 the river until it reaches the deep pool alluded to and there 

 accumulates in a huge mass, generating gases, until it makes a 

 plunge upwards. No doubt the mass which rose to the surface 

 in the manner described was caused to rise by the surging 

 action of the water made by the steamer and barges which had 

 just previously passed. Whether the fish were, so to speak, 

 sucked in by the rapid ascent of such a mass of weed cannot be 

 known, but it is not improbable that some of them would be 

 feeding on the outskirts of the weed upon the fresh water 

 shrimps with which it abounds, whilst others might at the 

 moment be swimming immediately above the weed when it rose 

 and be carried involuntarily to the surface. It is scarcely to be 

 believed that they were voluntarily having a gambol in honour 

 of the occasion, or yet that so many fish were all at once 

 attracted by curiosity at the strange phenomenon taking place. 

 The sudden upheaval of the water and the scene presented 

 were altogether so curious that on the spur of the moment it 

 was thought that there had been a small earthquake in the bed 

 of the river. A tight float has already been mentioned now a 

 word or two for a " running float." Carp bream are generally 

 fished for with this kind of float. Mr. Hopper's first experience 

 of this float was three or four years ago upon a noted bream 

 swim about 14 feet deep. An ardent Trent fisherman of 20 

 years experience, whom for the present purpose we will call 

 Brown, and a friend called Witchdorter, accompanied Mr. 



