Winter at Hazelbarn. 161 



it is more creditable to the sportsmen. In the summer we 

 have bream, and all the coarse fish, with available trout in 

 a nobleman's park five miles across country. In the winter, 

 we have pike, plentiful and large, in the river, and perch to 

 match ; the same fish, under other conditions, are to be had 

 in one or two ponds which the owners of the estates in 

 which they are situated, kindly place at our free disposal. 

 In times of hard frost, the ponds are literally sealed, but 

 the river is seldom frozen, and never in every portion, 

 though it has none of your runaway currents that hurry 

 through the land with a flash, and a roar, and a sweep, and 

 a tumble, until sobered by the stealing fingers of the salt 

 tide into which they are soon absorbed. 



Hazelbarn being eight miles_ from the nearest railway- 

 station, and the river a mile from Hazelbarn, we have a 

 monopoly of the angling. You may mark the course of 

 the river by the sombre line of pollard willows that have 

 stood on picket-duty from time immemorial. Here we have 

 holes of fourteen feet deep close to the bank, and a general 

 depth that would everywhere take in a seven-foot man to 

 the neck. The stream is always steady, and there are 

 curves in the banks, and backwaters formed, it might be 

 thought, expressly to invite the prowling pike and perch to 

 lie in wait for unconsidered trifles passing innocently by. 



Last winter, the curate took an eighteen-pounder, and 

 I two twelve-pounders, or thereabouts, on the same day. 

 Generally, however, we are amply satisfied with a brace 

 and a half a-piece of fish that shall not be under five pounds 

 each. Perch-fishing depends upon the suitability of the 

 weather for bait capture. We rarely take them spinning or 

 trolling, although every enticing phantom, spoon, and 

 shadow eel that ingenuity has devised has been tried. 

 Only at rare intervals will they look at the live minnow, 



M 



