IfOiV AND WHERE TO SPIN. 115 



than acted upon, which says that 'Prevention is better than 

 cure.' The 'strong delusion,' then, to which I refer is the 

 assumption (under whose agis these quasi judicial murders are 

 being perpetrated and winked at) that the Thames can be 

 denuded of its pike, and can be made a trouting river — a river, 

 that is, capable of maintaining a sufficient stock of trout to offer 

 the angler a fair day's wage for a fair day's work ; in other words, 

 to enable him to calculate upon a certain number of fish in his 

 creel as the probable result of a given expenditure of time and 

 skill. If a river will not do this, it is worthless to the fly-fisher, 

 and is not a trouting river in the only valuable sense of the term. 

 Now, is there any chance of such a consummation so far as the 

 Thames is concerned? Let us see what are the facts of the 

 case. 



The first fact is that the pike could tiot be destroyed ; not 

 only not absolutely, but not even so as practically to affect 

 the trout question at all. How, indeed, can it be expected 

 that a few years of permissive poaching under the Thames 

 Angling Preservation Society, should effect what all the com- 

 bined efforts of netting, trimmering, and every conceivable mis- 

 management and abuse for centuries have been unable to 

 accomplish? What tould, and probably would, be accomplished, 

 would be to reduce the stock of pike just sufficiently to make 

 the river entirely unattractive to Thames troUers, of whom there 

 are at present, I believe, somewhere about twenty for one trout 

 fisher. 



But supposing, for the sake of argument, that the pike could 

 all be destroyed, and that the Society continued, or increased 

 their trout breeding operations, is there good ground for be- 

 lieving that the river could ever be made a trouting stream, in, 

 as I have already pointed out, the only useful sense of the term ? 



So far from it, the assumption, nay, I may say the cer- 

 tainty, is exactly the opposite way ; and I will undertake to 

 prove to any unprejudiced mind, not only that the change 

 would fail to improve the trout-fishing which already exists, 

 but that it would be positively detrimental to it. 



12 



