SPORT ANCIENT AND MODERN 



county. It was amusing to see the interest the which have been kept since 1801. In the 



dog now took in the dead birds. When they beginning more teal were caught ; between the 



were swimming in the pipe one would have years 18 12 and 1825, however, the wild duck 



imagined that he did not know that there were were more numerous. The following extracts 



such things as ducks in the neighbourhood ; taken haphazard from the records confirm this 



but now he pushed his nose into each one of statement : — 

 them, as much as to say that their present Wild Duck Teal 



state was due to him. The catch consisted of ■^°^ 73 334 



sixteen teal and the mallard whose life had been '^'3 30+ 108 



spared. |^^° ^^7 ^ 



The keeper, on being asked why so large a g^ ^ , 



proportion of the birds had flown down out of jg^^ . A 



the pipe, said that those that had escaped were 



led by some tame birds which had gone into the The decrease of wild duck is probably due 



pipe with them, but that this was a very unusual to the draining of the various mosses which 



occurrence. As the evening was now drawing used to abound in Lancashire, and were famous 



in, we decided to stop work. breeding places for the duck ; another theory 



Although teal now considerably outnumber is that perhaps some decoy-men had not been 



the other wild fowl taken in this decoy, wild careful to leave at the end of the season enough 



duck at one time were much more numerous, as birds to bring a lead back in the following 



may be seen by a comparison of the records year. 



ANGLING 



Lancashire no longer holds the proud position 

 it once had with regard to the fishing in its 

 rivers. We read in the Angler's Vade-mecum of 

 200 years ago of the quantity of fish there were 

 in the Lune and the Ribble ; but a visit to these 

 rivers now reveals a sadly di£Ferent state of things. 

 The immense destruction of fish that has taken 

 place in recent years is entirely due to the pollu- 

 tion which these rivers have had to endure. It 

 is astonishing that any fish can live at all in the 

 discoloured water ; yet fish there are in the Ribble, 

 as the writer has seen. One day, on arriving 

 at this river, he found the water in splendid 

 order, and fish were to be seen moving, yet in a 

 quarter of an hour the river was stained with a 

 dark purple colour, which had been discharged 

 into it from the dye-works above, and the only 

 thing to do was to put the rod together and go 

 home. 



In the eighteenth century the salmon rights 

 on Lancashire rivers were let for hundreds of 

 pounds ; nowadays the Ribble and the Lune 

 are practically the only ones that contain game 

 fish, and a run of the former is rented by a 

 Manchester angling association. The river that 

 has perhaps suffered most in the way of fish de- 

 struction is the Mersey. As late as the year 

 1735 the value of the fishing in the reaches 

 near Warrington was estimated at no less than 

 ^400 per annum, salmon being very plentiful. 

 A writer in 1824, however, mentions that the 

 perpetual disturbances and depredations to which 

 the river was subjected had greatly reduced the 

 number of salmon, and the fine-flavoured smelts 

 (' sparlings ' is the local term for these fish) had 



greatly diminished. Pollution in more recent 

 times has completed the work of destruction. 

 Warrington Weir is still there, but the water 

 pouring over it is, at its best, the colour of dirty 

 co£Fee. Yet a very keen fisherman who has 

 lived in the town for over sixty years told the 

 present writer that he remembered seeing a 

 sturgeon caught at the weir not more than 

 twenty years ago. 



Another death-blow to Lancashire angling 

 has been the draining of the rivers for the water 

 supply of the various large towns. Streams 

 which from their appearance ought to be full of 

 fish are now almost dry, and to catch the few 

 fish that still remain in them one has to go out 

 at night with a large white moth, as was most 

 forcibly brought home to the writer on his visit- 

 ing the Hodder, a river which runs into the 

 Ribble. This is a beautiful stream with nice 

 overhanging banks, and it was with great expec- 

 tations that the rod was put together and a 

 start made by wading up the stream. After, 

 however, having tried every conceivable place 

 that looked likely for trout, and having flogged 

 for a distance of three miles, the writer had 

 the disappointing experience of taking only a 

 few small fry, which were, of course, returned 

 to the river. A halt was made at the inn at 



Whitewell, 



but 



where 

 all 



several anglers were stay- 

 ing, but they all agreed that it was only 

 waste of time to try for a fish in the daytime, 

 and that they went at dusk and fished for 

 several hours at night; the largest individual 

 bag for the season had been three sea-trout in 

 one night. 



487 



