FLY FISHING FOR. TROUT AND GRAYLING. 311 
has a chance, and never attains so large a growth as when he is 
abundantly supplied with minnows or other small fry. It is 
true that a kind of ‘stall feeding’ may be pursued with great 
success. About the year 1840, a distinguished officer informed 
me that at a Waterloo Banquet which he had recently attended 
there were served up two trout nearly of a size, from the pre- 
serves of Sir Home Popham, near Hungerford, which together 
weighed 36 lbs. These fish had been fed on chopped liver, 
and my informant assured me that no salmon could be better 
eating. But a few years afterwards I heard of a still heavier 
specimen, weighing 23 lbs. 7 0z., sent up to London from the 
same neighbourhood. 
This, as far as I know, was the largest specimen of Salmo 
Jario on record in the British Isles. 
A fish of twenty-one pounds is said to have been caught in the 
river Exe. I remember the capture—with pike tackle—of one 
over fifteen pounds in Marlow Pool, and have heard of other 
fish from the Thames that weighed eighteen pounds. The Drif- 
field Club used to exhibit a stuffed seventeen-pounder, caught 
in days when there was a periodical migration of countless 
minnows up the various feeders of the ‘ Beck,’ pursued by flights 
of the small black-headed tern or ‘carr-swallow.’ But till I 
hear of a rival candidate for first honours, I shall still say to 
that noble trout of Hungerford, ‘ Zu maximus ille es.’ 
The system of feeding which gave him and sundry other 
stately ‘bulks’—like Arac’s brethren—to the market was briefly 
as follows. Two adjacent tanks—for the eaters and the eaten 
—were supplied by a running stream, and now and then a 
large hooped landing net with small mesh was dipped into the 
reservoir of bait, and its contents handed over to the cannibals 
hard by. Then ensued a grand scene: a dozen speckled 
giants appeared, rushing, plunging, gulping, walloping, till the 
last victim had disappeared, when tranquil digestion became 
the order of the day. Under this system of training, a trout 
on a large scale, caught lank and lean after breeding, might 
easily double his weight in the course of the season. It should, 
