THE THAMES. 53 



of all praise, there is something yet to be done. Mede and 

 Persian laws cannot be laid down upon angling, and the 

 experience of one year, without any apparent reason, often 

 directly contradicts the experience of another. But upon 

 one point there need be no hesitating utterance — fishing for 

 pike in June is opposed to both law and common sense. 

 Roach may have recovered from spawning in that leafy 

 month, though that is by no means certain, even when the 

 season has been a forward one. In the last week of April 

 I have caught with a fly dace that were perfectly recovered, 

 and this in a stream where the previous year they were 

 rough and flabby so late as the middle of May. 

 • Leaving, however, roach and dace as debatable subjects, 

 it cannot be too strongly set forth that the Thames anglers 

 are allowed to capture pike a month, if not eight weeks, too 

 soon. The bream-fishing of the Thames is capricious, but 

 large fish are occasionally taken, and they are more deli- 

 cately coloured within and without than the bream of slug- 

 gish waters. Tench are the angel's visits of the Thames. 

 Perch, as I have pointed out in the notes to the previous 

 chapter, are, as a general rule, fair game at Midsummer, for 

 the perch, after spawning, loses no time in being himself 

 again. It is the pike which suffers. Here again the prize 

 system of the clubs works immense mischief. In June the 

 pike are pallid and lean ; at times you may take them with 

 anything that is moving and bright, yet I have seen them 

 so emaciated and listless in that month as to barely move 

 out of your way at close quarters. 



Unscrupulous pot hunters in killing these fish are, to be 

 sure, doing what is lawful ; the expediency does not trouble 

 them by so much as a thought. Every fish helps them 



