74 A TERSIDE SKETCHES. 



that seemed of mammoth proportions amongst its brethren, 

 and a three or four ounce trout was considered by the 

 Devonians a highly respectable moorland fish. It is a well 

 Icnown rule in angling that when the small fish feed greedily 

 the large ones do not move, and vice versA; and the small 

 •ones had the ill taste to be in the ascendant on my visit to 

 Dartmoor. 



The bulk of the trout were about the dimensions of 

 sprats, and these on the first day I in my ignorance re- 

 turned to the water. Three or four, however, injured be- 

 yond redemption by the steel, went to the cook with what 

 I deemed to be the sizeable fish. At dinner I made a dis- 

 covery. The Dartmoor troutlets are the best flavoured and 

 sweetest eating fish it was ever my good fortune to taste. 

 You devour, or rather scrunch, them, body, bones, and head ; 

 the much-lauded whitebait are inferior to them. A Ply- 

 mouth friend afterwards told me that parties of gourmands 

 frequently make expeditions to Princetown for the sake of 

 a dish oi petite truite. The quarter-pounders, though not to 

 be despised, are at table less delicate than the syrametrical, 

 energetic little things that at first so trouble the angler's 

 conscience. A trout breakfast at the Duchy Hotel at 

 Princetown, within sight of miles of moor rolling outwards 

 to the horizon, is a treat to be often repeated ; or if at 

 luncheon time in the West Dart Valley you look in at the 

 Two Bridges Inn, and selecting a dozen of the smallest fish 

 from your basket, hand them over to the landlady, the 

 chances are that twelve tiny tails alone will be left witness 

 to your appetite. 



I do not wonder at the fuss made a few years since about 

 ■the convicts' diet ; Dartmoor has a special facility for making 



