2o8 WATERSIDE SKETCHES. 



Many of the Broads, all the best ones indeed, are, though 

 private property, accessible to a decent sportsman. Bream, 

 pike, and perch are still their most numerous fish ; the 

 roach, as might be expected, are vastly inferior to their 

 brethren of even such muddy rivers as you find at Reedhaln, 

 Cantley, and Buckenham. In one of the Norwich tackle- 

 shops I saw a stuffed bream of 9 Jib., the largest I ever 

 heard of; in a Yarmouth public-house I caught sight, 

 through the open door, of a brace of pike in a glass case, 

 each of which had turned the scale at three-and-twenty 

 pounds when taken from the Broads. The stranger will act 

 wisely if he make inquiries of some practical person — there 

 are many such in Yarmouth, Norwich, and Lowestoft, the 

 three centres from which the Broads must be " tapped " — 

 before setting forth upon his expedition. 



If you are fond of ornithology as a science, or wild-fowl 

 as an object of sport, the Norfolk and Suffolk Broads offer 

 a fruitful field of exploration. There are snipe on the 

 marshes, widgeon, teal, coot, duck, and geese in their 

 season ; the heron revels upon the flat oozy shores, the 

 reedsparrow twitters in the sedges, and if there are any 

 bitterns left in the land here they will be. 



As for eels the countrymen would not think of tying less 

 than thirty or forty hooks baited with small fish on their 

 night-lines, and are to their notion scurvily used by Dame 

 Fortune if more than a third of that number are non-pro- 

 ductive. The bottoms of the Broads with one or two 

 exceptions are muddy — the very ground for an eel ; the 

 exceptions are due to gravel, and Hickling Broad, I believe, 

 is one of them. 



These Broads are largely used by holiday parties in die 



