442 
MR. F. SUTTON ON THE PROTECTIVE INSTINCT IN FISHES. 
or artificial, and the fisherman avails himself freely of this tendency 
on the part of these particular fish. I have myself caught with 
a spoon as many as a score fish in one day in the Yare, and as an 
evidence of the fearlessness and the voracity of Pike, I have on 
one occasion seen a Pike of about seven pounds, rush furiously at 
a bright spoon hanging over the side of a boat, and dipping a few 
inches into the water. On one occasion I was using a new bright 
leaden plummet to fix the depth for Poach fishing, when it was 
seized by a two-pound Pike on its passage to the bottom, and 
bolted in a moment. 
The voracity and fearlessness of Perch are well illustrated by 
old Isaac Walton in his pithy comment on this fish : “ As you be 
fishing you may commonly come to a hole where there be Perch, 
and as you go on fishing you may t ike them one after the other 
till they all be gone, for the Perch be like the wicked of this world, 
he careth not for the destruction of his brother though he perish in 
his sight.” 
But the Poach is the most cautious of our local fishes, and next 
to him the Bream ; and it is these two kinds of fish I must use for 
illustrating what I mean by the title of this short paper. There is, 
in my personal recollection, a vast difference between ^he angling 
of these rivers to-day and that of say sixty years ago. At that 
time, angling in the Yare was practically limited to the upper 
river between Surlingham and Norwich I have some personal 
recollection as a very small boy of seeing very large hauls of Bream 
and Poach taken at Surlingham, and I can remember seeing scores 
of anglers along the riverside, just in front of where the old 
Thorpe Station was built, and which is now the Goods Station ; 
not only were they angling, but they were catching fish of full 
size and in large numbers throughout the late summer and early 
autumn months ; the fish were mostly Bream, and I remember to 
have seen a couple of fishermen fill a bushel basket with these fish 
in less than a couple of hours. There is now no such sport to be 
had in that district, except perhaps for a week or two before spawn- 
ing time when Bream seem to draw up the river to Trowse Eye, 
but this lasts only for a few days, but at the time I speak of there 
was no necessity to go down to Coldham Hall, Buckenham, or 
Oantley. During the whole season any reasonable number of these 
fish could bo caught at or near Norwich. It is not so to-day. 
