January 11, 1893] 
THE PISHING GAZETTE 
STREAM CLEANING. 
By Fenton Hook. 
laltoniana 
One of the great drawbacks to stocking any 
streams or ponds with trout is the vast amount 
of mud and weeds which have accumulated in 
most of our rivers, take for instance the Colne, 
Wandle, Mole, Chess, and tributaries. The 
millers in the olden days used to take more 
interest in their waters and keep them cleaner, 
but of late years they have let them get into such 
a bad state, almost beyond the power of manual 
labour, on account of the time taken to remove 
the mud, also the great expense. Some few months 
back a miller on the Colne tried to clean a portion 
of his water, and, after having one thousand 
yards removed by contract at oiie shilling per 
yard, gave up the idea, as it seemed to make little 
or no impression on the water. What really is 
wanted is some enterprising firm to construct a 
small dredger suitable for cleaning out rivers ; 
there is an appliance for cleaning out ponds 
which comes very expensive, the charge I believe, 
being something like ten pounds a day. A 
dredger suitable for rivers could be easily made 
to be driven by a four horse-power engine, which 
could be fixed in the boat, the lot not weighing 
more than five tons ; it could then be drawn from 
one river to another on a trolly. The boat should 
be constructed of iron, and large enough so as to 
draw not more than a foot or so of water. The 
cost of such a dredger, including labour, would 
not be more than two pounds a day ; and working, 
say, twelve pans, ought to lift at least fifty yards 
of mud a day, the mud being lifted high enough 
to be thrown into a shoot, and so fall into a slop 
cart, which can then be drawn away and 
distributed on the land, as there is no finer 
dressing for grass when harrowed in, and ought 
to be worth something like two shillings per 
yard when thrown into the cart; but if we only 
got one shilling per yard it would then pay for 
the getting, and ought to have a ready sale at the 
price. The way to start would be to begin at 
thetop of yourwaterand harrow it down, with, say, 
old railway sleepers loaded down, or an old harrow 
so as to drag all the mud to the lower portion 
of your water to feed your dredger, the harrowto 
be drawn by a horse or two, ridden by boys. If I 
had the cleaningof a river, I would harrow it down 
in places every year, and pull out the surplus 
weeds with a hand drag or a drag pulled by a 
horse, as the old way of drawing the knives up 
the river is of no use, only for the miller to let the 
water down, which is generally done in the middle 
of the summer, which I think is very injurious to 
the trout. Weeds we know are fine keepers, but 
you cannot have both in your waters, weeds and 
fish, that is, if you want your fish to rise well; 
suitable patches should be left, and when they 
come to the top should be toppedby a scythe. The 
cleaner you keep the bottom of your river the 
more trout you will have, as there will be more 
food for your fish, and they will stop in your 
water and not stray away. My experience is, it is 
of no use turning trout into waters that have not 
been prepared for them. I mean cleaned out and 
the coarse fish netted down and kept down, and 
the proper time to do it is in the spring and 
autumn, so as not to let your woi-k get the master 
of you. What would the Thames be like if it 
were not for the barges constantly passing up 
and down, and so keeping the bottom of the river 
in the channel as clean as it is possible, also the 
boats continually dredging gravel, why, the mud 
and weeds would accumulate so fast as to render 
the river useless for fishing. Some rivers clean 
themselves when they are not too foul, as you can 
observe on the shallows, the first warm day in 
spring, a quantity of little bubbles forming on 
the top of the decayed matter at the bottom of 
the river, and as the days get warmer these little 
bladders lift the deposit from the bottom to the 
surface, and it floats away in large quantities. 
We have received several complaints lately 
that the Fishing Gazette is not procurable on 
Saturday at certain newsagents. As our recently 
improved publishing arrangements enable the 
trade to supply their customers on the morning 
of the date of publication, we s-hall be glad to 
hear from any of our readers who may have been 
inconvenienced in this way. 
A CERTAIN youthful female telegraphist in the 
Thames Valley this week came to the conclusion 
that a prominent member of one of the up-river 
fishery associations was a lunatic, for the message 
sent ran as follows: “ What price rainbows 
delivered free reply paid.” The reply, however, 
came in due course, and the feminine manipu¬ 
lator of the electric current was further amazed 
when the machine spelled out, “ Wire received 
regret booked up in rainbows.” 
An enormous amount of fishery bye-law litera¬ 
ture has come into existence during the past ten 
days, and among the many criticisms that have 
been published I fail to find a favourable one. 
Here are a few extracts taken as they come from 
a pile of newspaper cuttings at my side : ‘‘ Have 
not been received at all kindly by anglers, whose 
opinions, it would seem, have received but scant 
consideration.”— The City Fress. “ Do not at all 
meet with the satisfaction of the general body of 
London anglers.”— The Star. “ Some dissatis¬ 
faction is felt among the general body of London 
a.nglers at the alterations.”— T>aily Chronicle. 
“I desire to say flatly, decisively, and emphatic¬ 
ally that I think it the most senselessly stupid 
and idiotic sort of arrangement that could possibly 
have been concocted outside of a lunatic asylum.” 
—Morning Advertiser. “ We have come to the 
decided conclusion that the suggested bye-laws 
will meet with strenuous opposition from all who 
take a genuine interest in the preservation of the 
Thames as the most accessible fishing resort of 
the public. . . . The only concessions to the 
claims of bond fide anglei’s are the prohibition of 
trailing, and the increase in the size of barbel (a 
game but otherwise worthless fish). . . . The 
well-wishers of the only free sport left to the 
working man will join in the hope that their 
efforts to oppose a retrograde movement as to the 
important fisheries of the Thames may be success¬ 
ful.”— Reading Mercury. “Another mountain has 
brought forth amouse. . . . Had the Conserva¬ 
tors only left undone that which they ought to have 
done, the case would have been bad enongli . . . 
they have likewise done that which they ought 
not to have done. ... It remains to be seen 
whether the thousands of Thames anglers will 
quietly submit to having their carefully matured 
plans, their plainlj’ expressed wishes, ignored. 
There are already signs that they will not do so. 
. . . To our minds the case against the adop¬ 
tion of the proposed new bye-laws is complete.”— 
Rod and Gun. “A resolution was passed pro¬ 
testing against the same becoming law in their 
present formbnthe ground that they would be fatal 
to the fisheries of theThames.”— Reading Observer. 
“ Do not all meet with the satisfaction of the 
general body of London anglers.” — Morning 
Leader. “The little good that the other altera¬ 
tions in the bye-laws may do will, so the Thames 
anglers confidently asserf, be more than nullified 
by the increase of netting which is certain to take 
place. It seems not improbable that if the con¬ 
servators do not withdraw the objectionable 
clauses the proposed bye-laws will be opposed when 
they come before the Privy Council.”— Daily 
Graphic. “ The two most noteworthy points are 
the prohibition of trailing, and the increased 
privileges which it is proposed to give to 
owners of private waters in the direction of 
netting. . . , The new bye-laws are not being 
favourably received by the anglers of the Thames. 
. , . There is very little in the proposed bye¬ 
laws which would have the effect of increasing 
the stock of Thames fish (excepting jack). It 
may be said that there might not be a fish more 
preserved to the river because of them. Anglers 
w’ill therefore not improbably come to the con¬ 
clusion that rather than have increased netting 
facilities conferred on owners of private fisheries 
or persons claiming under them, it would be 
better to,have no new bye-laws at all.”— 'The Field. 
The foregoing form only a small portion of the 
many notices which have appeared of those odious 
bye-laws, but before closing this paragraph I 
must refer to an article which has appeared 
up in the north, and is proof, if one were 
needed, of the bond of sympathy which exists 
between the anglers of the north and the 
south. In a leading article in the Northern 
27 
Angler I read : “ We do not wonder that Thames 
fishermen are wroth at the proposed new bye¬ 
laws. Two or three of them are nothing short 
of iniquitous, and will lead to the undoing of 
much that has been done by the T.A.P.S. and 
kindred associations . . , the very persons to 
whom anglers look for protection propose to 
reduce the mesh of the net (‘ used by owners or 
claimants of private fisheries ’) to 1 |in,, and to 
do away with the licence. Why? because the upper 
I’iver is represented on the Board by four riparian 
owners. . . . Such bodies should be repre¬ 
sentative. There is not a single nominee of the 
anglers or boating men who use the Thames on 
the Conservancy. The anglers may spend their 
money to stock the grand old stream, so that 
the man who owns the bank may have better 
hauls. . . . Thames anglers will have achieved 
something if they succeed in blocking the bye¬ 
laws until the London County Council brings in 
its next bill which is to give representation on 
the Conservancy.” This is strong, but not too 
strong for the occasion. Who wrote the article 
I do not know, but he is evidently well up in his 
subject. _ 
There is one good thing about this frost of 
1892-fi, there is no snow with it to get into the 
rivers wdien the thaw comes. Pish, even trout, 
will feed well in a snow storm, but snow broth in 
the river is generally fatal to sport. Twice I 
have found trout rise well when it has been snow¬ 
ing, and have caught roach as fast as I could play 
and land them in the midst of a blinding snow¬ 
storm. Another day, or rather evening, on the 
Thames the more intense the cold the better the 
roach seemed to bite. Every few minutes the 
line froze in the rings, a small fish froze to the 
bottom of the punt, the well net froze, everything 
freezable turned into ice. That was in February. 
In winter one certainly should not hesitate about 
going roach fishing in the hardest weather, but if 
a nor’-easter is blowing the chances of sport are 
certainly not great. _ 
At the time of writing the frost has returned, 
anti the hopes anglers may have entertained at 
the commencement of the week of a cleai’ance 
of the ice from rivers will probably he dis¬ 
appointed. Nevertheless there are places here 
and there where the river has not frozen owing 
to tlie stream or the wind, but unfortunately 
just the places where there is most stream are 
those least likely to be productive of sport; for 
fish generally take to deep quiet waters din ing 
severe frosts. 
There has been a Fisheries Pair at Sydney. 
Boats took the places of the usual stalls, and 
the fair merchants were dressed as fisherwomen 
of various nations. It is to be hoped that the 
boatkeepers stopped at the dress, and did not copy 
the language and idioms peculiar to fishwives. 
I AVI considerably indebted to our good editor 
for calling my attention to certain photographic 
printing paper sold by the Eastman Company of 
Oxford-street. With the exception of Pizzighelli’s 
Platinotype paper, which is not very reliable, it 
gives less trouble than any paper I have used, 
and for bringing out evei^thing there is in a 
negative it even surpasses the ordinary albu- 
menised paper of commerce. So many anglers 
go in for photography, and making prints from 
negatives taken in the summer is such an admir¬ 
able winter pastime, that I hope soon to devote 
some space to the subject of printing papers, some 
of which can be worked any day when the weather 
is reasonably fine, and others which have to be 
developed in the dark room like negatives, after 
a short exposure to gas or lamp light. These 
latter are, of course, most valuable for amateur 
photographers whose days are occupied. Certain 
papers give good results with weak negatives, 
others work best with dense negatives. The 
experienced amateur should therefore vary his 
paper according to his negative to get the best 
results. 1 must say, however, that the paper I 
have recently lieen trying gives good results with 
both weak and strong negatives. It is called 
“ Solio ” paper by the Eastman people, and is 
evidently an imjiroved form of gelatino-chloride 
paper. I hope soon to try it on some Kodak 
films, which have not yielded very good results 
by other processes. Templar, 
