172 
THE EISHING GAZETTE 
[March 11, 1893 
stowed away his clay in his waistcoat pocket, and 
shouted, “Pull, pull!” I did so, grasping my 
rod with both hands, and whirled over my head 
into some nettles behind what seemed to me a 
monster fish. It turned out to be a trout over 
l^lb., fat, and well fed. How it was that either 
my line or my rod was not broken I cannot say. 
Providence is wondrous kind to little boys. If 
there happens to be an exceptionally large trout 
in some brook it usually falls a prey to a little 
boy fishing with a stick, a piece of string, and a 
bent pin. If all one hears is true, the expert 
angler is not iu it with the small boy and his 
proverbial tackle. He is my bete noir. Often 
when staying with some non-angling friends, I 
have been taken down to a brook where trout are 
reputed to be, and reproached for my unsuccess 
with “ Oh, I’ve seen little boys hoist out fish as 
long as my arm with a bent pin and a string.” 
At such times I feel tempted to exclaim “ Hang 
all little boys that on earth do dwell.” However, 
from this day onward, my footsteps were often 
along the river’s margin, and many a good basket 
of fish has been ray proud possession. 
Prom Knighton to Tenbury—a distance of, 
well, by road, from twenty-seven to thirty miles— 
I have at one time or other fished in all the best 
water. As I have commenced with the Teme on 
the southern or Herefordshire side of Ludlow, I 
will go on to speak of the water between there and 
Tenbury. At Ludlow four weirs hold the water 
up, and occasionally under these some large trout 
are captured, especially in the deeper water at 
Ludford, but here and all down the Steventon 
and Hucks Barn water the river is not much 
cared for, and suffers from a plethora of anglers, 
and, I fear, poachers also. My experience is that 
from Ludford to Ashford Bridge the water is far 
better for trout than grayling, in fact, in these 
reaches I have never had much sport with the 
latter. There is a great deal of dead water, the 
abode of chub and rough fish. At Ashford, below 
the weir, matters are different. The weir here is 
semi-circular in shape, very high, and quite per¬ 
pendicular, and how the salmon managed to sur¬ 
mount this obstacle was always a matter of 
wonder to me, seeing that there was no salmon 
ladder. That they did so was evident from the 
swarms of samlet in the reaches above. In my 
young days I fiatly refused to believe that these 
samlet were the offspring of the salmon, and 
pointed to Ashford weir as an impediment which 
no salmon without wings could negotiate. My 
ideas have considerably enlarged since then. 
One day I was fishing with two companions 
here, wLen, in some shallow water, we saw a 
ghastly monstrosity in the fish line, which paid 
no attention whatever to our movements, although 
we tried to scare it with a stone or two. What 
could it be ? The youngest of my friends naively 
suggested a codfish in the last stage of consump¬ 
tion. We plunged into the water and circum¬ 
vented the queer object with our landing nets, 
and it proved to be a salmon, unable for some 
reason or other to get down to the sea. A more 
horrible sight I have rarely seen. It was com¬ 
pletely covered with a white fungus, its head was 
out of all proportion, water lice swarmed all over 
its body, which was scarred with wounds from 
rocks and stones. The smell made us all heave 
—evidently the last stage of mortification was at 
hand. We honoured the poor long-suffering 
wretch with burial beneath the sod of a fair 
orchard. 
Many a good grayling have I caught just below 
the weir, and further down in the deeper water 
there used to be a chub swim which would have 
delighted the heart of a chub fisherman. In my 
boyhood I spied these fat monsters sailing lazily 
about in a particular spot, much overgrown with 
scrub and trees, and where the stream was just 
too deep to wade. For long I meditated how to 
get at them, and at last decided on a plan. 
Having obtained a good supply ot bluebottles, 
I swarmed an overhanging tree, drew up my rod 
after me and dangled one of these tempting 
morsels before a passing chub’s nose. My first 
attempts, however, were practically failures ; for 
the largest chub invariably broke my tackle— 
the first two or three rushes of a big chub are by 
no means to be despised. Some stronger gut 
settled them, and I often crammed my basket 
with “ loggerheads,” some being over 31b., 
which were distributed to the villagers, after 
several ineffectual attempts on the part of my 
brothers and sisters to make a meal off this 
cotton-wool. 
However large the chub, they would give up 
the combat after three or four rushes, and lie 
placid and still on the top of the water, allowing 
me to descend from my perch and tow them to 
land like logs of wood. They have even become 
unhooked in so doing, but with wonderful con¬ 
sideration made no attempt at escape, allowing 
me in some instances to capture them in my 
hands. No wonder fly-fishermen despise them 
after trout and grayling, so game to the last. 
Once I had a terrific fight with a 21b. trout in this 
overhanging tree. 
I marked him sailing majestically towards me 
and offered him a nice fat bluebottle which he 
did not think twice about accepting. The battle 
waxed hot and furious. It was quite half-an-hour 
before I judged him sufficiently played out to 
venture out of the tree. But my friend was not 
to be caught that way, and while I was climbing 
down he took the opportunity of making off, and 
wound himself round and round a stub, luckily 
near the surface of the water. The tackle, being 
about the strongest obtainable, held him, and I 
got him safely in the landing net at last. I was 
as proud of that trout as of any I have ever 
caught. 
The Ashford Court and Moor Park w'ater hold 
capital grayling and trout, and then comes, a 
mile or two above, little Hereford Bridge (not to 
be confused with the county town twenty-five 
miles away), where I have never done much good, 
although there are some tempting-looking 
streams. Below the bridge, in the Eastern Court 
water, the river runs very deep for some dis¬ 
tance over a rocky bed. Here I have taken some 
very nice fish, but beware of the wading, for you 
may slip off the ledge of rocks into ten or twelve 
feet of water if the greatest care is not exercised. 
All the way from here, through Burford to Ten¬ 
bury, is some very nice trout and grayling water, 
all strictly preserved. The Swan Hotel at Ten¬ 
bury has the privilege, I believe, of giving visitors 
leave to fish, but I fancy their water runs below 
Tenbury, and of the fishing beyond I have not 
had much experience. Mineral springs in the 
neighbourhood have earned for the little town 
the title of Tenbury Wells, though as a watering 
place it is not in the first rank. 
{To be continued.) 
TOaltontana 
“ You are to know there is night as well as day fishing' 
for a trout, and that then the beat are out of their holds 
.and you must fish for him with a strong line, and 
not a little hook, and let him have time to gorge your 
hook, for he does not usually forsake it.”-— Izaak 
Walton. _ 
Izaak Walton was no considerable fly-fisher, 
though he wrote more charmingly and lovingly of 
angling than ever fiy-fisher has done. A ily- 
fisher, pure and simple, might have hesitated ere 
giving directions as to the mode of capturing 
trout by night. Possibly Old Izaak, in his mar¬ 
vellous wisdom, foresaw that in those Hampshire 
streams which he visited it was no bad thing to 
slay the big trouts, which, in such waters, were 
voracious and destructive even as pike. It is a 
good thing to kill the old cannibal monsters 
which haunt every stream devoted to trout, but 
he who fishes with worm at night is certain to 
kill small fish as well as large ones, more’s the 
pity. This brings me to the subject of night¬ 
lining in the Thames (a river in which the 
larger the fish are the more they are liked), which 
I have been artfully leading up to. 
Ever since our good friend Punch began t(p 
amuse the public in the weekly newspaper bearing; 
his name, there has been no finer piece of humoutv 
published than the proposed Thames bye-law*. 
Look on the cover, and we find some legend coi>- 
cerning bye-laws made for the “ preservation andl 
protection ” of the Thames fisheries. Look in the' 
Acts of Parliament and you find similar legends*- 
But look inside the cover, and we find that tlte' 
way in which the Thames fisheries are to be pi’R- 
served and protected, is to allow the persons w1to> 
claim the fisheries to night-iine, in and out of thtif 
fence months, to set trammel and llew-nets of any 
mesh and length, to use cast-nets of any size or 
mesh, to snatch the fish with a couple of dozen 
weighted triangles on a line, to set Himmers 
floating down the stream, to—why, good Heavens . 
short of putting dynamite or poison in the river, 
there is hardly anything they might not do. 
Tuere’s humour for you, too, to call a flew-net 
a means of preserving the fisheries, to look upon 
a trammel as a protector of fish, a night-line as 
a friend of trout. What jokers these conservar 
tors are ! I met one of them the other day and 
asked him if he really intended any of these 
things, or if there was not some confusion ot 
ideas, or printer’s errors, or lapse of graminar or 
construction. He kept up the joke remarkably 
well. Without a smile on his face he assured me 
that it was intended that those who o'wned 
fisheries should have the power to net and night- 
line. “ Have I not a right to net all the fish out 
of my own water?” he asked me with some 
affectation of fierceness. I roared with laughter, 
the joke was so good and well kept up, and when 
he went on to tell me that putting trout ^ the 
Thames was no use because some hull trout which 
had been put in his water had never been seen 
again, and that some people thought a little 
netting improved the fishing, why, a Falais 
Royal farce was nothing to it. I had always 
thought up to this, that the conservators were 
more or less serious men, a trifle old-fashioned 
if anything, but in no degree frivolous. Dull 
tell him that bull trout were migratory fash, and 
that not long after he put them in, tliey pro¬ 
bably attempted to go down to the sea, and as 
probably died in the attempt? No, I told him 
nothing of the sort. I could have my little 
jokes as well as he. Templ.ar. 
WATERPEOOF LEATHER BOOTS. 
One of the most important reciuisites in an 
angler’s outfit is a thoroughly waterproof boot; 
such a boot, which will stand the crucial test of 
an hour or two in the long dew-covered grass of 
the early summer morning, or the still more 
penetrating snows of winter, is an article seldom 
met with, except it is made in iiidiarubber. _ 
Any manufacturer, therefore, introducing a 
thoroughly reliable and absolutely waterproof 
leather boot, would be welcomed by every angler 
who values comfort and dry feet. Messrs. Finch 
and Co., of Swallow-street, Piccadilly, have shown 
us some boots or their manufacture which are as 
near our idea of perfection as any we have yet 
seen, and which appear to us to be exactly the 
article required. They are made in what is 
known as brown “Moorine” leather, an exceed¬ 
ingly fine-grained hide of a peculiarly oily nature, 
and are as waterproof as it is possible for leather 
boots to be made, which means, that they are 
practically waterproof throughout—the uppers 
as well as the soles. 
We have not had an opportunity of testing 
them, but, judging from the excellent workman¬ 
ship and their business-like appearance, we quite 
believe that these boots possess all the advan¬ 
tages claimed for them. They are light, soft, 
and cheap; the price we understand is 35s. per 
pair, and we are surprised that such boots, hand¬ 
made as these are, can be supplied at so low a 
figure. 
We had no idea that there were forty sizes ot 
anglers’ feet, but we must assume that that is so, 
seeing that Messrs. Finch keep that number of 
different sizes of these boots in stock. 
We recommend our readers to visit their ware¬ 
house and see these boots for themselves, we are 
sure they will not be disappointed. IMessrs. 
Finch also make high and low wading boots and 
shooting gaiters in this same material, and the 
repeat orders they have received from well- 
known sportsmen bear significant testimony to 
the genuineness and excellence of their goods. 
If you are Interested In Books 
send 29 . Cd. in stamps for a copy post free every week for 
3 months of “ The Pubushkrs’ Circular and Booksellers' 
Kecoru,” St. Dunstan’s Uouso, Fetter-lane, Fleet-straet, 
London. 
