CHAPTER I

FLY FISHING FOR TROUT

THE year of Jubilee produced a wonderful crop of statistics showing the marvellous increase in the wealth, power, and influence of England during Her Gracious Majesty's reign. Every loyal subject rejoices that this is so, though the unfortunate agriculturist may not be tempted to vouch for the accuracy of the statement as regards the particular industry in which he is engaged; but in no trade, in no industry, has a more remarkable development taken place than in that connected with the supply of articles necessary for the various sports and athletic competitions accounts of which now occupy so much space in the daily papers, and add so much interest to the lives of vast numbers of our fellow-countrymen. Take, for example, the scene at the Oval on an August Bank Holiday, when Surrey and Notts are engaged in a County cricket battle, or at Lord's when the matches

Australia versus England are in progress, or indeed, look anywhere where good cricket is being played. Then as to football, what an extraordinary concourse of people flock to see the final tie of the Association Football Cup! I saw some 65,000 gathered together at the Crystal Palace for this purpose in the April of 1897. Notice, moreover, that every Saturday during the winter, when the Association Football teams are competing, there are generally many more than 100,000 people looking on at that competition alone, to say nothing of the crowds attending the ordinary matches. Or turn to Golf; it is but a very few years ago that the game was played in England only at Blackheath, Wimbledon, Westward Ho! and one or two other places; but now all over the country golf links are to be found. No watering-place, no health resort, no town of any importance or progressive aspirations is without this adjunct to the happiness of its inhabitants and visitors. In fact, it is not too much to say that a town labours under a considerable disadvantage, if it be dependent on the advent of visitors, should no golf links be available in its immediate vicinity.

So with all other kinds of athletics, public interest in them has grown enormously during the past decade; in fact of very recent years, sport in every

form has developed in Great Britain in a most striking degree; but I venture to think that no sport or pastime has attracted a greater number of votaries than has fishing, whether it be for coarse fish or trout. Let him who does not credit this go, on almost any day between May and August, to one of the main London stations when an early train is leaving for the districts through which Kennet, Test, Lea, Mimram, Chess, or other trout-yielding river gently flows. His scepticism touching the attractiveness of the 'gentle art' as practised in this year of grace must then surely be abandoned. If it be moderately favourable weather, there will almost to a certainty be there discovered not a few men clad in rough workmanlike clothes, bearing fishing bags and rods, who are anxiously wondering whether for once the fates are going to be propitious and send them that most essential—and also for some reason or other rarest— of all the elementary conditions of fishing, an upstream breeze. Where ten years ago there might be found one such angler, now twenty have appeared.

Or let our doubting friend go to the Midlands of England and seek the banks of Wye, Dove, or Derwent, and there, on every possible occasion, such as a Bank Holiday or a Saturday during the fishing season, he will discover people who have come long distances to

try to lure from those lovely streams the much-fishedfor and wonderfully wary trout who dwell therein. On enquiry he will discover that the number of tickets now sought for the open waters is largely in excess of that for which demand was made but a few years since. So it is in the North; and, in fact, turn to whatever part of England you will, if trout be found there, and reasonable facilities for preserving the rivers be afforded, you may be sure that endless applications to buy or rent those streams will be made.

In truth, the owner of a good trout river, should he be no fisherman himself-and then I should sincerely pity him-has now a safe and certain source of income; indeed, should he be the fortunate possessor of a part of one of the favourite southern streams, he can ask and obtain a price for his fishing which but a few years since it would have been considered an act of lunacy to mention. One may be fairly asked why this sudden demand for trout fishing should have taken place, and why the followers of old Isaac's craft should have all at once become so numerous? In the North there have always been many more anglers than in the South; more literature on the subject of trout fishing has appeared there than elsewhere, and therefore it is with