that need be mentioned. The former has a great reputation on the river,
but we ourselves have used it but little.

The food on the Coln is most abundant, and to this must be attributed
the extraordinary size of the fish as compared with the depth and bulk
of water. That one hundred and fifty brace of trout, averaging a pound
in weight, are taken with rod and line each year on a stretch of water
two miles in length, and varying in depth from two to three feet, with a
few deep holes, the width of the water being not more than thirty feet
for the most part, is sufficient proof that there is abundance of food
in the river.

Where the water is shallow we have found great advantage accrue by
putting in large stones and fir poles, to form ripples and also homes
for the fish. By this means shallow reaches can be made to hold good
fish, and the eddies and ripples make them easy to catch. The stones add
to the picturesqueness of the stream, for they soon become coated with
moss, and give the idea in some places of a rocky Scotch burn. A
pleasant variety of fishing is thus obtained; for at one time you are
throwing a dry fly on to the still and unruffled surface of the broader
reaches, and a hundred yards lower down you may have to use a wet fly in
the narrower and quicker parts, where the stones cause the water to
"boil up" in all directions, and the eddies give a chance to those who
are uninitiated into the mysteries of dry-fly angling.

The large fish prefer sluggish water, but in these artificial ripples
fish may be caught on days on which the stream would be unfishable under
ordinary circumstances. It would be invidious to make comparisons
between the Coln and the Hampshire rivers--the Itchen and the
Test,--these are larger rivers, with larger fish, and they require a
better fisherman than those stretches of the Coin that we are dealing
with, although the lower reaches of the latter stream are difficult
enough for most people.

Otters used to be considered scarce on the River Coln, but two have
lately been trapped in the parish of Bibury. With pike and coarse fish
we are not troubled on the upper reaches, though lower down they exist
in certain quantities. Of poachers I trust I may say the same. Rumour
has sometimes whispered of nets kept in Bibury and elsewhere, and of
midnight raids on the neighbouring preserves; but though I have walked
down the bank on many a summer night, I have never once come upon
anything suspic