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The light rod, it is urged, is much less tiring and is quite powerful enough for ordinary purposes. Against it is claimed that dry-fly fishing is not "ordinary purposes," that chalk-stream weeds are too strong and chalk-stream winds too wild for the light rod to be efficient against them.
What I discovered was that the various elements of interest, all of which may be found in other chalk-stream valleys, are here concentrated, or comprised in a limited space, and seen together produce a combined effect on the mind.
As the Thames is itself the product and union of all its vassal streams, an "incarnation" of all the rest, so in its bed it holds all the shells collected from all its tributaries. Different tribes of shells live in different waters. Some love the "full-fed river winding slow," some the swift and crystal chalk-stream.
Killed, as well as hooked; for how large trout are to be killed in a weedy chalk-stream without a stiff rod which will take them down, is a question yet unsolved. Even the merest Cockney will know, if he thinks, that weeds float with their points down-stream; and that therefore if a fish is to be brought through them without entangling, he must be 'combed' through them in the same direction.
But come what may, or flourish where they please, the empty shells are in time rolled down from trout-stream and chalk-stream, fountain and rill, mill-pool and ditch, cress-bed and water-cut, from the springs of the Cotswolds, the Chilterns, the downs, from the valleys of Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, Surrey, Gloucester, Oxford, and Essex, into the Thames.
This easterly key of to-day is shriller, more cheerful, warmer in sound, though the day itself be colder: but grander still, as well as softer, is the sad soughing key in which the south-west wind roars on, rain-laden, over the forest, and calls me forth being a minute philosopher to catch trout in the nearest chalk-stream.
Among English anglers, Sir Humphry Davy is one of whom Christopher North speaks rather slightingly. Nevertheless his SALMONIA is well worth reading, not only because it was written by a learned man, but because it exhales the spirit of cheerful piety and vital wisdom. Charles Kingsley was another great man who wrote well about angling. His CHALK-STREAM STUDIES are clear and sparkling.
Yet another is marked by W.C. Stewart's The Practical Angler , in which is taught the new doctrine of "up-stream" fishing for trout. This is a book of permanent value. Among the many books of this period Charles Kingsley's Miscellanies stands out, for it contains the immortal "Chalk-Stream Studies." Another well-known and excellent writer, Mr.
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