The only other fish which I have to remark upon is the trout. They are not found in the Witham; but the Bain trout are handsome; both the golden, or rich yellow kind, with pink spots, and the purple or mauve-coloured variety, but the former are much finer in flavour. For some years the swans on the Horncastle Canal made great havoc among the young trout and spawn {79a} in the neighbouring river Bain, but the last swan died in 1897. Further, there is now an artificial breeding tank established at Horncastle, managed by Mr. Rushton, for keeping up the supply. Some very fine fish have been taken at different times. My notes record as follows:—In April, 1896, one of the anglers already referred to {79b} caught a trout in the Bain, close to Horncastle, weighing 4lb. 6oz., 23in. in length. The same fisherman, in July, 1888, took another, within half a mile of the same place, weighing 4lb. 10oz., 23in. in length. The son {79c} of a quondam veteran angler, and himself one of our keenest fishermen, tells me that he, several years ago, assisted his father to land a male trout of 7lb. weight, from the watermill pool at Horncastle. It fought so hard that he and his brother had to rush into the water and take it in their arms, their father’s tackle not being intended for such a monster. {80a} This, however, was surpassed by a trout taken by the late Mr. Robert Clitherow, of Horncastle, _a beau ideal_ disciple of the gentle craft, which weighed 8lbs. Probably the handsomest trout in the neighbourhood, though not the largest, are those of the Somersby “beck,” “The Brook,” rendered for ever classical by the sweet poem of the late Poet Laureate. In years gone by the writer has enjoyed many a picnic on its banks, when we used to pull off our shoes and stockings, and turn up our trousers—gentlemen as well as boys—to catch the trout by the process called “tickling” them, while hiding in their holes; which the ladies afterwards cooked on a fire extemporised on the bank. The music of the rippling stream haunts one still, as one reads those liquid lines of the poet, themselves almost a runnel: I chatter over stony ways, In little sharps and trebles; I bubble into eddying bays, I babble on the pebbles. {80b} Twenty-five or thirty years ago, the dykes in the Fens, near the Witham, abounded in fish of the coarser kinds, with some goodly pike among them. As a boy the writer has caught many a pike by the process called “sniggling,” _i.e._, a noose of wire, or gimp, attached to the end of a stiff rod, or stick, which is deftly slipt over a fish’s head, as he basks among the water weeds, and, when thus snared, he is jerked ashore. When shooting in the Fens he has also killed, at one shot, five or six fish crowded together in a dyke. But climatic alterations, and over-perfect drainage, have changed all this. The water now runs out to sea so rapidly that the Fen drains are dry for a great part of the year, and the fish are no more.