“Yes, as long as you pick deepish water, and get under a lee.”
“Do they groundbait the place where they fish?”
“Not before they come, but while fishing they throw in a good deal of meal, mixed with water and clay. If they were to groundbait one or two suitable places on both sides of the river, so as to be sure of getting a lee, for a day or two before they fish, they ought to get even more than they do now. Here is a boat-load trailing for jack. Ask how many they have caught.”
Wynne did so, and the reply was, “Fifteen, but all small: they run from two pounds up to seven.”
“People here either fish for pike with a live bait or trail with a spoon. You rarely see anybody spinning by casting, or even using a dead bait on a spinning flight. Now, I know that in the hands of one or two people, a paternoster has proved very deadly. With three large minnows on your tackle, and roving about close to the bank, you may get many pike and perch.”
“I’ll try it in the morning before breakfast,” said Wynne.
In another mile the river again turns westward. On the north is a very large Broad, called Hoveton Great Broad, whence comes the clangour of a large colony of black-headed gulls. The Broad is not navigable for anything of greater draught than a small sailing boat; and now all access to it has been barred by chains across the dykes, and it is strictly preserved, chiefly in consequence, it is said, of the disturbance of the gulls by visitors. The gulls flew, screaming, overhead, in a white cloud, so that the air seemed filled with them, and the half-grown young ones floated on the water, as lightly as thistle-down. Although this colony is nothing like so large as the famous one at Scoulton Mere, near Hingham, in Norfolk, yet it is extremely interesting, and particularly when the eggs are being hatched off, and the little fluffy brown balls, which represent the young birds, are running and creeping about the reeds and grasses, and swimming in and out of the water-divided tussocks. Air and water and grasses seem thrilling with abundant life, and the ear is deafened with abundant noise; a noise, however, which, discordant as it is, has for a naturalist the music of the nightingale. The water is very shallow at the east end, where the gulls are, but the soft mud is of an exceeding great depth.
Some years ago the American weed, Anacharis alsinastrum, that pest of our inland waters, so completely filled this Broad, that a duck could walk upon the surface. It then suddenly decayed, at the same time poisoning the fish so that they died by thousands. Since this time the Broad has been comparatively free from it.
During Wynne’s visit the Broad was still open, and we visited it in the jolly. After rowing about for some time, we turned to go back to the yacht, and Wynne said, “I don’t see the sails of the yacht anywhere. Where can she have disappeared to? I know that the river is over there, because there is the sail of a wherry over the reeds, but there is no channel through the reeds, and it is no use your rowing that way. You have lost your way, my boy.”
We only laughed at him and rowed on.