In Lyncolneshyr, fast by the fene,
Ther stant an hows, and you yt ken.Todd’s “Gower and Chaucer,” p. iv.
which might well apply to the “hows,” or monastery, of Kirkstead. Every such Religious House had its “fish stews,” or ponds, keeping, as Chaucer says, “Many a bream, and many a luce (pike) in stew, and many a fat partrich eke in mewe.” The Cistercian rules of diet were very severe, allowing only one meal a day, and none but the sickly were permitted to partake of animal food. Consequently, fish were in great demand, and the greater the variety, the more toothsome would be the monastic fare. [74]
Roach abound in the Witham, and attain a very fair size, not unfrequently up to 1¼lb.; and the artizans of Sheffield, and elsewhere, brought by special trains, in hundreds, often carry away with them very fair baskets. Bream of both kinds are very abundant in the Witham. I am told by one angler that he has seen the water crowded with shoals of them, and they are caught up to 6lb. in weight, and even more. I have before me the paper-cut shape of a bream caught near Tattershall, which weighed 5¼lb., was 21 inches in length, and about 20 inches in girth. Chub in the river Bain, between Horncastle and Roughton, and again between Tattershall and Dogdyke, are caught weighing several pounds. They are a wary fish, but, when hooked, fight hard for a while, and then suddenly collapse. The writer has often, in the early morning or late evening, sat by the river fishing for them with black slug, and seen two or three big fish, 1½ft. in length, slowly rising and sinking in the stream, as they examined the bait. A chub was taken in the Bain, in 1898, with the spoon-bait, weighing 4lb. 10oz. The Pike attains a good size in some of the ponds in the neighbourhood, and also in the river Witham. In a large pond, about three-quarters of a mile from the Bath-house, at an abandoned brickyard known as “Jordan’s Pond,” a near relative of the writer, a few years ago, landed a pike weighing between 13lbs. and 14lbs. It was currently reported for several years that there was a much larger pike in this pond, which those who had seen it estimated at 20lbs. weight. A resident near has told the writer that he has seen it, holding across its jaws a captured fish fully a foot long. This pike disappeared, it is believed in the night, in the year 1897. Doubtless the nocturnal marauder has kept his own counsel from that day to this. There is an old laconic expression, “Witham pike, none like,” which is only a condensed form of an older adage,
Ancholme eels, and Witham pike,
In all the world there’s none syke.
The pike of the Witham were evidently famed of yore, for Drayton, in his Polyolbion (Song XXV.), personifying the Witham, says:—
Thus to her proper song the burthen still she bare,
Yet for my dainty pikes I am beyond compare.
Walter de Gaunt (a.d. 1115) granted to the
Abbot of Bardney eight fisheries on the Witham, and a fishery on the Witham at Dogdyke (Dock-dike) was granted to the Abbot of Kirkstead by Philip de Kyme (a.d. 1162), which were privileges, in those times, of considerable value. (Reliquiœ galenœ, Introd., p. xxiii.). Records in the Archives of Lincoln state that when Henry VII. visited Lincoln, in 1486, keeping his Easter there, and “humbly and christenly did wesh the feet of 30 poore menne with his noble hands,” he was entertained at a banquet, to which the Mayor contributed “12 grete pykes, 12 grete tenches, and 12 salmons”; [76a] and on a second visit, after his victory at Stoke field, the Corporation presented him with “2 fatte oxen, 20 fatte muttons, 12 fatte capons, and 6 grete fatte pykes.” “Pike have been taken in the Fens,” says Mr. Skertchly, in his “Fenland” (p. 398), “from 20lbs. to 24lbs. The largest known was taken when Whittlesea Mere was drained. It weighed 100lbs., and was given to the late naturalist, Frank Buckland.” There are fine pike in the lake at Sturton Hall, where permission to fish may generally be obtained; and the present would seem to be an opportunity for placing on record that when, early in this century, the lake, of some eight acres in extent, was first formed by damming the stream which ran through the Park, it was stocked with pike and other fish from the moat which then enclosed the residence of the present writer, Langton Rectory. I find among my notes on Witham pike fishing, that in 1890 one angler [76b] took, in two hours, five fish, weighing altogether 31lbs.; the largest scaling over a stone (14lbs.), measured 35½ inches in length and 19 inches in girth. A few days later he landed fishes of 7lbs. and 5lbs., while another angler, about the same date, secured a pike of 16lbs. But a Horncastle fisherman, [76c] in the same week, captured one of 18lbs. in the Witham near Tattershall. One of our greatest anglers states that his largest pike, taken in the Witham, was 16¼lbs.; that he has landed 23 pike in one day, of all sizes, and 20 the next day, making 43 fish in two days. In the closing week of the season 1898–1899, a season below the average, a pike was taken in the Witham, near Tattershall, weighing 22lbs.
The late vicar of Tattershall, the Rev.
Mortimer Latham, to whose memory the writer would here pay his tribute of regard and respect for as genuine, and withal as genial, an angler as Isaac Walton himself, “knew,” as we might say, “by heart,” the Witham, its finny occupants, and their haunts; and many a fine fish he landed, the shapes of which he kept, cut out in brown paper, in his study. The largest pike he ever took weighed 19½lbs. I have before me, as I write, the paper-cut shape of this fish, lent to me by his daughter; who writes: “It may interest you to know that it was conveyed home in a bolster slip, and was on view in the vicarage courtyard, to the great entertainment of the whole village.” Its length was 38 inches, girth about 21 inches. She further adds: “My father, at one time, caught several tench (now supposed to be extinct in the Witham), and I am proud to say that the last one known to be captured was taken by myself, for being one of the keenest fishermen that even Lincolnshire ever produced, he made us as ardent fisherfolk as himself.” I have also the shape of a perch caught by him, weighing 2½lbs., length 15½ins., girth about 12ins.