sometimes dressed with a stuffing, or stewed in wine, as are both jack and carp; but no amount of culinary skill will, in my opinion, ever render the chub a palatable dish—at least, if my readers think fit to experimentalise on it, it shall not be on my recommendation.
Chub may be taken at all fishing-stations on the river Thames below Richmond, and I may mention the river from Reading to Great Marlow as good chub-fishing ground. Staines, Shepperton, and Walton, I have known to furnish good sport, but I should say that lower down the river the fishing was decidedly superior. From Maidenhead to Henley there is first-rate chub and jack fishing, and the little river Loddon, approaching Wargrave and Shiplake, contains some very heavy fish of both sorts, as well as good perch. The summer months are the best, I think, for chub-fishing, as they may then be taken well with either the natural or the artificial fly in most rivers. In the winter months the best bait is a fine paste, or bullock’s pith and brains—the latter exceedingly killing in cold clear weather. Chub do not thrive so well in ponds or very still waters, as they love eddies and gently rippling corners, such as the ditches and small inlets that join a large river, or near mill-streams, where the water carried down from the mill-wheel causes a rapid and continuous flow. In such places chub bite greedily, and run large, and, with skill, afford sport quite equal to that of barbel-fishing. In their habits, as I have observed, chub have many points of resemblance to the barbel, and where one is found the other is usually not unlikely to be near at hand. The river Isis is said to contain exceedingly large chub, and I have often taken large ones between Oxford and Eynsham, but I do not remember to have caught any over three pounds in weight. Certainly I have taken many about or a little under that size, but none larger. I have been often told of persons having seen them as heavy as seven or eight pounds in the water I mention, but I never saw any so large myself, though a pretty accurate observer and constant angler. The truth is, that a very large fish in the water looks even larger than he really is, and mere lookers-on, who have not been in the habit of judging the weight of fish by the eye, are apt to be deceived, and hence often grossly, though not wilfully, exaggerate. I believe that chub of five or six pounds’ weight are not at all uncommon in certain waters, and, as above stated, I have seen one of the latter size at Henley-on-Thames; but I think that four pounds’ weight may be reckoned the average of good chub in most English waters, and I should look upon those over six pounds as fairly entitled to be considered exceptional fish.
Whether or not the jack has a peculiar partiality for a chub dinner I do not know, and perhaps if I asserted such a fact I should be liable to correction. I know that few anglers use a chub bait from choice in fishing for jack, but it has struck me as somewhat singular that in my angling experience I have taken more chub marked by the teeth of the jack than I have any other fish similarly injured, which would seem to imply that the jack has a preference for this fish as food. It may, however, be possible that the true reason of my having observed so many chub thus marked (and so few in proportion of other fish), is that the chub, being a hardier fish, often survives the effect of a deadly “grip” which would have proved fatal to the roach or dace, and hence the solution of a fact I can positively assert, viz., that chub are very often marked by the teeth of the jack. I have taken chub so scarred and wounded by a jack as to be almost divided in two, and yet apparently lively and healthy. I once caught a chub thus marked which appeared to have been recently injured, certainly within a week, yet he took my bait, a gentle, quite eagerly.
In some districts the chub is known as the “chod,” or “cheven.” Possibly the fish—I only hazard this as a suggestion—is thus named from the fulness of its head and jaws; indeed, we still apply the epithet “chubby” to a particularly well-fed specimen of our English boy tribe. In feeding, a large chub will make a peculiar “chopping” noise with his mouth, such as I have noticed in no other fish. This sound is not occasioned (as might be conjectured) by greediness, but by the peculiar formation of the jaws of the chub. Chub—though biting boldly—are wary fish, and the cognomen of “river-fox” given them by quaint old Sir Izaak Walton is not perhaps altogether an inapt one. In conclusion I may add, in justice to a fish not very generally popular, that although the chub does not rank in the first class of “sporting” fish, and has no peculiarly striking merits or characteristics, he may yet on occasion afford far from bad amusement to us “brothers of the angle.”
THE BATTLE OF THE CATS.
“Mieaow!”
Now before I proceed any further I had better explain a little.
During my residence in a sea-port town in the north of England, I once had the privilege of conversing with an old lady in her 103rd year.
She was wonderfully active for her years, and looked so lively that, if she had not unfortunately fallen down-stairs shortly afterwards, and given her system a shock that it did not recover, she might have been living yet.
Like many very old people, her conversational powers were, to put it in a mild way, considerable. Moreover, oh! ye anti-tobacconists, she smoked; and over a confidential pipe the old lady opened her wallet and favoured me with many marvellous and strange tales concerning her native town; among others, of a great battle that had been fought on the town moor. It had happened before her time, and not being gifted with the faculty of remembering things that had happened before she came into the world, she could only speak from hearsay, but she had “heerd tell” that two great armies of cats had, long ago, come from no one knows where, and met in deadly strife on the moor, and that after it was over they had returned whence they came; or at any rate, the survivors had. Here was a most unparalleled event! Other neighbourhoods might boast of Roman remains, and British barrows and tumuli,