Indicative Trout
A more specialistic group than the mere tourist or holiday- maker is up in arms. The fishermen are alarmed ; and they are a valuable company, not because they catch trout, but because they know more than other people about the purity of our waters ; and they care more. Trout are peculiarly sensitive to almost any form of impurity, to oil from the roads to beet-sugar, or rubber, or lead- mine effluents. Trout may perish where dace, gudgeon, roach, pike, and even freshwater crayfish will flourish, and where much of the proper food of fish still survives. Both trout and salmon are sensitive to mechanical as well as chemical assaults. One of the loveliest rivers in all Wales lost its salmon owing to the excess of mining detritus tipped into its waters. The Lea, a stream most important to Londoners, lost all trout in some of the upper reaches owing to the accumulation of mud banks, due in the first case to the cessation of an old mill. Industry should not come second to a sport, but trout, like fishermen, are important because they announce a danger ; and there is no question about the duty of keeping streams and lakes nure. So the fishermen and the Friends of the Lakes will have the support of a very ordinary public in their camoaign to save the waters, even the colour of the waters, from pollution. May they succeed, as protestant fishermen succeeded a few years ago, on behalf of the Wye.
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