Llyn Tegid, or Pimblemere, (for this pool has these various names) is within a quarter of a mile south of the town, and is a fine expanse of water, with well-cultivated, sloping boundaries, clothed in many parts with verdant woods.
Bala and it fine lake (says Mr. Roscoe in his “Wanderings through North Wales,”) have attractions peculiar to themselves. To appreciate them as they deserve, the traveller should first ascend the craggy summit of the neighbouring mountain, and gaze upon the rude glens beyond, through which the boisterous Twrch rushes in a succession of resounding falls. It is by contrasting the wilder and fiercer tracts of the landscape, with its milder features round the quiet hamlet and lake, that we add fresh zest to the interchange of feelings ever open to the Cambrian traveller. Bala lake is the most extensive in Wales, being nearly four miles in length, and three quarters of one in breadth, its banks consequently embracing a circuit of about nine miles. Its greatest depth is forty feet; and the water is said to be so pure, that the nicest chemical tests can detect scarcely any foreign admixture.
Be this as it may, the lake has abundance of pike, perch, trout, eels, and roach, with shoals of a fish called gwyniad, so named from the extreme whiteness of its scales. It is a gregarious fish, often found in the Alpine lakes, more especially those of Switzerland, and dies soon after it is taken. Its weight rarely exceeds four pounds, and its flavour is by many persons considered rather insipid; a circumstance that by no means recommends the gallantry of the late Lord Lyttelton, when he assures his friends that it is so exquisitely delicate as to more than rival in flavour the lips of the fair maids of Bala themselves. But, being so very good, and like the ladies of Bala, perhaps, sensible of their attractions, these fish have the shrewdness to keep out of harm’s way, as we are told, by remaining at the bottom of the water, where they feed on small shells and aquatic plants, from which scarcely any bait will induce them to emerge; they are, therefore, principally taken by nets. The angler may always be certain that, while a cloud rests on Aran, he may save himself the trouble of fishing in the lake. In former times the fishery is stated to have formed part of the possessions attached to Basingwerk Abbey, but has since fallen into the hands of Sir Watkin Williams Wynn, who has pitched his tent, in the shape of a neat sporting-box, quite according to the Irish rule, ‘convanient to the spot.’