HOOKS FOR BOTTOM-FISHING.

181

On such hooks you can easily put your worms without injuring them. If your hooks are sneckbent you will feel a difficulty in threading your worm, and as you force it up, you will often find the point of your bent hook penetrating through its sides, spoiling the bait in more ways than one, rendering it less lively, and liable to break even by the motion of the water. Hooks for gentles, greaves, paste, and so forth, may be short in the shank, and sneck-bent, for they are more readily covered by the bait, and will not let it slip off so easily as the straightly rounded hooks. All baithooks should be whipped on as delicately as possible, with silk the colour of the bait you use, and waxed with almost colourless wax. Hooks should be whipped on from towards the bend, and the whipping should be terminated by a couple of almost imperceptible slip-knots, varnished at the end of the shank. If the beginning of your whipping be rudely done, showing a commencement glaringly thicker than the wire of your hook, an obstruction will exist fatal to putting on your bait easily, and without injuring it, if it be a worm. In general hooks are whipped on too clumsily, with too many coils of the silk, and with the silk too fatly waxed. Bait-hooks have commonly a few nicks made with a file towards the ends of the shanks. The whipping need hardly extend beyond them. The gut should be softened and thinned

182

CORK AND QUILL FLOATS.

by drawing between the front teeth. I mean the small portion of it that is to be whipped on to the shank of the hook.

The latter I

Floats should be of moderate size. Heavy floats may be used in barbel fishing, but are not absolutely necessary, except when sinking and roving with a live bait for pike. In general [ prefer cork floats to quill floats. never use except for roach and carp fishing. A neat, small-sized cork float is handy, sits well in the water, and is sufficiently light to give you instantaneous information of a bite. For my

own part, I frequently fish without a float at all, with a lightly leaded line, and seldom miss striking at a bite. The best bottom-fishers fish for trout, grayling, perch, dace, and even for roach, with a tripping bait without a float. They are quick and sensitive enough to see and feel a bite without the eaves-dropping of a float. A float, however, is a safe appendage, and to be surely relied upon. Notwithstanding, I advise the learner to angle frequently without one, and to depend on the sharpness of his eye and the sensitiveness of his hand. If he do, he will be always able to angle with an immense advantage-and slightest fish-pull upon it. float to drag in the water. pendicularly in it, and the line should rise straight

a very light float— to distinguish the Never allow your It should sit per

HOW TO STRIKE A FISH.

183

up from it to the point of the rod, which should hang, whenever it is possible, right over it. The advice in the last sentence is important. Neglect it, and you will seldom strike successfully. I continually see persons angling with their floats slanting in the water, or lying loosely upon it, with the line slack or coiled, and of course I see them miss seven out of every ten fish they strike at. Their baits are frequently nibbled off without their being conscious of it at the time.

In bottom-fishing you must strike promptly with a slight, sharp, wrist-jerk towards you, inclining your hand generally a little to the right. If you miss your fish, and find that in striking you have jerked your bait out of the water, conclude that you have struck with unnecessary force, injuring and loosening thereby the bait on your hook, and causing more pother in the water than fish are used to. Moderate your dangerous strength, and strike so as to lift the bait upwards only a few inches. You need not be a bit afraid, if your stroke is quick enough, that it is too weak to hook your fish firmly. Striking strongly is a great defect, a displeasing one, except to fishing-tackle makers, who thereby get an increase of business in making and repairing. Rods are broken through it, lines and hooks carried away, and fish lost and uselessly tormented and rendered shy.

184 WHEN YOU SHOULD NOT PLAY A FISH,

Your rods and lines for bottom-fishing being less delicate than those used in fly-fishing, you may frequently after a very short struggle lift your fish out of the water. In many instances, particularly when you alight upon a shoal of small-sized fish, you should give as little play as possible, bringing your fish at once to the surface of the water and out of it with all despatch. Barbel and large chub should not be pulled at fiercely at first, but be allowed to sink and run moderately, under a pretty tight bearing-rein, just sufficiently so to prevent them carrying their noses whithersoever they fancy; and when you feel their obstinacy becoming lax, present the butt-end of your rod to them, and try their strength under a shortened and taut line. If you feel there is danger in bearing so hard, relax the strain on your tackle, and indulge your captive with a short swim or two. The weight of the line he will have to drag will clog his movements, and as soon as you begin to bear on him again you will see his head turn towards you, and his enfeebled fins, fast losing their propelling powers, beat the water languidly. Bring his exhausted head above water, and down into your landing net with proper economy of time. In fishing with a single hair-line, you must always cautiously play your fish, very small though he may be. But when with such a line you hook a monster fish,

AND WHEN YOU SHOULD.

185

giant barbel, or chub, or carp, or perch, you must play him with all the careful address and ingenuity of the fly-fisher. An event of this sort will fill you with excitement, charged to the brim with doubt, pleasant suspense, and fear; and if by the suaviter in modo you succeed, and you cannot succeed on any other tack, you may commemorate your success by means of a mammoth mummy in a glass case with this glorious inscription: Barbel, weight 12 lbs., caught with a roach single hair-line, at Sunbury, July 185-, by Some sceptic may doubt the truth of this immortalising label, but I should not, knowing well what immense weights art can pull up, and what immense strength it can pull down. In fishing for perch your tackle should be strong, for he is a bold biter, and not to be scared away by a stout gut-line; hence playing him will not be very necessary. You should lift him on land promptly, and not allow him to dart about under water like a mad thing, else he will give the word to his mates, and cause them to disperse as diversely and as rapidly as the seizure of one young pickpocket by the police causes the dispersion of the surrounding shoal.

You must exactly plumb the depth of the water, in order that you may know on what part of your line you are to fix the float. For barbel, tench, and gudgeons, you must fish close to the bottom