70 TAKING SPAWN BY HAND. 



hard enough to hreak the skin. This art, in its perfection, 

 is on*e which only great masters attain ; neither tliis, nor 

 the subsequent manipulation, can be well clone until after 

 long practice. The novice will probably kill one-quarter 

 of all the Trout he attempts to handle, and if, after years 

 of experience, he loses only three or four out of every 

 hundred, he may think himself pretty well advanced in 

 the art. The fish must be grasped by the head (if you are 

 right-handed), with the right hand, and by the tail, or 

 rather the lower part of the body, with the other hand, 

 and held over the pan with the belly in the water. As 

 soon as the fish is quiet, the right hand may be gently 

 slipped down from the head, and the forefinger and thumb 

 used to press the belly. The fish still being held by the 

 tail, and lower part in the left hand, and partly supported, 

 perhaps, by the sleeve of the coat, or by the bare arm, and 

 the remaining fingers of the right hand. Every one will 

 have a way in which he can do this best, and will find it 

 out after a few trials. If the fish is large and struggles 

 violently, the usual direction given in the books, is to let 

 an assistant hold the tail. We counsel you, if the fish 

 struggles violently, whether it be large or small, to drop it 

 back into the tub, manipulate another, and after a few 

 minutes, try it again ; it will lie quiet after a while, espe- 

 cially if it is a small fish. If you attempt to hold a fish, 

 which struggles violently, you will be very apt to kill it. 

 If, in addition to your own two hands, you get the two 

 hands of an assistant, on the struggling fish, there 

 is not much chance of saving him alive. Here is a 

 better way. File the barb off of a No. 4 hook, then tie 

 it with three feet of line to a pliant switch, three feet long. 

 Hook your fish on this, through the jaw, and, holding it 

 in a tub of water, let it struggle until it is exhausted. 

 Then the hook can be slipped out, no injur}^ having been 

 done to the Trout, and it can be handled without any diffi- 

 culty. 



