114 THE BORDER ANGLER. 



and by it he will probably capture the largest trout ; 

 while on a bright day, with a gale, the worm may 

 sometimes be employed with success. The worm 

 should be thrown out with a long cast, allowed to sink 

 a little, and then be drawn in with slow jerks. We 

 hesitate to recommend the otter as a proper instrument 

 of the angler ; but should any one be clear in his con- 

 science about the use of it even on a loch, he will often 

 on a breezy day find it effective on St. Mary's.* It is 

 not till the middle of April in the earliest season, and 

 the beginning of May in a backward one, that there is 

 much chance of success in trout-fishing here. 



The minnow-fisher who is willing to risk his tackle 

 may, in the lower parts of the Loch o' the Lowes and 

 about the head of St. Mary's, take his chance of 

 hooking pike or large perch, as well as trout, when 

 practising his art with a large minnow on a windy 

 day. But as pike are apt to bite through gut though 

 we have had good jack-fishing with common trouting- 

 tackle it is better to angle for them by the ordinary 

 methods, which we have not yet described. The most 

 common pike-tackle consists of the double hook at- 

 tached to a piece of twisted brass-wire, which by 

 means of a needle is drawn up through the bait not 

 through its entrails, but inside the skin leaving a 



* The otter, we may inform those unacquainted with it, con- 

 sists of a piece of wood shaped somewhat like the hull of a 

 ship, with a leaden keel, to which a line with several dozens of 

 flies ma} r be attached ; and when the fisher who may either 

 use a rod or not puts a strain upon it, it strikes diagonally 

 outwards, and may be drawn upwards at any required distance 

 against the current. On lochs it is most easily wrought against 

 the wind. This, in the north of England, is called "jacking." 



