Trouting. 45 



home, to give it up altogether. At last one day he got hold of one ll^lb., 

 under the most atrocious circumstances. He dropped his bait into the 

 side of the weir, and found it stuck fast. 



" Here, Bill, I've got hold of a pile or a bough, or something ; see if 

 you can clear it ;" and he handed the rod to Bill, who, receiving it and 

 raising the point, said in his forcible style : 



" Bough, be ! It's a something, sometliing, somethinged, great 



trout;" and so it was, and they had the luck to kill it. 



Now, that never would have happened to me. No trout ever would 

 have come at me like that ; and, if he had, all I should have felt would 

 have been a severe tug at the rod point, and nothing more ; or, if it had 

 happened that he managed to hook himself, he would at once have gone 

 under the weir apron, or round a pile, or even two piles if one was not 

 enough. No, those lucky chances never by any fluke happened to me. 



Then I vowed I wouldn't go out any more. Yet when the morning 

 came I was once more deluded to go, and I went up to the very same 

 spot, and had no sooner dropped my dace in than at last I felt the magic 

 tug, and, after a very moderate fight — for the fish was so fat that he 

 couldn't fight much — I got out the handsomest trout I ever saw, weighing 

 12?lb., a female, with a little head, hog back, and perfect in every 

 particular. Cooper, senr., set that fish up for me, and, though it has 

 been in a case nearly thirty years, it looks as well as ever, and every- 

 one says, "What a handsome fish!" 



But the trout fishing that one usually commences on is worming in 

 small streams. There are two or three ways of worm fishing. In one, 

 which is practised in rather larger streams, you fish with fineish tackle, 

 but with a brandling, and cast up stream almost like using a fly; in 

 the other you trundle a bigger worm down stream, following it along, and 

 keeping out of sight as well as you possibly can ; and in the last you use a 

 quill float, and fish the eddies in thick, high water. The second is the 

 method I enjoy most. I have given two or three descriptions of this 

 kind of fishing in different publications ; and, as it is not easy to give 

 yet another in other language which shall .convey the* same views, I 

 will e'en select that which is the best of tK&m,«a,ud.j:eproduce it here. 



