108 Sporting Sketches in Pen and Pencil. 



and I half-fill a good big basin, such as they wash glasses in — one that will 

 hold two or three quarts — pour boiling water on the bread, and let it soak 

 thoroughly for an hour, putting a plate on top of it to keep the steam in, so 

 that every bit of crust is thoroughly soft and disintegrated. I then put 

 it in a strainer and squeeze most of the water out of it, or the bait will be 

 too wet — and bait that is too wet breaks up too quickly ; you are apt to 

 see a ball or two come up from the bottom to the surface and float away 

 out of your swim, and that is not the object; then I have nearly two 

 breakfast cups full of the commonest rice boiled, and I put the whole 

 into my large mixing pan, and crush, squash, and break them up 

 thoroughly, so that there be no big lumps of either. Then I take about 

 two-thirds or a little more of a peck of fine fresh bran — and mind it is 

 fresh, for my noodle of a man once left a bag of bran under a drip of wet, 

 and the consequence was it got wetted and turned musty, and, as I hadn't 

 time to mix the bait, I let him do it. I fished, and at first got a few 

 bites ; but as the day went on I got less and less, until, to my surprise, I 

 couldn't get a fish. I couldn't make it out. I thought a jack had gone 

 through the swim — we have a few of these nuisances, and now and then 

 they will spoil the best day's roaching. At last somehow I got one of the 

 bait balls near my nose, and then I smelt the musty bran, and the murder 

 was out ; I had driven every fish out of the swim. I guess the gardener 

 remembered that mixing; for I am free to admit that when anything 

 of that sort happens I am a little what we used to call in Cornwall 

 " thurtover." Then I scatter in the bran and mix gradually, stirring and 

 mixing, and every now and then adding a sprinkle of flour to help to 

 bind— about a breakfast cup and a half is enough for this— and so I keep 

 on until the bran is all in, and I think the mass is about the right 

 consistence. Then I take one of the stones and weld a double handful 

 of the bait on to it, squeezing it up firmly, and working it into a baU as 

 big as an orange ; and so I keep on imtil I have made up about twenty- 

 five or thirty balls, which exhausts the mass, and makes one pretty warm- 

 and ready for a pipe. 



Then I made up the paste — nothing but flour and water, which I 

 much prefer to bread. It sticks on better, but it requires to be mixed 



