110 Sporting Sketches in Pen and Pencil. 



caverns six or eight feet in depth, is a splendid and safe harbour for the 

 fish, which poachers cannot negotiate. I take the upper swim, Jork the 

 lower ; he fishes into the middle of my swim, I fish down into the 

 middle of his. The depth is plumbed; in go three or four balls of bait. 

 The floats are porcupine, with a little bit of cork, and carry seven 

 or eight No. 5 shot — that is enough, and just enough — the lines fine 

 gut, the hooks the best muddy-coloured hair. Jork puts on two corns of 

 pearl barley ; I put on paste — and mem. here : when using paste, if 

 you are smoking a cigar, don't work up your paste with the same 

 finger and thumb as you manipulate your weed with; fish don't like 

 'baccy. 



The floats swim gently down — nothing ! Again — my float dips a little ; 

 I strike ; no go ! Fresh paste. The next moment I see Jork's rod 

 describing a parabola, and a very lively fish makes for the opposite pollard. 

 " A lively customer, Jork ?" " Yes, but I don't think he's a roach," and 

 he isn't ; for when in the fulness of time I pass a net tmder him, a dozen 

 yards below the swim, he proves to be a chub of l^lb. Then I get another 

 bite, but that is all ; paste will slip out of their mouths constantly without 

 hooking. That is why I prefer the barley. Then Jork gets another chub. 

 " Well, there's an end of them ; they always come first, but we never get 

 more than two ; they are rare boys to take a hint." Then I scratch and 

 lose a good fish. " That was a roach at any rate." Next Jork gets hold 

 of another, and a nice roach comes to net, fib., a regular little pig, so 

 round and hog-backed is he. Then I eschew the paste, and go in for barley 

 too, and I have my reward ; for just as my float is passing the pollard stump 

 it checks slightly, bows gracefully, and dips under the surface. "Twick!" 

 and my rod describes a parabola too, with a lusty fish of a pound, who 

 makes a most lively fight on the single hair, again and again rushing over 

 to the pollard ; but I work him steadily down below the swim, and Jork 

 dips him out handsome as a picture. Then on baits, and in again, and in 

 two swims I'm in another, and before I am well fast Jork "twicks" too, 

 and he has hold of a ditto, which happens four or five times in the 

 course of the day, and two very handsome fish a little over and under 

 the pound are added to the store. Then I get another, the best yet, l^lb. 



