WOUM-F1S11ING FOll TROUT. 121 



shake his head when he finds something is appended to it, 

 and then plunge off with all speed. 



The bush-angler should carefully contrive to keep the 

 end of his rod exactly parallel with the edge of the water, 

 for if he allow it to hang over the bank or bushes, the fish 

 will see it, take fright, and walk off without ceremony. 

 Jn drawing the line out of the water, care should be taken 

 to avoid lifting it up perpendicularly ; it should rather be 

 drawn out in a slanting direction, and then the water will 

 not be so much disturbed. 



When the weather and water are best adapted for shade 

 or bush-fishing, the trout is often very hungry ; and if 

 you can only contrive to keep yourself and tackle well out 

 of sight, you may safely calculate on good success. In 

 order to show to what extremities this fish is sometimes 

 reduced, we shall relate an incident, which fell under our 

 own observation in the year 1826. This was a remark- 

 ably hot dry summer; many rivers were nearly dried up; 

 and the fish in some of the shallower streams were entirely 

 destroyed for want of water. We had gone out one 

 fiercely hot day, to the distance of ten miles, in the North 

 of England, to a favourite spot for bush-fishing. When 

 we arrived at the water, we found, to our dismay, that we 

 had left our worm bag behind us. Our mortification was ex- 

 treme. To get a worm of any kind was next to impossible ; 

 for there had not been a drop of rain for three entire months, 

 and the fields were burnt up like the deserts of Africa. 

 We happened, by mere chance, to have an old bait-bag in 

 our pocket, in which there were about twenty old dried 

 up shrivelled worms, so dry indeed that they almost 

 crumbled into powder between the finger and thumb. 

 We steeped them in water as a desperate resource, and 

 contrived to thread them on a very small hook. The 



