378 SALMON AND TROUT. 



force it off. Perhaps, when you get hung up in a weed or 

 sedge you try to pull it off with a furious jerk of the rod, instead 

 of taking the line quietly in .your hand and drawing it gently 

 away. Possibly, too, in such a position as one of the foregoing 

 dilemmas you cracked the joint almost through yesterday or 

 the day before, and the least strain to-day is sufficient to com- 

 plete the fracture. In fact, I would preach one text only : 

 Keep your temper and be patient if you would succeed, not 

 only in May-fly fishing, but in any other fishing, any other sport, 

 or, in fact, in any walk of life or occupation you may pursue. 



FREDERIC M. HALFORD. 



[Bidding a reluctant adieu to the May-fly and the Chalk 

 stream, to Dry-fly and Wet-fly fishing, and those fascinating 

 paths which tend 



With waving wand by willowy wastes 



to the haunt of the coote and the kingfisher, let me endeavour 

 to be the reader's guide along the equally picturesque, though 

 perhaps somewhat less beaten, track leading to the pursuit of 

 the sister arts of Spinning and Bait-fishing. In the term ' bait- 

 fishing ' is included everything except fishing with the artificial 

 fly, embracing, therefore, spinning as well as shrimp and worm 

 fishing. And this will draw our steps further a-field from the 

 ' runs and ripples ' of the Test or the Itchen, to the ' rushing 

 of white waters,' which only moor and mountain can produce 

 in perfection, and to the loveliness of loch and lake. . . . 

 Lovely is the word Scott uses * lovely Loch Achray ' which 

 I fished when a boy, with many another island-studded loch 

 and dashing river, from the wild savagery of Loch Corruisk 

 to the quieter beauties of a Lomond or a Katrine. And I 

 say again, with Scott, they are all ' lovely ' alike to the 

 artist and to the sportsman. I think I know them nearly 

 all, and I love them all. 



So (to end where I started) bait-fishing in the broad sense of 

 the term in which I use it r will take us for the most part into 

 wilder and more poetical regions and associations H. C.-P.-] 



