THE ROACH. 5 



of August, the weed gets out of them, and the very sUmy 

 coat they wore quite wears off ; their scales are smooth 

 and bright, and their fins nice and clear. Now they 

 begin to get very shy indeed, and it requires an 

 artist in the business to take them. These fish 

 prefer a clean, sandy bottom, and don^t like a 

 muddy one, being in my opinion a very clean fish. 

 The baits have to be sweet, and no suspicion of tobacco 

 juice or dirt about them, or he will have none of them. 

 Roach are very fond of a lazy eddy by the side of a swift 

 stream, but being a bulky fish are not found much in very 

 strong and rapid waters ; they like the slow, lazy curls under 

 bushes, the quiet lay-byes or corners away from the main 

 stream; swims that flow at the rate of not more than two 

 miles an hour, or in the curls, eddies and dimples in the 

 vicinity of a weir, or in the immediate neighbourhood of an 

 old wooden bridge, and sometimes in the shallows of a mill 

 tail. These are the principal places to look for roach in a 

 swiftly flowing river. In slow rivers, broads, and lakes, 

 that abound with these fish, they can be found nearly any- 

 where, provided the bottom is all right and the locality suit- 

 able ; but I shall divide the subject into two parts, one part 

 treating of still water reaching, and the other stream, fishing, 

 in the following chapters. The food of roach consists of 

 weeds, cad-baits, grubs, flies, worms, fresh-water shrimps, 

 insects, spawn of other fish, etc. ; while as baits he will take 

 gentles, paste, bread, malt, wheat, pearl barley, et hoc genus 

 homme. As a fish for the table, he is several degrees better 

 than either the barbel or the chub ; nicely fried in plenty of 

 lard, and browned, he is not at all bad faring ; in fact, I am 

 very fond of a good-conditioned autumn roach out of a 

 gravelly river. I should think the top weight of our Eng- 

 lish roach can be put down at 31b., and even this would only 

 be reached on very rare occasions. I can only remember 

 seeing two caught of that weight, and they were got in the 

 salmon net as mentioned in the chapter on barbel. A 2 lb. 

 roach is considered a very good one indeed, and thought 

 worthy of a glass case. The Hampshire Avon, I am told, 

 contains the largest roach, specimens fromi two to two and 

 a half pounds, or even a little over, being frequently taken. 



