THE BREAM. y^e 



occasions when very fair bags indeed of those fish have been 

 made during the middle of the day. Fine tackle and proper 

 appliances were, however, in those cases an absolute neces- 

 sity. A night breamer's tackle, I have no hesitation in say- 

 ing, would have failed under the same conditions of weather 

 and water. If you proceed in a w^orkmanlike manner you are 

 bound to get them; sometimes, that is, if you stick to them 

 long enough ; but I may as well again confess that in bream 

 fishing the blanks have been more numerous than the prizes, 

 but still I always consider that one slice of luck, and, say, 

 5olb. of fish, makes up for several disappointments. Per- 

 sonally, I don't like fishing during the " silent midnight 

 hours," but there are times when, do as you vriW, the bream 

 won't bite unless you are on the job with lamp and lantern. 

 I know of no fishing more uncertain than Ouse breaming : 

 you never know at what hour of the day or night they will 

 come on ; you can only fish and wait, hoping for the good 

 time coming. I once remember an angler baiting and fishing 

 a swim, day after day in the hope that he would soon get them, 

 when at last, on the afternoon of the third day, he got a bite 

 and landed a three-pounder. He now fished away in earnest 

 and landed a dozen good fish in an hour, when tney left off 

 feeding as suddenly as they began ; and although he stuck 

 to it for two more days, he never got another bream, or even 

 any signs of a bream, bite. On the other hand I have known 

 them to keep on the feed for three or four days at a stretch, 

 but, as I said before, it is awfully uncertain. 



I will trv to give a picture of a rustic bream fisherman 

 and his modus operandi. His tackle is of the most primitive 

 kind, the rod in many cases being simply a long ash sapling 

 cut from the nearest plantation. Reel and running tackle 

 are absent altogether, the line being nothing more than a few 

 yards of stout watercord, tied firmly at the end of the " pole." 

 The float is about the size and shape of a schoolboy's peg- 

 top ; quite large enough for pike fishing. A yard of the 

 strongest and coarsest gut, mounted with a large and strong 

 Carlisle hook does dut}^ for tackle. A dozen or more large 

 split shots are pinched on this gut line, and crowded close 

 together within a foot of this hook ; this completes the out- 

 fit, the total value of which would not exceed sixpence. I 



