Il8 THE PERCH. 



more, it is almost sure to fall a victim at last, as I never yet 

 saw a bleak in the deep, quiet stretches of the Ouse succeed 

 in escaping from a perch, and I have watched the contests 

 some scores of times. I don't know as I need say anything 

 about fishing down the streams for perch with a worm, ex- 

 cept that the worm, be it tlie tail end of a lob or the suc- 

 culent marsh worm, or the red cockspur, should be clean 

 and well scoured, and swum down very near the bottom, 

 and let the swims be as long as possible, for it is a good 

 deal like roach fishing when water is clear; fine and far 

 off must be the order of the day. The instructions given 

 for roach fishing down the streams in Vol. 2 will fit in for 

 perch fishing exactly; a few scraps of clipped up worms 

 thrown in from time to time in the track of the float is all 

 that is required by way of ground bait. The only differ- 

 ence between roach and perch fishing in this style, and in 

 the summer and autumn months, is that in roaching we 

 generally stick to one place during the day, especially if it 

 is a well ground-baited swim, whereas in perch fishing it is 

 the best to rove about, throwing a few scraps of ground- 

 bait into every fresh place tried. A small fish, say a min- 

 now or a tiny gudgeon, in fact, anything not over two inches 

 long, will be found as good as anything that can be tried 

 during the autumn months, and these can be fished on 

 either a float tackle or a paternoster. The most common 

 paternoster in use is generally made of stout gut, with a 

 couple of bone runners at intervals in it ; fastene 1 to these 

 bone runners are single sneck bend hooks dressed on short 

 lengths of pig's bristles, while at the bottom is a pear shaped 

 lead of a size to suit the requirements of the stream. Some 

 anglers say that nothing else is so good as pigfs bristles to 

 dress the hooks on, as they always stick out straight from 

 the main gut line at right angles, whereas a bit of gut col- 

 lapses and hangs downwards. I don't know, I am sure, 

 because I never used a bristle in my life; I always found 

 a bit of stiff gut, about four inches long, plenty good 

 enough for me. The wav I like a paternoster to be made, 

 is to have a gut line, fairly fine, about one and a half yards 

 long, with a couple of those swivels (very small size, with an 

 extra eye in the side, same as recommended in the chapter 



