42 ANGLING FOR COARSE FISH. 



or throwing, the used hook away, I carefully notice if the 

 gut on the new hook is the same length as the gut on the 

 old one, and if there is any difference, I shift my float 

 accordingly. A slight change in the ground-bait is necessary, 

 for I want to get the fish to look upon wheat as a very 

 proper and safe food. This view they will not take if they 

 simply see the grain on my hook. I therefore break up 

 some ground-bait, and make up three small balls, mixing 

 in as much wheat as I can. The ground-bait I let in gently 

 by means of my line as before, and I also throw in from 

 time to time a dozen or more grains of wheat some yards 

 above my swim, so that they reach the bottom at the spot 

 where I am fishing. For my hook I select a plump, full 

 grain, just bursting its shell, and put the hook point in at 

 one end of the white streak, and just out at the other, so 

 that, immediately I strike, the point of the hook catches the 

 fish's mouth. To cover the point with the husk of the grain is 

 fatal to success. Sometimes, when the wheat is badly cooked, 

 and the inside is almost boiled out, I am obliged to put the 

 hook point into the husk; but even then I am careful that 

 the point comes through. Sometimes two grains answer 

 better than one, and when the fish are shy it is an admirable 

 plan — one I have followed for some years — to thread a gentle up 

 the shank of the hook, and cover the bend with a grain of wheat. 



When roach are very plentiful, or a shoal is in some hole 

 which it has no inclination to leave, the throwing in of a 

 few grains well above the swim, every few minutes, serves 

 quite as well to keep the fish together, and on the feed, as 

 the more elaborate ground-bait. On the best day's roach- 

 fishing I ever had in my life my hook-bait was wheat, 

 and my ground-bait also wheat, thrown in loose. A great 

 many skilful anglers use brewers' grains as ground-bait when 

 fishing with wheat, but I much prefer the plan just described. 



About nine o'clock the roach suddenly cease to feed, and 

 after trying various little dodges without success, I come to 

 the conclusion that either their feeding-time is over for the 

 morning, or that there is 



A Jack in the Swim. — Jack, or pike, eat roach, and in 



