BAIT PISHING. 113 



an inch of his nose. I saw plainly enough that master trout, 

 notwithstanding he thought it was dinner time, was not pleased 

 with the bill of fare, so I began to think of trying to drift down a 

 live minnow, and was turning over my stock of worms to find a 

 tempting little one for my minnow line, when I discovered a lob 

 worm snugly coiled among the moss ; this I immediately put on 

 ray hook and swam down towards the trout, who no sooner caught 

 a view of it than he darted fiercely up the stream, and seizing the 

 bait gorged it almost instantaneously, and then fine work I had 

 with him before he allowed me to bring him to land, but which at 

 length after a spirited resistance I accomplished. 



I have found indeed from experience trout are equally capricious 

 in their choice of worms as of flies, for at certain times I have 

 known them reject a lob worm for a brandling, and sometimes they 

 have shown a dreaded preference to a red worm, which at another 

 time they would scarcely touch ; but generally speaking a well 

 scoured worm of any kind will do, though upon the whole as I 

 said before I am inclined to give a preference to the lob worm 

 when used singly, and to the garden worm when two are put on 

 together. But be the worms of what kind they may, they are 

 always the better for being scoured for at least five or six days in 

 clean moss before they are used. By far the best moss for this 

 purpose is the long white moss found in bogs ; but if you cannot 

 procure this, then the coarsest and cleanest you can get should be 

 substituted. The moss should be changed every four or five days. 

 Sometimes new milk or raw cream is dropped on the moss for the 

 purpose of fattening the worms when they begin to fail ; but when 

 this is done the moss should be changed the next day : otherwise 

 by becoming sour it will do the worms much more harm than 

 good. 



The best way to preserve worms for any length of time, is to 

 have a large earthen pan with some fine mould at the bottom and 

 a layer of moss at the top; and such worms as are wanted for 

 immediate use should be transferred to a bag containing clean moss 

 only ; and should any of them appear to fail after being kept in 

 the moss, they should be returned again to the pan, where they 

 will rnost probably soon recover. Care must be taken not to al- 

 low the mould to become too dry, and it will be advisable 

 every now and then to change it for fresh earth. 



And now having said thus much about the worms, I next pur- 



Q 



