212 ROACH AND DACE. 



and draw it a little more rapidly, which will most probably induce 

 him to seize upon it. 



Next to the places above mentioned ; the quieter parts of the 

 river, and a moderate depth of water, is most favourable for roach 

 fishing, and dace may be taken there too, though the latter are of- 

 ten found playing about in the shallows, where they rise freely at 

 a small artificial fly, and when they rise shyly their cupidity may 

 generally be aroused by sticking a gentle to the hook of the 



fly. 



In the deeper waters it is a good plan to bait the ground in the 

 same manner as for bream, and angling over the baited ground, 

 which you may do either with the worm, gentle, cadis or ant eggs, 

 as also with paste made according to the directions before laid 

 down; or with a common piece of dough, as also with salmon 

 spawn either raw or preserved. When you fish with a worm, 

 which should be a small one, and of these perhaps a brandling is 

 the best, you must give time when the fish bites, in order to let 

 him get the whole bait, or at any rate the hook well into 

 his mouth, which for its extreme smallness he cannot very 

 readily do. If missed he will sound the alarm among his breth- 

 ren, and so for the time at least mar your sport. When you angle 

 with paste you must pursue a different plan, and strike the instant 

 you perceive a bite, otherwise the fish will have eaten off the bait 

 from the hook, and very probably detecting the snare will not be 

 prevailed upon again to bite. 



Both the roach and dace are found in ponds and lakes, though 

 the former seems more adapted to still waters than the dace, who 

 seems to thrive best in gentle running waters : or sluggish brooks 

 with a clay soil which seems to agree very well with them, as they 

 do not like the trout delight in a clear gravelly bottom, prefixing 

 a softer ground that abounds with the larvae of the insects on which 

 they principally feed. The dace is considered very destructive to 

 the spawn of the trout, and on this account great pains have been 

 taken to extirpate the race from some of our rivers, though from their 

 rapid increase, keeping down their numbers, so as partially to re- 

 medy the mischief they perpetrate, is all that is likely ever to be 

 accomplished. The best means of doing this is to make a paste 

 of bread, moistened with honey and cocculus indicus, which being 

 made up in small pellets, and cast into the water, the dace feeding 

 eagerly upon, it will soon become intoxicated, and float helplessly 



