60 THE PRACTICAL FISHEUMAN. 



spawn, considering its size, and is even ambitious enough to demolish 

 trout ova. I have been amused to see the fury of a tiny stickleback on 

 finding itself too small to compass a trout egg, and the egg too tough to 

 admit of tearing with its pigmy fangs. The stickleback is liable to a 

 curious death through its voracity. I have seen it entangled amongst 

 the complications of frog spawn, which it has sought to devour, by its 

 spines catching the glutinous mass containing the egg. Its persistence 

 after food is so great that it will, a9 every schoolboy knows, suffer itself 

 to be drawn out without the assistance of a hook. Sticklebacks are 

 very plentiful in Lincolnshire, but exceedingly scarce in the Thames 

 peculiarly so, I may say. 



I am going to surprise some of my readers by saying that the capture 

 of this little fish may be made an exquisitely funny operation, and 

 therefore amusing. At the risk of being sneered at, I am obliged to 

 confess that the recollection of my juvenile exploits amongst the gaste- 

 roste, and my late " tiddlebrat " fishing in maturer years haunt me with 

 still a pleasant flavour. Everybody, of course, knows how schoolboys 

 catch these fish, but the following episode will show a more refined 

 method, which on the occasion to which I refer was to me very original 

 and interesting. I was staying at Prestbury, a sweet little village in 

 Gloucestershire, situated just at the foot of the Cotswold (Cleeve) Hills. 

 Through the village runs a small stream which, so far as I am aware, 

 contains nothing but sticklebacks. One morning I was strolling by its 

 narrowest part, and beheld a little urchin, perched on a large stone, 

 fishing. The said urchin, with an instinct of sport which will make him 

 a great angler, if I am not mistaken, had constructed a rod out of a 

 piece of thin steel wire which was very pliant, and had actually made a 

 line out of long human hair. At the end of it was a tiny pin, bent, 

 and on it a worm. The dexterity of the angler so much amused me, as 

 he with due regard for the fragility of his apparatus, played each furious 

 little fish, that I, after a time, asked the little fellow to let me catch one. 

 He handed the rod to me, and I was surprised at the pretty sport this 

 insignificant fish and childish toy-like tackle afforded. I have never 

 since despised small things because they are small, as people are wont 

 to do, and I am not ashamed to confess that, since the incident of which 

 I speak, I have passed some pleasant hours in catching minnows and 

 sticklebacks, and watching their graceful and interesting movements. 

 By the by, the stickleback chiefly uses its pectoral fins, and not its tail, 

 in propulsion. 



