TIIE CARP. 75 



by means of a baiting needle, thus hiding the hook completely and giving 

 your fish time to pouch, or at least to pass it beyond the teeth in tha 

 throat before referred to. 



It is highly necessary sometimes to ground bait the spot you intend to 

 fish. The following preparation has been recommended, but I imagine that 

 most experienced anglers -will readily perceive it errs from extreme 

 elaboration : Take a quantity of well cooked veal, a handful of oatmeal, 

 and a little honey ; bruise them in a mortar, mix them in a thin paste or 

 batter with new milk and a few grains of assafoetida. Crush down in a 

 mortar a quantity of worms, gentles, slugs, and some lumps of the most 

 tallowy cheese you can find, thicken the veal batter with this compound, 

 and then roll it up into little balls ; these balls must be thrown into a 

 compost of tallow greaves and grains steeped in bullock's blood, and the 

 entire mess sunk in the place some hours before fishing. This is Blakey's 

 prescription. There are no less than twelve ingredients, besides trouble 

 of procuring and compounding, and after all has been faithfully done one 

 may go out, as I did on one occasion, after mixing up this unspeakable 

 mess, and tell it not in Gath catch nothing. 



The best and simplest ground bait I know of is pearl barley or even 

 boiled rice, using boiled pearl barley or a red worm for the hook bait. I 

 have usually found that immediately after a thunderstorm is a good time 

 to fish ; and let it not be forgotten that the early bird ever gets the pick 

 of the worms, or, as in this case, fishes. 



The best spots in the Thames for carp, as far as my experience goes, 

 is in water from 3ft. to 6ft. deep, where there are plenty of large stones 

 and the long tape weed, from which it picks considerable quantities 

 of animalculse and water insects. I have in my "mind's eye" a cer- 

 tain spot by the dilapidated trunk of a willow on Chertsey Mead, by 

 which the water gently swirls over rocky prominences and through a wild 

 growth of weeds, alternated with clear intervals of gravel. Here have I 

 seen many a two and three pounder somnolently basking in the morning 

 sun, although I never caught one from the place. 



In conclusion of this chapter on carp I may be allowed to jot down a 

 few recorded weights of these fish. I have myself seen them of 181b., 

 but according to Donovan they attain a prodigious weight in Germany. 

 He says : "One was taken at Dertz which weighed 381b. In Prussia they 

 frequently weigh 401b., and in the Volga they are 5ft. long. One caught 

 near Frankfort-on-the-Oder was 9ft. long and 5ft. in circumference, 

 weighing 701b. Lake Zug, in Switzerland, produces carp of 90lb. ; and in 

 the Dniester some had been taken of which knife handles are made with 

 the scales. Carp do not arrive at this prodigious size until they are of a. 

 very advanced age." I should think not. 



