CHAP. vin. Baiting with diabetic. 131 



Hindustani chabena, is used as a bait ; at least I have not heard of it at 

 any other place. The queer thing about it is that not only is the gram J;he 

 best bait, but it is the only bait, except dough, which will catch fish. I 

 suppose they have been educated to like gram, and gram they must have, 

 and nothing else. I have tried one thing after another flies, minnows, 

 frogs, beetles, both natural and artificial, dead and alive, as well as spoons, 

 but the fish will not look at any of them. 



" Jubbulpore was my first station in India, and having been accustomed 

 to salmon-fishing in the north of Ireland, I was delighted to find that I 

 could still follow my favourite sport in India. 



" The river is very easily got at, being only about five miles off ; but as 

 it is necessary to procure the bait before proceeding to the river, I think 

 a description of it ought to precede that of the river. 



" The simplest way to get the gram is to send to the bazaar for half a 

 seer of fried chabena. I have often tried to parch the gram myself, and 

 though I have watched the bunnias doing it I could never succeed. It 

 is done in hot sand kept continuously moving to prevent it being burnt 

 but as it is procurable in every village of any size there is no use trying to 

 make it oneself. When procured the gram is seen to be loosely covered 

 with the cracked outer shell ; this has to be removed, and then the gram 

 appears of a yellowish-white shiny colour. A hole has now to be drilled 

 through it, large enough for the gut and shank of the hook to pass through, 

 as the gram is very soft (it can even be crushed between the finger and 

 thumb) ; this is very easily done with a fine brad-awl, but as a brad-awl 

 is very liable to break it, I had a special instrument made for the purpose. 

 This was simply a spear, the size of the head of a pin, very flat and sharp. 

 Being flat it allowed the particles, as soon as cut away, to fall down, 

 which the brad-awl did not, and thus prevented the gram from splitting. 

 Several of the grains will be found already split, and it is very important 

 to pick out only the perfect ones, as the more perfect they are the longer 

 they will remain on the hook. A lot of these ready bored must be provided, 

 say a match-box full, as they get used up very fast, for as soon as the gram 

 gets sodden with water, which it will do in five or ten minutes, it breaks 

 off and another has to be put on. This is the one great drawback to gram- 

 fishing, for as each grain has to be threaded on the hook, and not forced 

 over the barb, it is necessary each time to remove the hook, and having 

 threaded on the gram to replace it on the casting line. As this occurs 

 sometimes after one or two casts, it becomes a nuisance, and to lessen it 

 as much as possible I always arranged that, while I was fishing, my servant 

 stood behind me with another hook ready threaded with gram. I thus 

 lost very little time removing the old hook and putting on the new, but 

 even this dodge is only a slight improvement, and the old nuisance remains. 

 The only real remedy is to use artificial gram. I have made this for 

 myself by using a very white hard wood (I have forgotten the name), and 

 after carving out the grain of gram, covering it with a thin coating of 



K 2 



