CHAPTER XIII. 

 BOTTOM FISHING FOR LABEO. 



" Labeo and Flavius set our battles on. 

 'Tis three o'clock, Romans, yet ere night 

 We shall try fortune in a second fight." 



Julius Cczsar, act v. scene iii. 



GOOD roach-fishing is the Elysium of the Londoner. He will tell you 

 that it calls for much more exact nicety and skill than you have any 

 idea of, and he will be right. He will revel in his theme and expatiate 

 upon it. What he would say to you I say again to him. I have his own 

 sport here, the same sort of fishing, only magnified ; magnified many 

 fold as regards the nicety of skill required for the capture of the astuter 

 Asiatic ; magnified as many fold as regards the size of the fish to be 

 taken. Fancy a Londoner with a roach of 50 Ibs. fairly landed. You 

 would never hear the last of it. And fancy him again if all efforts to 

 catch that fish with the ordinary roach tackle had proved futile, because 

 roach tackle was too clumsy for the adept thief of a fish, and he had 

 been driven to improve his tackle. After such a triumph over ex- 

 ceptional difficulties I fancy he would be a talkative Londoner. Is it 

 not fair that I should ask of the roach fisherman that his very love of 

 his favourite sport should make him ready to appreciate highly a style 

 of fishing so very like his own in character, and yet surpassing it in its 

 best sport-giving characteristics ? I shall introduce him to a float 

 my " detective float," vastly more sensitive than his roach quill ; to a 

 rod calculated to strike much more rapidly; and to fish running 

 commonly from i or 2 Ibs. to 10, 15, or 20 Ibs., and of which one 

 of 100 Ibs. is recorded as having been taken with a rod. And I may 

 quote an actual bag of a correspondent, whose nom de plum? is " Meade 

 Shell " : 



" I caught a very large number of fish (chiefly Rohu) last year. On 

 4th October I landed sixteen fish which weighed 208 Ibs., and two other 



