194 Bottom Fishing for Labeo. CHAP. xm. 



and exclaiming ' It's all lies ! It's all lies ! ' and was nearly flinging the 

 book into the water. The whole first day he caught nothing, while I," 

 says my friend, "took 83 Ibs. weight. At last he got home on a fish, 

 broke his rod in two, and swung out a 2-pounder so hard against the high 

 wall behind him that it was stunned. ' There's something in it,' he said. 

 Then he silently mended his rod and mended his ways, and after two days 

 got well into it. R., let me add, was exactly described by anticipation at 

 page 42 of 'Tank Angling' 'And when you have told them everything, 

 and they come to putting it in practice, and sit by the water and miss bite 

 after bite, as we have done, they will only say you are lying,' said one of 

 a fishing party." 



When I was yet a stranger to the Rohu and knew only the Madras 

 Labeos, I heard of an angler who had taken them for twenty years, and 

 was the authority in those parts. So I went two hundred miles to see 

 him and learn of him, and he most kindly responded to my request and 

 came sixty miles to meet me and show me all he knew. I was first at 

 the water, and was at work when he arrived. He at once condemned 

 my tackle and offered me his own. I begrudged the time that would 

 be lost in changing, and persuaded him to put up his, promising to 

 change as soon as I saw him killing fish, fully believing that I should 

 have to change. He used a big float made of a bundle of five peacock 

 quills tied together at both ends, and he cast far out into the tank. I 

 used my light " detective" float, and had it immediately under the tip 

 of my 10 feet rod. Otherwise we fished alike. He was a good fisher- 

 man who had killed his own weight many times over, and was naturally 

 well content with the tackle with which he had done it. I was not a 

 little surprised to find that nevertheless I killed twenty fish to his one, 

 and much larger ones. What could be the explanation of it ? I wasn't 

 going to be such a " silly " as to put it down to my own good fishing, 

 for there we were probably quits, and he had the unquestionable 

 advantage of experience of his own country and climate. It must be 

 in the tackle I thought. But why ? Why should his, which had stood 

 the test of twenty years, be inferior to mine, tried for the first time in 

 waters new to me but well known to him ? We must have an adequate 

 reason. I had come two hundred miles to learn it. So chatting away 

 like two conspirators I learnt much of him, and eventually came to this 

 conclusion. He knew the seasons of Northern India well, and con- 

 forming to them, fished only in the rains, from " i5th of June even up 

 to September," and considered 2ist April, when he met me, so hopeless 



