198 Bottom Fishing for Labeo. CHAP. xm. 



They used a No. 9 Limerick hook and a very light sinker. But I 

 do not see that it need affect the principle whether you follow their plan 

 or ours in the size of hook and manner of weighting. They said they 

 caught fish up to 20 Ibs. in this way, and they were catching fish by this 

 method when, from the waves, we could do nothing at all with the 

 detective float. Still, when there was no wave a detective float, even 

 at the depth of 30 feet, beat them more than twelve to one, fishing 

 near each other. 



They also used a second unbaited hook hanging free from a separate 

 tangoos about an inch below the baited hook. It is the counterpart of 

 the plan mentioned at page 56 of "Tank Angling." In consequence 

 of there being no Rohu in Southern India, and other Labeos being, 

 even in the rains, more subtle biters than the Rohu, that bare second 

 hook has come to be generally used. And it cannot properly be called 

 stroke-hauling or snatching, for you can never see your fish to catch 

 him foul by sight, and consequently it can never be used without 

 the fish biting, and you never catch any but the individual fish that 

 is actually biting, and not even that anywhere foul about the body, 

 anywhere except in the mouth or close to the mouth. It is no more 

 unsportsmanly than the free hook at the tail of a spinning minnow, or 

 the flying mount of two or three trebles that whirls round and round 

 a spun bait and catches foul many a fish that has not actually taken 

 the bait in his mouth. It is less so from the free hook in paste 

 baiting never coming into play till the bait has actually been taken 

 into the fish's mouth and the biting has continued for some time, and 

 it is never relied on to vary the time of striking and to strike other- 

 wise than with a view to catching on the baited hook. I have known 

 the fish bite so warily that a party of four rods in four days could not 

 catch a single fish except on this extra hook. It is such peculiar 

 fishing that makes the extra hook at such times allowable. I see 

 from newspaper notices that it has equally been used by English 

 sportsmen as well as natives in Northern India, where the bites are 

 often much freer than in the South. And so it comes that honest 

 anglers have asked me to say for it what can properly be said for 

 it as fair fishing. 



Instead of one free hook one inch below the bait as in " Tank 

 Angling," it is now preferred to use two at a distance of two inches. 

 Two No. o Limerick hooks are knotted together by the gut being 



