270 Rod and Tackle. CHAP. xx. 



makers you might just as well ask for the man in the moon, and expect 

 to get him out by the next overland parcel post. You will have to tell 

 them that it is the treble hook called by the hook makers extra-stout. 

 The ordinary tackle-maker, who is not educated to the supply of Indian 

 tackle, is sure to have none of these hooks in his shop. He never 

 deals in them, has probably never seen them, and does not know how 

 to order them of the hook maker, even if he sees them. Tell him they 

 are called extra-stout, as I said above, and that such hooks you must 

 have. It will shock his sensibilities doubtless, his refined eye recoiling 

 from anything so clumsy. 



Moreover, he considers it no compliment to offer such a hook to a 

 sportsman, . as if he had not fine enough hand to kill a fish on an 

 ordinary hook ; and, indeed, it might be considered an insult, if the 

 pull of the fish was the only thing to be afraid of. But that is not 

 the difficulty at all, it is the very unusual power of compression 

 exercised by the Mahseer, the violent chop with which he seizes his 

 fish, that crushes an ordinary treble hook before you feel your fish at 

 all, as explained at length in Chapter IV. 



Tackle Shops. My readers being mainly Indians, some of whom 

 had come out to India without being inoculated with the fishing virus, 

 I felt in my former editions that they, some of them, might not know 

 where to look for tackle shops ; and in the days of my first edition, 

 few tackle-makers knew anything about Mahseer, and the special hooks 

 needed for them. It was specially due to my readers, therefore, that 

 I should mention shops in which these hooks were kept. I mentioned, 

 therefore, C. Farlow, 191, Strand; and Bowness, 230, Strand, as the 

 only ones I then knew to have any knowledge of Mahseer tackle. 

 Since then, however, letters to the Field have been frequent, and 

 tackle-makers have had their opportunities of learning, and perhaps my 

 books have added their mite to spread the knowledge; and anglers 

 have talked to their tackle-makers. Still they are, speaking generally, 

 slow to turn aside from their main English trade and sacrifice time to 

 making a speciality of Indian fishing, and in earlier days there were two 

 schools of anglers, so that they did not know which to accept as safe 

 exponents, the cable and barge pole school, or the more modern pliable 

 salmon-rod school. So it has come about that though any tackle-maker 

 that you are accustomed to deal with ought, from the instructions in 

 this book, to be able to supply you correctly, I am afraid few of them 



