THE ANGLER'S SOUVENIR. 



297 



u 



gudgeons and two roach in its folds. These are 

 duly transferred to the bucket, as are also half a 

 dozen gudgeons secured by a second cast. Then 

 the master goes home to breakfast, while John kills 

 the bait and wraps them in a cloth, rolling them up 

 in the same manner as one sees a dentist's or 

 surgeon's tools rolled up sometimes in a leather 

 case, and so that only one bait at a time is exposed, 

 when required, and they are kept from nibbing 

 against each other. 



About ten o'clock master and man are at the side 

 of a small river which flows with sinuous course 

 through rich meadows and yellow stubbles, forming 

 here a long shallow, about a foot or two feet deep, 

 with a smooth current sliding over waving weeds, 

 and there a wide pool where the water moves very 

 slowly in a large eddy, and washes lazily about the 

 roots of tall flags and clumps of rushes. 



He puts his rod together, and as the weeds arc 

 somewhat too thick as yet for comfortable spinning, 

 he baits a gorge-hook and makes a cast from the 

 reel, and the bait descends head-foremost into a 

 deep pool close by a patch of lily leaves. 



The master's tackle is somewhat peculiar, for he 

 has his fancies, as all true anglers have. He has 

 a Nottingham reel of a great diameter, and yet 

 he has a dressed line such as is not used in the 

 Nottingham style of fishing. The master says that 

 even with a dressed line he can throw a long way 

 off the reel if he so desires ; and where the ground 



