168 THE PRACTICAL ANGLER 



drag which we advise should be dressed on a 

 separate piece of gut, sufficiently long to keep it 

 a least three inches behind the minnow, and 

 attached to the upper hook of the minnow -tackle 

 by a loop, so that it may be taken off or put 

 on at pleasure. The object of having it so far 

 behind the minnow is to catch, by the outside of 

 the body, those trout which bite shy or miss the 

 minnow. 



In order to test whether the two hooks by them- 

 selves, or with the addition of the drag, kill most, 

 we fished for several days, time about with each 

 having the drag on one half-hour and off the next. 

 We have, unfortunately, lost our notes on the sub- 

 ject, but the result was decidedly in favour of a 

 drag. Sometimes more than half of what we caught 

 were taken by it ; at others not more than a third. 

 When the drag was on, we did not catch so many 

 trout on the minnow-tackle itself as when the drag 

 was off, which we account for in two ways. Firstly, 

 the drag is likely to alarm a few trout which would 

 otherwise take the minnow ; and secondly and mainly, 

 the drag captured at the first rise numbers of trout 

 which would have repeated their attack and been 

 caught by the minnow-tackle proper. On no occa- 

 sion did we catch more without the drag than with 

 it, but we think it quite possible that in very clear 

 water, and among very wary trout, the drag might 

 alarm them ; and that if it is not catching a fair 

 proportion say at least one in four it may safely 

 be dispensed with. 



