252 THE PERCH 



ended ; there was a weird and ^indefinable change. 

 I looked at the man inquiringly ; he seemed to have 

 noticed nothing. But the perch had departed and 

 not another bite did we get, though we still tried for 

 half an hour there and in other places. We had only 

 been fishing about two hours, and had between us 

 over six dozen fish, averaging about i Ib. each. 



In the deep water we nearly always fished with 

 delicate paternosters, and these, I need hardly say, 

 were free from twirling pieces of ivory and hog's 

 bristles, being made of quite fine gut (such as one 

 would use for Derbyshire trout) with a couple of loops 

 tied in it on which the hook-links were fastened. 

 The running tackle, too, was -of the finest American 

 line, and I found the large-barrelled Nottingham 

 winch very useful for reeling in quickly. We nearly 

 always fished alongside big beds of weeds, and, strange 

 to say, I never caught a pike when perch fishing in 

 the lake, though pike were fairly numerous. Once, 

 to my surprise, I brought up a large rudd which had 

 taken the little perch I was using as bait. 



The best sport was always to be had on cloudy 

 days when there was a ripple. When the water was 

 calm and the sun shone, the perch were very shy and 

 difficult of capture. At first I was inclined to take 

 the local view of the matter, and abstained from perch 



