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The style of fishing with creed malt or wheat differs little from 

 the above, but I have seen so much bungling on the part of 

 Roach fishers with malt that I shall endeavour to correct them. 

 I have seen them fish sharp streams, and boiling eddies ten or 

 twelve feet deep, with their bait but a yard below the surface, 

 and throw in grains for ground bait, and not a few either, but 

 five or six handfuls the first start. ' Of course, after throwing in 

 such a large quantity of ground bait, it is impossible to get a 

 nibble, for the fish have all gorged themselves. I have known 

 this piece of folly to be committed both on the Trent and Thames 

 a hundred times. The Londoners mix up a fearful mess for 

 ground baiting with while fishing. I have seen one of these 

 messes mixed up by a gentleman in a punt at Chertsey bridge, 

 on the Thames. After he had tried my style of angling, and 

 found he could not manage the running line and a reel, which 

 ran too quick for him, he gave it up. I pressed him to try again, 

 and he did, and caught two or three fish, but he would not 

 continue the style ; so I went with him, not to instruct him, but 

 to look on and learn something that I had not known before, 

 for he said, " Now, master fisherman, we will show you our style 

 of angling, and how to catch Roach and Dace by wholesale J 

 bring that tub here." I did so, and found it was full of clay or 

 rather slug. He now took off his coat and turned up his 

 sleeves, made a hole in the middle of the clay, and put in 

 about a quart of bran, two pounds of soaked bread, one quart 

 of gentles, two or three handfuls of greaves in lumps, and two 

 or three hundred of chopped dew worms. He then kneaded 

 the whole together as a baker would knead his dough, and 

 having completed this process, he formed part of it into two or 

 three large balls, and dropped them carefully over the punt side. 

 Of course they went to the bottom at once, but as soon as these 

 dumplings dissolved the water became a living mass with the 

 different sorts of stuff that the ground bait was composed of, 

 and I could see that a deal of it would go down the stream for 

 a hundred yards, and that there had been sufficient thrown in 

 to satisfy all the fish within a quarter of a mile of the place. I 



