THE TROUT. 99 



very opposite effect with the trout : your bait must 

 spin as evenly and truly as the worm of a screw. 

 A long cast is frequently necessary, and great 

 skill in the management of the bait when it falls 

 in the water is essential to insure success. A fish 

 once hooked, however, ought never to escape. 

 Your hooks are strong and numerous, your tackle, 

 though not coarse, capable of bearing any reason- 

 able strain ; and a Thames trout, though a strong 

 fish, and sometimes weighing from eight to 

 twelve pounds, does not display anything like the 

 generalship of a salmon when fighting for his 

 life. A few trout have lately been taken with 

 the fly in the Thames, but the prevalence of the 

 pike must ever, in spite of the praiseworthy 

 efforts of Mr Buckland and Mr Ponder, pre- 

 vent the Thames from becoming a good trout 

 river. 



In the Tweed, the Esk, the Dee, or in any broad 

 wading river in Scotland or Wales, where good 

 trout abound, the fisherman should not only be 

 provided with his bait-kettle, duly immersed in 

 some cool, sequestered spot, but also with a small 

 can attached to the strap by which his landing- 

 net is suspended, such can containing six or eight 

 live minnows with which to rebait when necessary. 

 Trout will no doubt take a stale bait, a salted bait, 



