54 ELEMENTS OF ANGLING. 



If even tight-corking produces no bites after 

 about half an hour the angler may try another 

 swim. It does not matter much where he selects 

 it so long as it has a good clean bottom, a steady 

 stream, and is not less than about 3ft. deep. If it 

 is as shallow as this the ground-bait should be 

 thrown in in very small pieces, so that it may 

 scatter at once. Often a bite will follow the first 

 swim down after a few pieces of ground-bait have 

 been thrown in, and often in shallow swims it pays 

 to put a piece of ground-bait on the hook instead 

 of paste, and a good big piece. I remember once 

 taking a big basket of roach in about 3ft. of water 

 by throwing in two or three pieces of ground-bait 

 as big as nuts before every swim, and baiting the 

 hook with a similar piece, while another angler 

 only a few yards away, fishing in the ordinary way 

 with paste and ground-bait thrown in in balls, 

 hardly caught anything. The novice will find 

 ground-bait difficult to use, as it washes off the 

 hook so easily ; but this is to some extent com- 

 pensated for by the bold bites that it produces. 



In a fishery like Mr. Smith's it is well for the 

 roach fisher to be alive to the possibilities of catch- 

 ing bream as well, and it is not a bad thing, at some 

 time when the roach are not biting very eagerly, to 

 " bait up " a bream hole for the evening. Taking 



