jo ELEMENTS OF ANGLING. 



can be used in it. The very tender ones, such as 

 wasp grub and dry bread are, of course, not easily 

 managed ; therefore, as a beginning, let the novice 

 content himself with a worm or a bunch of gentles, 

 baits which all fish will take, and which do not 

 easily come off the hook. 



Legering is the method usually employed in 

 fishing for barbel, a big reddish fish with feelers at 

 the corners of its mouth which feeds strictly on the 

 bottom. The barbel is only found in the Thames, 

 the Trent, and some of their tributaries, and it is a 

 singularly capricious fish with abnormal powers of 

 resisting the angler's wiles. .,ave, indeed, been 

 sometimes tempted to think that barbel do not feed 

 every year or even every alternate year. Certainly 

 many a season goes by without any sport worth 

 mentioning being recorded. In some places, where 

 barbel are known to exist in quantities, never a one 

 is caught, though anglers fish for them assiduously 

 and bait swims in the most lavish manner. 



Baiting a barbel swim is a serious and expensive 

 business, for it involves lobworms, which have a 

 market value of about a penny for ten. It is not 

 much good trying to bait a deep Thames swim with 

 less than a thousand worms, and the enthusiastic 

 barbel-fisher uses two or even three thousand before 

 he is satisfied, putting in a thousand on the first 



