LINES FOE BOTTOM-FISHING. 15 



made of very light material, and the white East India 

 cane is most commonly employed. As a general rule, the 

 tackle used in bank-fishing is lighter, and the point of 

 the rod being always just over the float, and usually 

 scarcely a foot or eo from it, there is no long length of 

 loose line on the water to strike up, as there is in punt- 

 fishing ; and the strike, therefore, when there is a bite, is, 

 as I have said, much lighter, being a mere twitch ; while 

 it is not necessary, as in punt-fishing, to strike at the end 

 of every swim. The wear and tear, therefore, is nothing 

 like so much in a bank as in a punt rod, and a lighter 

 material can be employed. It is astonishing what a dif- 

 ference in the wear and tear of rod-tops the addition or 

 subtraction of a dozen or so of shot on the line makes. 

 For example, suppose your dozen shot weigh only the 

 eighth of an ounce. Suppose you only strike sixty times 

 in an hour, which is very far under the mark, and suppose 

 you fish a good day of, say, twelve hours. The addition 

 or subtraction of these twelve shot will have given your 

 fragile rod-top eighty-four ounces more to jerk up in the 

 course of one day. It will be seen, then, that this' point 

 of meting the weight of your tackle as near as possible 

 to the requirements of the stream is worthy of much con- 

 sideration. I have often seen roach and dace-fishers fish- 

 ing in an easy stream with great heavy floats, carrying 

 perhaps near half an ounce of shot, when they could have 

 fished it with a porcupine quill. The. consequence is that 

 the extra shot make a splash at every strike, and they are 

 so thick and large that the fish can easily discern them, 

 and thus they alarm one-half and all the best of their 

 fish. I like upright rings to all my bottom rods, finding 

 them safe and more convenient to the line. 



In general bottom-fishing a very fine gut foot line is 

 preferable to single horsehair. By means of passing the 

 strand of gut through a machine and so reducing it, 



