GUT AND REELS. !7 



single hair. Gut for bottom-fishing should be stained 

 slightly to suit the water, and a very pale green or olive and 

 light amber are the only colours ever required. It is the 

 Custom to stain gut of a deep ink blue, but this colour is 

 far more discernible in the water than the plain undyed 

 gut is. Gut is of two sorts, good and bad. Good gut 

 can be easily told by either the eye or the touch ; it 

 should be round, clear, bright, hard, even in size, and 

 almost colourless. Bad gut is flat, greasy, dull, raffy, or 

 rough and frayed, uneven in size, and of a green tinge ; 

 indeed the greener it is the worse it is. This is the gut 

 that is chiefly used for drawing purposes. Bad gut may 

 often be had for a little money, but it is never cheap 

 to the angler. When not using it, always as much as 

 possible keep your gut from the light, for damp hardly 

 rots it sooner than sunlight. 



The best reels for bottom-fishing are the plain reels 

 with a light check. Do not have a multiplier, even at a 

 gift. It is an abomination. In using hair from a punt, 

 unless you hold the line loose in your hand, the check 

 will be almost too much, and a plain winch is preferable. 

 Your winch should hold forty or fifty yards of fine line! 

 This running or reel line should be of very fine dressed 

 silk ; undressed, it is apt, when wet, to cling about the 

 rod and rings, and it also rots sooner. (In the Nottingham 

 style undressed lines are required.) Never use any 

 mixture of horsehair in your reel line, as it is so apt to 

 knot and tangle that it is always catching in something. 

 In using the long cane rods mentioned above, the Lea 

 fishers do not often use a reel or running line at all, but 

 simply fasten their lines to the eye of the rod-top. When 

 a good fish is hooked they play him for a time with the 

 whole rod, which, from its length, enables them to follow 

 the fish and keep over him almost anywhere he may choose 

 to go. As he becomes more tractable they unscrew and 



c 



