!.;_ TIN: sroox. SIR s. BAKER'S BAIT. 



is a good plan. Spoon baits are certainly excellent lures ; 

 they may be had of all sorts, sizes, fashions, and colours at 

 the tackle makers'; and as people have so many whims on 

 tliis point, I leave the angler to choose for himself. Sir 

 S. Baker, the great African traveller and Nile explorer, 

 formerly a correspondent of the ' Field,' once called my 

 attention to a bait he had used with great success in 

 Turkey. It was made out of a daguerreotype ^of an old 

 lady ; and the * old lady,' as he called it, beat the spoon 

 hollow. He took the plate (which was silvered on one 

 face and coppered on the reverse), cut a rude resemblance 

 of a fish out of it, turned the lobes of the tail reverse ways 

 to make the bait spin, armed it well, and it succeeded 

 admirably, never giving the spoon a chance. The otter 

 (previously referred to in perch-fishing) is also a useful 

 lure at times. And Mr. Hearder's plano-convex bait is an 

 excellent one for general spinning either in fresh or salt 

 water, and any fish which will take a spinning bait may 

 be taken by the plano-convex. It is made of various 

 sizes to suit the sort of fish angled for, and is contrived 

 upon much the same principle as the other just alluded to. 

 As regards the imitations of fish used for artificial baits, 

 they are so numerous that it is quite impossible to cata- 

 logue them ; made of every metal, from tin to silver, and 

 of all sorts of substances, from bone or horn and glass to 

 indiarabber and leather, the angler must be difficult to 

 please if he cannot select one to suit him from the stock 

 usually displayed in our fishing-tackle shops. Perhaps as 

 easily made and as effective a bait as any, is formed in the 

 following way : Take a thin bar or strip of lead, of suit- 

 able length and expanded at the latter end into a tail ; 

 lash a wire eye on to the upper end ; wrap this over and 

 over, round and round, with worsted or wool moulded so 

 as to shape a body ; then get two strips of kid glove, one 

 dive for the back of the bait, and one white for the bell ; 



