THE BARBEL. 71 



** The waters wild closed o'er the child, 

 And I am left lamenting." 



I inferred a little time back tliat when the harbel were 

 biting you would catch no dace, and when the dace were 

 feeding you would catch no barbel ; of course, I allude to 

 the two fish in the same swim at the same time. Now, I 

 don't want it to be understood, for a moment, that you never 

 catch the two together, for occasionally dace and barbel 

 are taken together, but I mean it is not a general thing 

 to find the two fish feeding very freely at the same time and 

 in the same swim. I remember once fishing in a good barbel 

 swim a short distance above Newark, with an old friend — a 

 capital angler. We had baited the swim properly, and 

 reckoned on a good take of barbel, but that time we had 

 reckoned without our host ; water was right, tackle was right, 

 bait was right, in fact everything was right except the barbel, 

 and they were conspicuous by their absence, for not a single 

 barbel did we take in the two days, but nearly every swim 

 we took a dace ; now I supposed that there were no barbel in 

 the swim or else the dace would not have fed so freely, and 

 I have still every reason to believe I was right in my sup- 

 position. On the other hand, I can remember taking half a 

 dozen barbel and the same quantity of dace out of one swim, 

 though as a set off to this I have known good catches of barbel 

 that have not had a single dace among them. 



When I was first initiated into the mysteries of the Trent 

 and its fish, I supposed, as the barbel was a big fish, I should 

 require very powerful tackle to take it. I had for a com- 

 panion an old friend with very much the same opinion ; in 

 fact, you may put us down as being very much uninitiated 

 just then. Well, as it happened, we had got our ground bait 

 in all right, more by good luck than good management, I 

 must now confess ; the water was very bright, the tackle very 

 coarse. My old friend, who had a predilection for spectacles, 



