MINNOW FISHING. 73 



dark and somewhat foamy, full and sweeping; soft rains have 

 swollen the rivers and streams. And now you want some min- 

 nows ; but where are they to be had ? Perhaps you have brought 

 some salted ones, and I have {mown such answer tolerably well. 

 In England they have all sorts of artificial minnows, of silver and 

 of brass, bright, burnished, like nothing that ever came from Na- 

 ture's hands ; and you may buy also artificial minnows tolerably 

 well coloured, so as to resemble the real. Between the mill- 

 dam of Abbey St. Bathan's and the first heavy stream opposite 

 the Retreat, I have caught in the Whitadder, with eight salted 

 minnows, withered and dried up, six large trout, not one of which 

 could be readily stowed away in the basket. 



I never used an artificial minnow in my life, and so have no 

 experience of this kind of bait. Fresh- water fish, and others, 

 show ^sometimes fits of stupidity, during which they will bite at 

 almost anything ; at other times, nothing can tempt them. They 

 are highly nervous, and it is said, even mesmeric : I know the 

 powers of electricity of a thunder-cloud for example, suddenly 

 appearing ; this I have seen spoil instantly a noble day's sport. 



But to return. A minnow is an excellent bait for trout : it is 

 the best, for it takes all the largest. You may fish with it in the 

 smallest streams or largest rivers, in still water or in the rapid 

 flowing current ; at all times of the year, late in autumn, early 

 in spring. To be a perfect angler with minnow, you must have 

 a strong arm and hand, and be at least five feet ten inches high. 

 The minnow must be made to touch the waters as softly as a 

 fly: it must be made to spin or revolve dexterously, and must 

 show life by motion, although it be dead : for trout generally 

 will not look at a straight and dead minnow, dragged by an un- 

 skilful fisher through the waters. Fishing for trout with a 

 minnow is the most difficult mode of angling. It requires real 

 dexterity that is, if you are to fish, as it were openly, on the 

 bank. The strength of the stream is your point, near some 

 eddy or sunken rock ; a rough stream full of large stones, long 

 since fallen into the river. Such you find in mountain passes, 

 where the river is making its way from one valley to another. 

 But you may fish with minnow, successfully if dexterously, in 

 brooks and small streams, standing well back, and cautiously 



