4^8 SALMON AND TROUT. 



the exercise of their art may well be content to lie on a sultry 

 summer's day anchored above or beside the rush of the ' lasher,' 

 while the live minnow to which they look for the chance of a 

 lusty fish wavers and flashes forty yards below, among the 

 eddies of the widening stream. He has merely to set his rod 

 at a proper angle, and then to take his ease, ' as humours shall 

 determine.' He will seldom fail to court the soothing influence 

 of pipe or cigar, while he refreshes his memory with reading 

 some favourite poem, play, or ' tale of romance.' Or perchance 

 he may feel the mere effort of reading out of harmony with the 

 sense of restful enjoyment to which he would fain surrender 

 himself, and be content to listen to the gushing waters and 

 whispering trees, till 'Beauty, born of murmuring sound,' 

 seems to diffuse itself over the scene on which he looks 

 dreamily through the half-shut eye. Such a mood may be rare 

 with active men, yet there are few to whom it is wholly un- 

 known, and it furnishes the best excuse for a mode of angling 

 which can hardly be described as ' sport.' I must confess to 

 having myself, on two or three different occasions, tried it for 

 a short time on a very hot day, but though the lounge was 

 pleasant, the capture of a fish by such means 



Gave me some sensations like a villain. 



To those who have no such misgivings, I will merely re- 

 commend a bright, full-sized minnow, as the best live-bait. A 

 small gudgeon is hardly showy enough, and if you try a bleak, 

 you had better 'go the entire animal,' with spinning hooks in 

 the rush at the stream-head. A single small hook through the 

 upper lip of your bait may suffice, but I would rather advise 

 the addition of a tiny triangle, with the tip of one hook just 

 inserted behind the gristle of the back-fin. It is more certain 

 to take hold, and secures you, moreover, against the rascality 

 of some wary old chub, who without it, is very apt to bite your 

 minnow clean in half, and go off unscathed. By the way, 

 what remarkable strength must lie in the unarmed jaw of a 

 large chub! His teeth are in his throat, and yet the cutting 



