THE CHUB. 67 



needle, and then push the needle completely through the 

 locust lengthways from head to tail. Draw the locust itself 

 up to the bend of the hooks until the hooks lie as it were 

 upon the shoulders of the bait. You must take care that the 

 points of the hooks are bare, and not hid in the locust at all, 

 as the hard shell will prevent you from hooking your fish. 

 The two sections of the tackle now want fastening together, 

 and this is done by simply putting one loop through the 

 other, the bait through the opposite one, and pull tight ; they 

 are perfectly fast, and can be easily undone when you want 

 to rebait. This bait is cast on the stream as far as it can be 

 thrown, and allowed to float down. It should then be held 

 stationary until it works across stream to the bank on which 

 you stand, and if there is a chub anywhere about the water 

 over which the bait has travelled, he will most certainly take 

 it. Here is one instance out of many where that bait has 

 played a leading part in making a good bag of chub. Some 

 years ago an angler went down the river below Newark to fish 

 the water that ran beside a rather long field ; he had forty- 

 three locusts with him, and when he got down to the bottom 

 of the field he had taken a chub with every locust but one. 

 Forty-two chub with forty-three baits, in three hundred yards 

 of water was not bad sport, and his tackle and method of 

 baiting was exactly as I have described. Since that time, 

 however, the Trent has changed in its character of a great chub 

 sport-giving river ; nowadays, we must be content with a far 

 less bag than that ; indeed, well do I remember when the 

 individual just mentioned again visited the well-remembered 

 field, after an absence of nearly a quarter of a century, and 

 again he, as in days of yore, carefully fished it down, and only 

 got one fish of about a pound and a half. " Strange," says 

 he to an old friend who used to go with him in the days of 

 heavy bags, and saw him catch as many as a hundred pounds' 

 weight in one day, when the} T used to throw three or four 

 big chub under a hedge to make maggots for ground bait 

 when next they went past the place. " No more strange 

 than true," said the other ; "we shall not catch them now 

 as we did thirty or more years ago." Why, I have heard that 

 angler say that it was an easy matter in those days to go to 



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