THE ROACH. 95 



diately swallowed, and the water ejected through the gills, 

 but the moment he finds out that there is something amiss, 

 such as a line attached to it, or the taste does not suit him, 

 he instantly blows it out with great force, along with the 

 mouthful of water he has just taken in ; and the bigger the 

 fish, the more cautious they are in this proceeding. In 

 fishing with gentles for roach it is a very common occurrence 

 to find the gentles blown up the tackle, sometimes a couple 

 of inches from the hook ; the roach had tried to blow the 

 bait from his mouth, but the angler had been too quick for 

 him, the hook had penetrated the mouth, and the bait had 

 been blown up the gut, instead of both hook and bait being 

 forcibly ejected, which would most certainly have been the 

 case had the angler waited another instant before he struck. 

 The would-be angler will now see at once the necessity of 

 having a float that will indicate a bite of this description, 

 and the smaller the quill, the better it will be. Some 

 anglers in roach fishing only have the extreme tip of the 

 float out of the water. Now I think this is scarcely enough ; 

 he should have half an inch at least out, on purpose to pro- 

 perly indicate a roach bite. When the roach draws in the 

 bait, in the manner described, the float perhaps does not bob 

 down, but merely tilts over a little sideways, and the 

 angler ought to respond on the instant. How many times 

 has an angler seen his float give a hardly perceptible bob, 

 and has waited until he has had another and more decided 

 one, and then found on striking that his bait was gone, and 

 there was no fish on his hook 1 The crafty old roach had 

 drawn the bait into his mouth at the first little bob of the 

 float, and that was the time to have met him by the magic 

 turn of the wrist. In the moment between the first bob and 

 the second, the roach found out that there was something 

 wrong, and so blew the bait out, and it was the very act of 

 blowing out that caused the second and more decided bob of 

 the float. One of the very best roach fishers we have in 

 Newark tells me that he has very often noticed this peculiar 

 biting of the roach when he has been fishing with a stationary 

 bait in quiet waters. He says he always gives a short twitch, 

 let the float move as it likes ; sometimes, he has noticed that 



