THE ROACH. 103 



August. We don't expect cherries and plums on the trees 

 in January, and the fish don't expect grain to be coming 

 down the river only at harvest time. Instinct is sometimes 

 stronger than reason, and to be a successful angler we must 

 take lessons from nature herself. Before I have done with 

 this paste fishing for roach, I will just shortly consider a 

 very vexed subject among anglers, and that is, the question 

 of scented pastes. Some say that roach are attracted long 

 distances by scented baits, and grow quite eloquent about 

 the merits of their chemically prepared pastes. Now I could 

 never find out that they ever made a better bag of roach 

 than could first-rate anglers using plain paste. True, we 

 have odd cases of certain individuals who have made a good 

 bag of roach by using these scented pastes, when other 

 anglers in the same water and on the same day have failed 

 to take any, but in the course of my experience I have only 

 dropped across one angler who could do it, and he was an 

 old pensioner living in the fens of Lincolnshire. He used to 

 prepare his paste with something, and certainly it did smell 

 very nice, and I know he has taken great catches of fish out 

 of those large fen drains, but whether it would have acted 

 among the educated roach of the Trent I cannot say. The 

 old man promised to give me the recipe of how it was made, 

 but I suddenly left that part of the world, and when I went 

 back to visit the old man he was laid in the village church- 

 yard. I have tried these scented pastes a time or two, but 

 I must confess that my experiments have not been crowned 

 with a deal of success. We know that experiments have 

 been tried and fish have been attracted by chemically 

 flavoured food, but whether they would not have been equally 

 attracted by plain food is not shown. A short time ago a 

 bait was advertised and sold under the name of " Ching," 

 and the advertiser said it would take fish by the bushel, or 

 rather, fish would take it and be caught by the bushel. 1 

 know some anglers who bought and tried it, but it turned 

 out a delusion and a snare. I examined a bit and it looked 

 to me to be nothing but a bit of bread, and it smelt as 

 though it was flavoured with aniseed. I have an extract 

 which has been taken from some fishing-book, in which the 



