FISHING AT HOME AND ABROAD 



one little roach — and that, too, in "swims," where it was nothing uncom- 

 mon for him to take, with his long roach pole and tight line, ten pounds 

 to twenty pounds of fine roach. He is a trout angler and pike angler, and 

 yet he told me that there was nothing he enjoyed more than fishing a good 

 roach river, with his eighteen or twenty -foot roach rod or "pole" as it 

 is often called, and a tight line, i.e., with the line tied to the rod and without 

 a reel and running line. For many years I had a beautiful roach pole of 

 East India cane about eighteen feet long and I used it in roach fishing, 

 occasionally, with a drawn gut three yard fly cast as line, a small porcupine 

 float, a *' crystal " roach hook and one or two small shot, just enough 

 to sink the float so that only half an inch of the white top stuck up out 

 of the water as the float was carried along the " swim " by the stream. 

 A *' swim " is any part of a river or canal, or even a still water, where 

 roach are fished for — ^in the same way anglers speak of barbel swims — 

 it means, I take it, any place where one uses a float on the surface 

 to hold up the bait as the stream carries it along or floats it. In 

 Yorkshire a favourite and deadly style of winter flshing is called 

 ** swimming the worm " or maggot, and is very killing for grayling and 

 chub — it is merely float fishing, with a tiny float, and is practically the 

 same as the fascinating Sheffield style of angling, which will be described 

 presently. 



The long roach pole, so beloved of the old school of River Lea roach 

 anglers, enables one to drop the baited line well out and up stream, and 

 to allow it to swim down for some yards opposite to the angler seated 

 on his seat basket, and as the little white tip of the float with its red cap 

 moves quietly down the "swim," the rod point is held out horizontally 

 over the float and moved almost imperceptibly in that position, until the 

 end of the swim is reached, when the line is lifted out and gently lifted over 

 the water and dropped in again. This action is repeated until the watchful 

 eye of the expert notices that the dip of the float indicates a bite, and I 

 believe one of the fascinations of roach flshing, especially in hard fished 

 waters, is the extremely delicate way in which a knowing old roach will 

 bite; perhaps there is a space of an eighth of an inch or so between the 

 red cap on the projecting, upright bit of white pointed quill and the surface 

 of the water. I have often struck on noticing that the red cap had sunk 

 an eighth of an inch, and firmly hooked a good roach, and it is often the 

 best fish which hardly move the float. I am referring chiefly, on this point, 

 to roach fishing near London, where the fish have been fished for centuries; 

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