FISHING AT HOME AND ABROAD 



fishing, in the nicety of which the habitual roach fisher prides himself not 

 a little; it is similar, with greatly emphasized difficulties of achievement, 

 and rewarded by the weights of fish taken being enhanced from ounces 

 to pounds, the fish running ordinarily from one pound to two, three, five 

 and seven pounds, and in some places to fifty-four pounds. In Burmah 

 they run larger still, one species of labeo being there recorded as nearly 

 five feet long, which, in such a thick fish, must be a great weight. It 

 should appeal to the roach fisher, let prejudiced trout and salmon fishers 

 scoff as they like at float and pond fishing. And to this it may be added 

 that scoffers are invariably converted when once they have tried and 

 learnt it. But they are never induced to try it without an exordium like 

 the above. So it is necessary, and will, I hope, be pardoned. For example, 

 let it be added that four rods in three days caught 678 pounds, and of 

 these one rod alone took 361 ^^ pounds, an example of superior skill and 

 better suited rod. And this Madras bag has since been thrown in shade 

 in Northern India. One rod took eighty pounds in three hours, besides 

 being broken by a monster. 



But what are the attendant peculiarities of the labeo ? The mouth is 

 not a mouth in the ordinary acceptation of the word mouth in the animal 

 creation, in that there is no mouth cavity behind the orifice, the tough 

 muscular lips ending abruptly in a constricted throat, and the mouth 

 opening itself is not forward as in most fish, but is under the snout, 

 being so placed for the purpose of sucking things up off the bottom, and 

 the fish has to be well over its food to get its mouth over it, and the 

 orifice is also comparatively small, and fimbriated, or surrounded with 

 quite a frill of short tentacles, which tentacles are presumedly used as 

 fingers for gathering the food into the orifice, which for brevity we must 

 call, by courtesy, the mouth. It is intelligible, therefore, that the manner 

 of feeding is, as might be expected, exceptional, and what the angler calls 

 a bite is singular indeed, as we shall see, and has necessitated exceptional 

 angling. 



It is true that anglers who know nothing of these peculiarities of forma- 

 tion, and fish for labeo as they would for English fish, will also catch 

 them, but only, only in the rains when they are biting boldly. At all other 

 seasons such anglers are simply not in it, and have to give it up as 

 useless. I went 200 miles to learn from one such who had caught them 

 for years, and was recognized over a wide area as the authority on this 

 fishing, and he obligingly came sixty miles to meet me. He promptly told 

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