CHAPTER IV. 



UP-STREAM WORM FISHING. 



HIS is a very scientific and deadly branch of 

 the angler's art, and we are indebted to the 

 late Mr. Stewart for elevating the worm to 

 its position as one of the most killing baits 

 for trout, a bait, too, which in capable hands can 

 be used in weather in which any other method is 

 simply hopeless. A blazing sun, a parched earth, a 

 mere driblet of a river, with water of the very clearest, 

 and the accomplished up-stream worm fisher has sport 

 before him. It is, however, too generally accepted that 

 such weather and such water are alone suitable for the art. 

 As a matter of fact trout will occasionally take a worm in clear 

 water more or less all the year round, as is very well known 

 to every Yorkshire grayling fisher in December and January. 

 And the up-stream worm fisher may undoubtedly find sport 

 as early as April, if he fishes the proper places, which it is 

 needless to say are not the places which he would fish in July 

 and August. The first time the writer ever fished a worm up- 

 stream in clear waterhappened to be in the third week in May. 

 A long spell of dry easterly winds had reduced the rivers 

 to such a condition that fly fishing was impossible, and 

 notwithstanding the very strong opinion of an old 

 fisherman, the writer and his friend Mr. George Paley, 

 essayed to try the worm after a short lesson from 

 the keeper. The result was that with one angler half- 



