THE GUDGEON. 25 



CHAPTER, IV. 



THE GUDGEON (Gyprinus Oobio). 



SETTING aside minnows, bull-heads, loaches, and stickle- 

 backs, and such small game for I have known a treatise 

 to have been written on the correct method of capture of 

 the last noble quarry, and if I remember aright, a pickle 

 bottle played a prominent part in the process. For my 

 eldest son, at the tender age of eight, wrote a treatise on 

 the above sport, as he styled it, for the " Information of 

 his Young Friends." I repeat, " setting aside " all 

 this, the gudgeon is usually the first quarry of the 

 young angler, that is always providing he lives where 

 they are found. The gudgeon is gregarious, and where 

 you catch one you may catch others, sometimes in large 

 numbers ; indeed, I have known as many as ten dozen of 

 gudgeons caught at one pitch. The gudgeon runs to six 

 or seven inches in length, but seven inches is a large one. 

 The largest I have seen are (or rather were, for I have 

 seen none of late years) found in the river Itchen, in 

 Hampshire. The bait which they prefer is a small red 

 worm, or cockspur, as it is called in Trentshire ; they will 

 take a gentle or any other small insect, but nothing is so 

 attractive to them as a red worm. Red worms may be 

 found in old leaf mould or vegetable refuse, and it is a 



