30 ANGLING. 



tried it), attracts the fish, and good takes have often been 

 made with it. The best baits for roach are, during the 

 summer, gentles, with a change to red worm or greaves 

 (in Trentshire, " scratchings,") which may be used, but in 

 the winter either paste or pearl barley carries the palm, or 

 a little bit of the brown of a crusty loaf. These are the 

 best baits, but there are a great variety of others : insects 

 various, as ant flies, or eggs, caddis-bait, blood worms, 

 boiled-wheat and barley, green-wheat, and many other 

 matters. The best ground bait for roach is that used by 

 the great majority of the Thames fishermen, and this in 

 the summer consists of bran and carrion gentles mixed up 

 with clay into balls ; and when the summer is past and 

 carrion gentles cannot be obtained, scalded bread, bran, 

 and boiled rice, mixed up either with clay or by itself, 

 forms by far the best ground bait. If no clay is used, a 

 small stone (as big as a walnut) should be inclosed in the 

 ball to make it sink. 



Here is the very best recipe for ground bait I know 

 it is my own. Get a big pudding basin and fill it 

 two-thirds full of old crusts, as stale as you please, fill up 

 with boiling water, and stand a plate over it, to let it soak 

 for a quarter of an hour. Take a breakfast cup of broken 

 rice and boil that, get about two-thirds of a peck of bran, 

 put into it about a quart of barley meal, and well mix. 

 Then squeeze out most of the water from the soaked bread 

 and stir that in, pour the liquor off the rice and stir that 

 in also, and work it all up together, adding a little of the 

 rice liquor now and then if it is too dry. Then, when of 

 the right consistency, work it up into balls of the size of 

 moderate apples with a stone in the middle. If it is too 

 dry it won't adhere well. If too wet it breaks up in the 

 water. It should be tough and consistent. This will 



