470 PRACTICAL LESSONS IN THE GENTLE CRAFT. 



fish. " Godfrey Daniel ! " says the fisherman, after seeing 

 a grand fish just hooked fling himself clean out of the water 

 and go with lightning-like speed down the run. " Godfrey 

 Daniel ! what a beauty ! " Then ensues a splendid run 

 for twenty yards, when a man's heart thumps painfully 

 absolutely painfully at the bare notion of such a glorious 

 creature becoming his own in due and proper time, and one 

 vows " by our lady " that he shall be played as carefully, 

 and with as gentle touch as one approaches the dear partner 

 of one's bosom at that awful period when she's sulking for 

 a new bonnet and can't have it. Hands up! There's 

 another fling out of the water, and old brown-faced and 

 horny-handed Tom Davis says excitedly and hoarsely, 

 " Drop point on ye're rod, sir smart, now ! " and you 

 instinctively do it as matter of course. Gone ? Impos- 

 sible ! But it is so, and there's no getting away from it, 

 and presently you see your own once fondly hoped-for trout 

 leap a hundred yards in the stream below you, in the vain 

 attempt to get rid of the half-yard of gut hanging from his 

 jaws and the stinging triangles in his soft fleshy mouth. 

 " Ah, gone at a bit o' binding," says old Tom ruefully at 

 your elbow, surveying the broken trace. " Thowt so ; I 

 did by gum ! It's they blessed careless coves at the shops 

 as is to blame for half the trout as is lost ; " and I entirely 

 endorse old Tom's imaginary opinion. Therefore not a 

 scrap of binding, if you please. It is just as easy to make 

 small loops for the swivels, and after putting the loop 

 through (the gut being well wetted previously), to draw them 

 tight ; and in the long run it is ten times more reliable, take 

 my word for it. Now as to swivels and the length of the 

 trace. 



I sometimes tumble across trout-fishers up the Thames 

 who are spinning a weir with three-quarters of a yard of gut 



