PRACTICAL LESSONS IN THE GENTLE CRAFT. 47 1 



(and that very coarse), three large jack swivels, and a great 

 ugly lead, heavy and coarse enough for the coarsest and 

 roughest pike fishing in private waters, where sharpset fish 

 will often run at anything. For my own part, and knowing 

 that if there is one fish which is especially more wide- 

 awake and cunning than another it is an old wary Thames 

 trout I always start on the war-path as well and carefully 

 armed as a man can be. I don't mean to assert, mind, as 

 a fact, that the angler with coarse tackle never gets a fish. 

 On the contrary, there is nothing so likely, supposing he 

 knows from observation exactly where a trout feeds and 

 they feed day after day in the same spot to the fraction of 

 a foot that if he goes at early morning, before the weir 

 has been disturbed by any of its paddles being drawn, and 

 cautiously drops a biggish bait which spins well exactly 

 over his lovely mottled nose, but that he will dash at it 

 without an instant's reflection. That's when he is dead 

 hungry, and then any fool can catch him. But only let 

 him have a " bit in hand ; " let him have, say, two or 

 three bleak or dace down his throttle, just to take the 

 sharp edge of the morning off, and rely upon it, it's the artist 

 then, and not the chance man, that gets him even to look 

 at a bait at all. 



Thus I like a fine gut trace of full a yard and a quarter 

 long, the lead so placed that it is a yard of trace length, 

 and the length of the flight-link itself from the bait, and 

 with at least five small, well made, well oiled swivels, and 

 one double one, all set below the lead. There is no 

 necessity for any above it ; the lead is not intended 

 to spin, and all the motion, therefore, should be below 

 it. The more there is, and the freer it is, the less likeli- 

 hood of a kink or snarl in the line. For the lead itself, 

 nothing, in my opinion, beats the " Field lead," when 



