210 I GO A-FISHING. 



it. But I know very few men who can fish a brook with 

 bait as it should be done. I could do it better myself 

 forty years ago than now, for the boy along the brook 

 learns a thousand lessons that he forgets as he grows 

 older. 



There is little choice of bait, but there is something 

 in even that. Never give up a deep hole in which you 

 have reason to think there are good trout until you have 

 exhausted your resources. The angle-worm is your main 

 reliance, but if that does not take, try the tail of a small 

 trout, or a bright-colored fin, or, if you can find it, a red- 

 fin's tail or fin. These last we do not find in the Pemige- 

 wasset, where trout and only trout inhabit. Sometimes 

 nothing is so taking as a grasshopper, at another time the 

 eye of a trout, and often the red gill will attract large fish. 



But the best of bait will be of no avail if you do not fish 

 with care and skill. Trout will seldom take bait when 

 they see you, or if they do, it will be with a sudden dash 

 out from under a bank or log or rock, and as sudden a 

 rush back. Then the chances are in favor of your losing 

 trout and hook, for the fish have a marvelous aptitude for 

 winding a line around twigs and roots and stakes. 



In most brooks the fish are found in deep holes, at the 

 foot of a fall or a rapid, under a bank, or under over- 

 hanging rocks. But in others they will be lying in the 

 lower end of each deep pool where it shoals up to the out- 

 flow. In swift rapids they lie in small eddies, watching 

 for what comes down stream. Their eye-sight is marvel- 

 ously keen. And it must be borne in mind that however 

 rough the surface of clear water may be, the water itself 

 below the surface is a solid medium like glass, so that a 

 fish under water sees in all directions as we do in the air 

 when the wind blows. I have seen a trout start from a 



