SPINNING TACKLE 3 



tail-hook solved a difficulty I had been labouring under in respect to my 

 own tackle, and I saw a valuable hint in it. I have since used Mr. PennelTs 

 tackle, slightly modified for trout, and think that, as I use it, it is as near per- 

 fection as need be." (For Mr. Francis's modifications, and the Author's reply, 

 see Field, of 17 th and %4-th May, 1862.) " I gave this tackle a severe trial a 

 short time since ; I tried it with a bleak. Now a bleak is always a difficult bait 

 to make spin "well ; it is very apt indeed to get out of spinning, and is so soft 

 that the slightest touch dislodges the hooks and throws it out, so that it 

 often will not spin properly; and this reluctance with the aggravation natural 

 to spinning baits, somehow always occurs just at the very moment when you 

 want your bait to spin its best. The bleak I had, too, came from a spot where 

 some hot water is discharged, and this always makes them much softer than 

 their fellows. Added to this they were in spawning condition, and in even 

 a worse state still than ordinary. Nevertheless in spite of all these ad-verse 

 circumstances, I spun a bleak with Mr. Pennell's tackle for more than two 

 hours. I was fishing long casts, and two or three times it fouled the bottom 

 and took hold of twigs and rubbish, yet it never once got out of spinning 

 for an instant, but spun on to the last as well as it did when I put it on. 

 With the ordinary three-triangle tackle, the bait would have been out of 

 spinning and the centre triangle loose, in ten minutes, and in ten minutes 

 more the bait would have been useless. 



" My great object has always been to get a good large hook well concealed 

 at the tail, so that if a 121b. trout runs at the bait in the heavy streams of a 

 weir, you may be able to do something more than scratch his mouth and 

 scare him for the season, a measure of success accomplished at present in 

 about seven or eight cases out of every ten fish hooked under such circum- 

 stances, thanks to the trumpery roach hooks which are so universally used. 

 Can anything be more absurd than the present method of spinning for trout 

 on the Thames ? On other rivers to take Trout of 1 Ib. we use the finest gut 

 we can get, and a large hook buried in the mihnow; on the Thames we go 

 out for a fish as large and as strong as a salmon, and as well educated as 

 an trout in the world, in water as heavy and often as foul as the most 

 dangerous salmon rapid ; we use monstrous salmon gut that would hold a 

 whale, and scare a fish of ] Ib. out of his senses, and roach hooks ; and then 

 we wonder we get so few runs, and think it hard, if by chance we hook and 

 lose a good fish in the heavy water. Common sense is utterly knocked on the 

 head by such proceedings. 1 tried to remedy these defects, but my tackle 

 though a step in the right direction, was defective. Mr. PennelFs is, I 

 am willing to admit, an improvement on it, and I am sure that no one who 

 used his as I have ventured to modify it will ever use mine again. I have, 

 as a rival inventor, no jealousy whatever in the matter, being simply 

 anxious to serve the angling w'orld, by finding the best tackJe, and 1 am 

 willing to own that I believe Mr. Pennell's to be so. I shall never use any 

 other henceforth, and if only half the whoppers so lost in former years 

 by the wretched little hooks in vogue, could try the flavour of my large tail 

 hook now, I would engage to give a far better account of them. Since writ- 

 ing the above I have run one trout only, a Thames fish, but that fish I 

 hooked and killed. FRANCIS FRANCIS." 17th May, 1862. 



" How TO SPIN FOR PIKE. Mr. Pennell's plan of hanging the lead is 

 glorious for Pike fishing. H. B." 24th May, 1862. 



" TRENT. Mr. Pennell's new and improved style of fixing the lead on a 

 spinning trace to prevent the line from twisting, will prove the best thing that 



