98 A BOOK ON ANGLING 



are more safe to kill with it than with a dead snap, as you can 

 hang on to your fish with more safety ; and should he make a 

 twenty-yard's run in the midst of a thick weed-bed, threading 

 innumerable rushy needles with the assistance of your line, he 

 will be the less likely to leave you behind with nothing but half 

 a hundredweight of weed on your hook and line. In lakes, try 

 the sheltered shallow bays, where the bottom is well covered 

 with lily leaves and roots, also the outsides of reed beds, and all 

 such places. In rivers very much depends upon the time of the 

 year. In the spring the fish are spawning. In the summer they 

 lie in the open reaches, or the eddies and holes by weirs, and 

 under boughs or mill aprons, by lock gates, etc. ; often feeding 

 in the heavier streams. With the autumn floods, they get into 

 the weed beds, or the large still spots where a back-water 

 debouches, or below an island. In such places they will 

 be often found gathered together in large numbers, on some 

 favourite spot of ground but a few yards square. Always try 

 such spots carefully, or you may miss the fish altogether, and 

 yet if you take one, you may, by sticking to the same locality, 

 catch a dozen or more. I once caught twenty-four in two days 

 from under the apron of Hampton Court weir. 



