RIVER-TROUTING. 397 



a little way above the bridge, overshadowed by old trees, and 

 much frequented by large heavy trout. There I have been 

 often more successful than when my sweep was perfectly un- 

 encumbered ; and I must be allowed to mention a curious 

 circumstance which happened to me some years ago in one of 

 these said pools. Having tied a cast rather hurriedly in the 

 morning, I hooked a good fish upon my bob, a mouse-body 

 and snipe- wing, when the single knot slipped. Two days 

 after, when fishing the same place, I again hooked and killed 

 a fine trout, upwards of a pound weight, and, to my astonish- 

 ment, my own handiwork with two inches of gut was sticking 

 in its lip. One of the fraternity, sedulously employed on the 

 opposite bank, remarked that " it must have been an honest 

 trout, for it was not for want of temptation that he kept the 

 hook for the right owner ! " He also related a fact of the 

 same kind which had happened a week or two before. A 

 friend of his was fishing with minnow, when the tackle caught 

 in a tree behind, and not being able to reach it, he had 

 broken the gut. Soon after, when some one was shaking the 

 tree, to secure the tackle, it dropped off into the water, and 

 being slightly loaded with lead, immediately sank. Next day 

 an eel was taken at a set-line with a piece of gut hanging out 

 of its mouth, and the very person who had lost the tackle be- 

 ing on the spot, it occurred to him that it might be his, which 

 proved to be the case. 



The insensibility to pain, which an angler can scarcely fail 

 to notice in these cold-blooded creatures, is a point which 

 happily redeems from cruelty the necessary inflictions of his 

 craft. I recollect catching three fine trout one evening when 

 trolling on Loch Lomond with a friend, and we discovered 

 hanging out of the mouth of one of them a strong hair-line. 

 On opening the fish, we found a large bait-hook fixed firmly in 

 its stomach, the wicker and part of the hook being nearly 

 digested. The creature had evidently been caught and broke 

 away from a set-line, and though hooked in so vital a part, 



