394 



SALMON AND TROUT. 



matter what the depth. This is a point of really critical im- 

 portance. To show how important it is, I may mention that I 

 have repeatedly fished behind local anglers who have been 

 using the ordinary worm tackle of the Usk — that is, one or two 

 worms leaded so as to sink a foot or two below the surface — 

 and killed fish in pool after pool which they, with probably 

 superior knowledge of the current-sets &c. had drawn blank. 

 The necessity of always ' touching ground ' causes, in rocky 

 rivers, a very considerable loss of leads, and in 

 : order to meet the contingency, and also to pre- 



vent the trace itself being broken every time the 

 leads got hitched, I found the most convenient 

 plan was to have a number of smoked paternoster 

 leads of various sizes attached to horsehair loops, 

 and to fill my pockets with these before starting. 

 Where, however, the water is not very deep and 

 strong, a better expedient, in various ways, is the 

 use of lead wire, attached in the manner shown in 

 the diagram, to the finest drawn gut, or to the 

 weak, flattened-out, and otherwise wasted ends of 

 gut-strands, or, finally, to horsehair. For some 

 reason this lead wire, probably from its yielding 

 and bendable nature, seems to catch much less 

 often than the common bullet or than paternoster 

 leads. 



When the latter are used, especially if new and 

 bright, it is most important to smoke them over 

 the flame of brown paper, or, still better, varnish them with 

 ' Brunswick black,' before starting for the river, as otherwise 

 the glitter of the lead will too often effectually scare away the 

 fish. The lead, of whatever sort it be, should be attached to 

 the trace about a foot and a half, or a little more, above the 

 hooks— above the second knot in the gut, in fact — and there 

 should be an inch between the lead and trace. The object, 

 of course, of attaching the leads by fine or defective gut, or 

 horsehair, is that when a foul occurs, which it very frequently 



•i.EAD-WIRE 

 SINKER, 



