igo THE GAMEKEEPER AT HOME. 



for several days, so soon as it has gone down fish are more 

 than usually plentiful, as if the flood had brought them 

 up-stream : poachers are then particularly busy. 



Fresh fish — that is, those who are new to that par- 

 ticular part of the brook — :are, the poachers say, much 

 more easily captured than those who have made it their 

 home for some time. They are, in fact, more easily dis- 

 covered ; they have not yet found out all the nooks and 

 corners, the projecting roots and the hollows under the 

 banks, the dark places where a black shadow falls from 

 overhanging trees and is with difficulty pierced even by a 

 practised eye. They expose themselves in open places, 

 and meet an untimely fate. 



Besides pike, tench are occasionally wired, and now 

 and then even a large roach ; the tench, though a bottom 

 fish, in the shallow brooks may be sometimes detected by 

 the eye, and is not a difficult fish to capture. Every one 

 has heard of tickling trout : the tench is almost equally 

 amenable to titillation. Lying at full length on the sward, 

 with his hat off lest it should fall into the water, the 

 poacher peers down into the hole where he has reason to 

 think tench may be found. This fish is so dark in colour 

 when viewed from above that for a minute or two, till the 

 sight adapts itself to the dull light of the water, the poacher 

 cannot distinguish what he is searching for. Presently, 

 having made out the position of the tench, he slips his 

 bared arm in slowly, and without splash, and finds little or 



