302 ON SOME ODD WAYS OF FISHING 



Broadsman paddles quietly up to him, and actually 

 scoops him out with his hand. You may touch his 

 body with your hand and he shall not move, but if 

 you touch his tail he darts away. 



I have seen a somewhat similar thing in shallow 

 pools in Shropshire. When the big carp come to 

 the side to spawn, their bodies are half out of the 

 water, and they may be approached and shovelled 

 out with a spade. In the reeds adjoining a carp 

 pool I once found a murderous instrument which 

 was used by a gang of sawyers at work in the 

 adjacent wood, for destroying the basking carp. 

 It consisted of a large flat piece of wood, in which 

 were set long nails like the teeth of a garden rake. 

 This was attached to a long pole, and woe betide 

 the unfortunate carp on whose back it descended. 



Groping for trout in the shallow streams is a 

 well-known amusement of country boys ; but the 

 dastardly and cruel practice of liming a brook is 

 not now so often resorted to as it used to be. I 

 have seen it done in a mountain brook, when, on 

 account of my extreme youth, I have been power- 

 less to prevent it, and the schoolboy notion of 

 honour prevented my "peaching." A shovelful of 

 quicklime is taken up the brook to some shallow 

 ford, and then thrown into the water and triturated 

 so that the stream carries it in a milk-white stream 



