ON SOME ODD WAYS OF FISHING 303 



downwards. In a short time the poachers follow 

 it, and pick up the trout, which are floating dead 

 on the surface, or swimming in circles on the top 

 of the water, with scorched and blinded eyeballs. 

 The lime penetrates into every crevice of the 

 stream bed, and if it does not kill every trout 

 within its range, it cruelly tortures all. I well re- 

 member the sickening sense of shame that crept 

 over me as, an unwilling participator in the outrage, 

 I crept over the mossy ground, when the noise made 

 by every water-ouzel that took wing and every 

 sheep that leaped dow^n the hill side seemed to 

 herald the approach of a keeper, with awful penal- 

 ties of the law in his train. 



Eiverting the course of a brook, and emptying 

 the pools of their water, and afterwards of their fish, 

 is a long operation, and therefore not so frequently 

 resorted to ; but that poaching instrument called the 

 twopole net I have known to clear many a nice little 

 pool in a stream of its spotted denizens. 



Do my readers know what a cleeching net is ? 

 It is in effect a magnified landing-net at the end of 

 a long pole, and its use is to grab fish from under 

 clumps of weed and overhanging banks. I once 

 had one made for the purpose of catching bait, and 

 a ludicrous incident occurred to a friend of mine 

 who used it. He plunged it in too far from the 



