THE TROUT 83 



fancies all is safe, he will gobble down the worm, shake 

 his head when he finds something appending to it, and 

 then plunge off with all speed. 



The bush-angler should carefully contrive to keep the 

 end of his rod exactly parallel with the edge of the 

 water, for if he allow it to hang over the bank or 

 bushes, the fish will see it, take fright, and fly off with- 

 out ceremony. In drawing the line out of the water, 

 care should be taken to avoid lifting it up perpendicu- 

 larly, it should rather be drawn out in a slanting 

 direction, and then the water will not be so much 

 disturbed. 



When the weather and water are best adapted for 

 shade or bush fishing, the trout are often very hungry ; 

 and if you can only contrive to keep yourself and tackle 

 well out of sight, you may safely calculate on good 

 success. In order to show to what extremities this fish 

 is sometimes reduced, we shall relate an incident which 

 fell under our own observation in 1826. This was a 

 remarkably hot and dry summer ; many rivers in 

 England were nearly dried up, and the fish in some 

 of the shallower streams were entirely destroyed for 

 want of water. We had gone out one fiercely hot day, 

 to the distance of ten miles, in the north of England, 

 to a favourite spot for bush-fishing. When we arrived 

 at the water, we found, to our dismay, that we had left 

 our worm-bag behind us. Our mortification was extreme. 

 To get a worm of any kind was next to impossible, for 

 there had not been a drop of rain for three entire 

 months, and the fields were burnt up like the deserts of 

 Africa. We happened, by mere chance, to have an old 

 bait-bag in our pocket, in which there were about twenty 

 old dried-up, shrivelled worms, so dry, indeed, that they 

 almost CTumbled into powder between the finger and the 

 thumb. We steeped them in water as a desperate 

 resource, and contrived to thread them on a very small 

 hook. The expedient proved successful ; and we 

 returned home with a very fine basket of trout. 



The French anglers catch hundreds of trout in the 

 months of May and June with the natural May-fly. 



