LIVE-BAITING. 133 



F. T. Salter's ' Angler's Guide and Complete Practical Treatise, 

 &c.,' 2nd edition, temp. 1815. He calls it the 'Bead-hook' : — 



The bead hook is formed of two single hooks tied back to back, 

 or you may purchase them made of one piece of wire tied to gimp ; 

 between the lower part of the shanks is fastened a small link or two of 

 chains, having a piece of lead of a conical form, or like a drop-bead, 

 (from which it takes its name) linked by a staple to it. The lead is 

 put into the live bait's mouth, which is sewed up with white thread. 



This is not much unlike thrusting a kitchen poker down a 

 man's throat and then stopping up his mouth with pitch- plaister. 

 And yet this prodigious piece of absurdity is quoted with lauda- 

 tory expressions by a whole string of authors. 



A tackle that exemplifies the ' execrably bad ' class is to be 

 found in Blaine's ' Encyclopaedia of Rural Sports,' one of the 

 least trustworthy manuals, so far as fishing is concerned — sound 

 as it may be on other subjects — that I am acquainted with, and 

 yet one of the most quoted by modern compilers. 



With hooks of the proportionate size shown in the diagram 

 of this tackle, the chances are about three to one that no pike 

 would ever be struck by them at all, but if he were so struck 

 the likelihood of his being brought to basket without his cutting 

 one or other of the two suspensory gut links (the whole tackle is 

 to be made of single gut) would be small indeed. And yet 

 Ephemera, in his ' Handbook of Angling ' (p. 142, 3rd edition), 

 calls this miserable abortion — I can characterise it by no milder 

 term — ' the best' live-bait tackle extant ! 



These sort of Mtises (for the foregoing are only specimens, 

 if flagrant ones) which are to be found cropping up everywhere 

 in fishing books, make us almost ready to agree with a review 

 in a recent number of the Fisherman's Magazine, which 

 affirmed that the gentle craft was afflicted with a literature as 

 large, perhaps, as that of all other field sports put together, and 

 of which nine-tenths would appear to have been written for the 

 express purpose of showing how ignorant it was possible for 

 men to be on subjects on which they nevertheless thought 

 themselves competent to instruct others. 



