CARP AND TENCH. ^93 



foi two summers, and have taken numbers of bream between two 

 and six pounds, and many tench, roach, and rudd ; but we have 

 never got hold of a carp. And yet we have used the finest tackle, 

 drawn gut and hair, tried every kind of sweet paste, worms, gentles, 

 potatoes, blackberries (bream like blackberries), figs, bananas, a 

 "bit of crumb of bread just under or on the surface ; in fact, there 

 is not a bait recommended for carp fishing we have not tried, both 

 with float and with ledger. Others who have fished the same 

 water have had no better success with these carp. In other waters 

 not so much fished we have taken them with small red worms and 

 paste. We confess we have never tried for them ' from daybreak 

 to five o'clock,' which is said by some to be the magic time, but 

 have often wondered that when fishing late — from sunset to mid- 

 night—for eels, the carp have never touched the baits, though 

 tench have, long after dark. Of course, we have tried ground- 

 baits of all kinds. Potatoes mashed up with bread and pollard we 

 have found bring the bream on best, and we should be obliged if 

 any of our readers can suggest some plan which they find suc- 

 cessful under similar circumstances. 



I was once witness to a very curious occurrence, where a 

 carp — naturally such a timid and dainty feeder — took in suc- 

 cession two hooks baited with worms, on two different lines, and 

 was itself taken simultaneously by both, one hook being fastened 

 on each side of its mouth : the youths to whom the singular 

 accident happened were brothers. The dist^mce between their 

 two rods and baits at the time the fish took the latter could not 

 have been less than several yards, and the floats disappeared 

 almost at the same moment, both anglers striking together and 

 the carp being lifted out between them. 



With regard to the tench the methods of capture pursued in 

 the case of the carp are also the best that I can recommend, 

 but though, like the carp, good bags of tench may be occasionally 

 made under exceptional circumstances, it is hardly sufficiently 

 certain sport to offer any great inducement from the angler's 

 point of view. Indeed, I never made but one real basket of 

 tench, so to speak, in my life and that was in a stagnant pond 

 belonging to my friend, Colonel Brooksbank, of Middleton Hall 

 on the Wolds, Yorkshire, which had been recently stocked 



