ROACH-FISHING AS A FINE ART. 347 



scoured gentles are the stock lures that will never go out of 

 fashion, with small red worms for winter, caddis for early sum- 

 mer, wasp grub for late summer and autumn. My friend, Mr. 

 Marston showed me a device which should be worth trying for 

 paste-fishing — two of the smallest hooks brazed together, and 

 one eye. No whipping on of gut is required, and a pellet of 

 paste no bigger than a pea envelopes the whole. There is no 

 rule by which the proper bait to use can be regulated. One 

 hour the roach will take one thing, the next another. To-day 

 they will bite at any of the familiar baits — paste plain or 

 coloured, rice, wheat green or boiled, malt, pearl barley, silk- 

 weed, gentles, worms, caddis, meal worms, ant eggs, grubs 

 miscellaneous, and insects. To-morrow they will touch never 

 a one. A ' new sensation ' in the way of roach-bait was 

 announced a couple of years ago. It was the fleshy part of the 

 banana. I gave it a trial with fair results ; the experiment re- 

 peated subsequently and in the same water, and under similar 

 conditions failed. Still there is one advantage in banana bait 

 which cannot be claimed for worms, gentles or grubs; you may 

 eat it if the fish do not. 



As to ground bait, generally too profusely used, the most 

 important point is to have it thoroughly mixed. The careless- 

 ness characterising its compoundment is proverbial ; hence the 

 best roach-fishers do not think of entrusting the business to 

 other hands than their own. If bran and bread be used — and 

 there is none much better — not a particle of the latter should 

 remain unwelded to the bran. The whole secret is in the 

 blend, and in the freshness of the material. 



Mr. Pennell, in asking me to write this chapter, sent me a 

 few notes upon what he terms ' fly-thrown bait ' for roach and 

 rudd, which he thought I might incorporate in it. I think I 

 shall do better by letting him speak for himself. He says : — 



For attracting both roach and rudd, and especially the latter, in 

 ponds, I have sometimes found the following plan to succeed better 

 than any of the ordinary modes of float-fishing, and, indeed, I have 

 not unfrequently made a basket by this means in places where the 



