304 SALMON AND TROUT. 
matter what the depth. This is a point of really critical im- 
portance. To show how important it is, I may mention that I 
have repeatedly fished behind local anglers who have been 
using the ordinary worm tackle of the Usk—that is, one or two 
worms leaded so as to sink a foot or two below the surface— 
and killed fish in pool after pool which they, with probably 
superior knowledge of the current-sets &c. had drawn blank. 
The necessity of always ‘touching ground’ causes, in rocky 
rivers, a very considerable loss of leads, and in 
order to meet the contingency, and also to pre- 
vent the trace itself being broken every time the 
leads got hitched, I found the most convenient 
plan was to have a number of smoked paternoster 
leads of various sizes attached to horsehair loops, 
and to fill my pockets with these before starting. 
Where, however, the water is not very deep and 
strong, a better expedient, in various ways, is the 
use of lead wire, attached in the manner shown in 
the diagram, to the finest drawn gut, or to the 
weak, flattened-out, and otherwise wasted ends of 
gut-strands, or, finally, to horsehair. For some 
reason this lead wire, probably irom its yielding 
and bendable nature, seems to catch much less 
often than the common bullet or than paternoster 
“LEap-wire’ leads. 
SINKER. When the latter are used, especially if new and 
bright, it is most important to smoke them over 
the flame of brown paper, or, still better, varnish them with 
‘Brunswick black,’ before starting for the river, as otherwise 
the glitter of the lead will too often effectually scare away the 
fish. ‘The lead, of whatever sort'it be, should be attached to 
the trace about a foot and a half, or a little more, above the 
hooks— above the second knot in the gut, in fact—and there 
should be an inch between the lead and trace. The object, 
of course, of attaching the leads by fine or defective gut, or 
horsehair, is that when a foul occurs, which it very frequently 
