THE BLEAK. 27 



like any ^\■hite bait ; and gentles or bread -paste 

 will take them freely , a caddis is irre- . 

 sistible; any live fly that is showing on 

 the surface is greedily taken, while they seemingly 

 cannot reject bluebottles hatched out of the 

 chrysalis of the gentle. To procure these I keep 

 gentles in a glass jar with muslin tied over the top 

 of it, placing the jar in the sun or keeping it in a 

 warm situation. The gentles soon assume the 

 chrysalis state, and then the perfect fly hatches 

 out 



When numbers of bluebottles have hatched out, 

 I pour boiling water over the muslin, killing the 

 flies ; for if you take a box of these live flies about 

 with you they sleepily crawl out when you want 

 one for the hook, and by the time one is flicked back 

 others are crawling over the sides of the box. 

 This may seem a lot of trouble about so insignifi- 

 cant a fish as the bleak, but sometimes they will 

 utterly refuse gentles, and take the fly freely ; and 

 I know how important it is to have something that 

 will catch them Moreover, a bleak in the punt- 

 well sometimes means a trout in the basket. Im- 

 pale your bluebottle on a tiny hook, and dabble it 

 on the water ; perhaps half-a-dozen bleak will 

 dart for the fly directly it touches the surface. 



To get sport out of bleak-fishing, I use a little 

 nine-foot greenheart rod, one that I am not special 

 afraid of taking out in the punt on the score tackle 

 of a chance break ; light fly-line, dressed, a two-yard 

 gut cast, the finest procurable, with three hair 

 hooks, a leader and two droppers (the leader is the 

 hook or fly at the end of the cast, the others are 

 called droppers). Twice as many bleak are caught 

 by using hair instead of gut hooks, for even bleak 



