42 COARSE FISH. 



though I have found a regular mixture of bread, 

 Ground- bran, clay, gentles, grains and worms will 

 bait bring the fish on the feed. A simple 

 groundbait is boiled wheat, and plenty of it, par- 

 ticularly in weirs and very deep swims. Bream 

 will sometimes keep in such deep water in the 

 weirs that it is almost impossible to fish for them, 

 especially if the surface current be very swift. 

 They want tempting out of this deep water, and 

 literally bushels of boiled wheat are required to 

 do it. I have never caught bream in a weir except 

 after tremendous baiting. A baiting of small 

 worms will also produce sport. I am particular 

 about a sweet, clean groundbait for bream, and 

 have done best in the Wey with bread and bran 

 only. I have seen men go out with large bags of 

 sour grains for groundbait ; but this, I should think, 

 would tend to sicken fish, rather than make them 

 feed. I have been told that ground-baiting with 

 crushed cotton or linseed cake, mixed with bread 

 and bran, will produce good catches of bream, but 

 have not tried this. If you want to get out a very 

 long way when bream-fishing, employ a pellet of 

 groundbait for weight, squeezed round three shots. 

 The first method of bream-fishing here described 

 ,, ., , may be called semi-tight floating. This is 



Methods ^ tr- t> 



of eminently suitable in very slow runs, eddies 



fishing ^^^ g(.jjj ^vaters. In my favourite Wey 



swim, the stream, when in flood, had formed a sort 



of double, or upper and lower bank, the main stream 



. being directed by a jutting point to the 



opposite side of the river. The side on which 



I fished formed a perfect bream eddy, about seven 



feet in depth. A few rushes grew at the edge of 



the bank, and I could sit on my camp stool behind 



