TROLLING FOR LAKE TROUT. 71 



sixteen and a half pound Lake Trout was hooked by me, on a sino-le 

 gut leader ; from the time I struck him, till his capture, was one hour 

 and forty-five minutes. During the first half-hour, he showed" great 

 bad temper, and kept the perspiration flowing off my head ; he did sulk 

 for half an hour, but it was a moving and a dragging sulk, unlike the 

 Salmon ; and during this sulk he took me along the lake for about a 

 mile ; I became fatigued, and bore so heavy on him that I got him 

 near the surface, and from that time until his death was one continued 

 run and fight. He had not the vivacity of the nine and a quarter 

 pound fish, but still I had " my hands full," and was effectually "used 

 up" when he was gaffed by Cowles, my guide. 



There is another mode of fishing to which you have made no refe- 

 rence, and which I have never seen described or spoken of in any 

 work upon angling. I mean " cross-fishing," as practised on the large 

 Irish lakes; and although it affords great amusement, still it is a spe- 

 cies of poaching, and should not be practised by the legitimate angler. 



The cross-line consists of one hundred and fifty yards of strong line, 

 say thin whip-cord, seventy-five yards of which is wound on a card, 

 similar to a card used in trolling for Blue fish, and the other seventy- 

 five yards on another or similar card. In the centre of the line, a flat, 

 square cork, about an inch thick, five inches wide, and of the same 

 length, is secured to a loop in the middle of the cork, and made per- 

 fectly stationary, but still so secured that the cork shall lie flat and 

 even on the water. To twenty yards, on both sides of this cork, the 

 flies are attached — that is, three feet from the cork, loop on the first 

 fly, and so on, every alternate two yards, until eight or nine flies are 

 looped on the line, on each side of the cork. The flies should be the 

 usual lake-flies, tied on twisted, or very strong, Salmon-gut of about two 

 feet in length. 



Two boats are of course needed. One card is held by the person 

 in one boat, and the other by him in the second boat. The line is 

 then stretched out as the boats separate, until the hand-fly is distant 

 about twenty yards from each boat. The boats are slowly rowed along, 

 in parallel lines. The line should be kept taut, so that the flies skim 

 or dance on the surface of the water. Each angler knows his own fish 

 by the cork, and the person holding the card on the opposite side of 

 the cork has no right to kill the fish which has been struck on the side 



