102 WATERSIDE SKETCHES. 



baiting hours before you fish is a necessity. Great fat lob- 

 worms, or unsavoury brandlings, are the orthodox bait) and 

 the fish himself is covered with slime that is not pleasant to 

 handle. No angler would care to fish often for bream if 

 there were other fish within his reach, but in Bedfordshire 

 and Huntingdonshire men of the artisan type manifest a 

 rooted affection for the sport, and wherever bream exist, 

 having found the same predilection, I always look upon the 

 broad, fork-tailed, light brown bottom-grubber as a kind of 

 working man's candidate. 



Hard by a village I or)ce visited in Yorkshire there ran a 

 canal in which there were a good many bream. Amongst 

 the men who at about'six feet intervals lined the banks on 

 a summer's evening was a quaint, shrewd Barnsley pitman, 

 with whom I became very familiar. He would think nothing 

 of a fourteen miles walk for the sake of three hours with his 

 pet bream, than which, he firmly believed, no nobler game 

 swam the water. He was a consummate coarse fish angler, 

 and a hero amongst the Yorkshire Waltonians. Poor fellow ! 

 Years passed, and I had forgotten him. Then I saw him, 

 blackened and dead, one of a ghastly row of unfortunate 

 colliers just brought up from a pit, laid out on benches, and 

 ticketed, till the coroner should inquire into the miserable 

 circumstances which without warning cut them off" from the 

 land of the living. 



Before taking leave of the Ouse I ought to add that it 

 contains other fish than bream and pike. Perch of two 

 pounds and upwards are often caught, and the anglers wlio 

 give themselves entirely to perch-fishing will not allow that 

 the Ouse is second to any other stream either as to the 

 quantity or quality of the bold, handsomely decorated fellow 



