176 Spinning tackle for Mahseer. Chapt. xm. 



use the extra outside sinker above mentioned ; and when 

 fishing deep pools for heavy fish you should have it, hut 

 in the shallower runs it is not necessary, and is trying 

 to your top joint, as well as more difficult to throw light 

 to any distance. Consequently I but seldom use it. 



I have one more complaint against the 

 whipping. tackle-makers. It is the fashion with them 

 to bind loops with silk, whereas the fastening would be 

 both tighter and less visible, if it were simply knotted 

 after well soaking the gut. In India particularly, where 

 whipped fastenings are so liable to come undone, from 

 the extreme dryness of the air shrinking the gut, spoil- 

 ing the wax, and slackening the silk binding, it would 

 be more satisfactory to have plain gut knots. Knots also 

 are not liable to fray as silk is from wear. 



. In Chapter V. I have, for special reasons 



hooks. there given, recommended two sorts of 



spinning tackle for Mahseer, one a solitary treble hook 

 which any one can tie, the other a lip hook and one treble, 

 which is tied as follows: Take the lip hook first, and 

 with silk whip a small piece of very fine gimp on to it, 

 so as to leave a loop at the head not more than an eighth 

 of an inch long, and another similar loop where the tail 

 of a fly would come, that is, at the end of the shank 

 and at the back of the hook. .1 have tried loops of 

 salmon gut instead as being less easily seen than gimp; 

 but I was not satisfied with them ; because the gut, when 

 well soaked from fishing, becomes so limp that it readily 

 bends, and the result is that the snood is not kept in 



