have
hooked a good fish, have an especial care to keep the rod bent, lest he
run to the end of the line' (he means, as does Walton, lest he pull the
rod horizontal) 'and break either hook or hold.' An old owner of my copy
adds, in manuscript, 'And hale him not to near ye top of the water, lest
in flaskering he break ye line.'

This is a favourite device of sea trout, which are very apt to 'flasker'
on the top of the water. The _Vade Mecum_, in advance of Walton on this
point, recommends a swivel in minnow-fishing: but has no idea of an
artificial minnow of silk. I have known an ingenious lady who, when the
bodies of her phantom minnows gave out, in Norway, supplied their place
successfully with bed-quilting artfully sewn. In fact, anything bright
and spinning will allure fish, though in the upper Ettrick, where large
trout exist, they will take the natural, but perhaps never the phantom or
angel minnow. I once tried a spinning Alexandra fly over some large pond
trout. They followed it eagerly, but never took hold, on the first day;
afterwards they would not look at it at all. The _Vade Mecum_ man, like
Dr. Hamilton, recommends a light fly for a light day, a dark fly for a
dark day and dark weather; others hold the converse opinion. Every one
agrees that the smallness of the flies should be in proportion to the
lowness of the water and the advance of summer. {7}

Our ancestors, apparently, used only one fly at a time; in rapid rivers,
with wet fly, two, three, or, in lochs like Loch Leven, even four are
employed. To my mind more than two only cause entanglements of the
tackle. The old English anglers knew, of course, little or nothing of
loch fishing, using bait in lakes. The great length of their rods made
reels less necessary, and they do not seem to have waded much. A modern
angler, casting upwards, from the middle of the stream, with a nine-foot
rod, would have astonished Walton. They dealt with trout less educated
than ours, and tooled with much coarser and heavier implements. They had
no fine scruples about bait of every kind, any more than the Scots have,
and Barker loved a lob-worm, fished on the surface, in a dark night. He
was a pot-fisher, and had been a cook. He could catch a huge basket of
trout, and dress them in many different ways,--broyled, calvored hot with
antchovaes sauce, boyled, soused, stewed, fried, battered with eggs,
roasted, baked, calvored cold, and marilled, or potted, also m