When the fish are all on the move, they take more food and grow less voracious than when, from the unusual chill in the water, the small fry are in the deeps, and consequently food harder to come by among the fish of prey. Where a pike bites in this state of things, there is no mistake about him. He does not play with your bait-fish, carrying it about in his mouth, and ultimately throwing it up. No; he means eating his dinner when it is ready, and then going down to his haunt again in the deep water.

July, August, and September are the three best months for trimmers. The weeds are now well up, and the large pike will lie in the deepest beds of weeds, for security against foes and the advantage of gliding unseen upon their prey. Without thick weeds no pike will remain long in any part of a river. They may be found in the deepest waters during winter, and some parts of the spring; but they are sure to take themselves off to the weeds as soon as these are sufficiently up to form good continuous places of safety. There is another reason for shifting their ground from the open water to that which is more obstructed. It is the many unmistakeable warnings which they have received from the snap-hooks of the troller. How many a rise is followed by the snap and a miss-that is, one cries out, "There! I just touched him: a trifle more, and I should have had him!" Not a doubt of it: the instinct which teaches the swallow to leave this for a distant country, and the salmon to seek the fresh waters to spawn in, imparts a knowledge to the pike that he is by no means safe in clear water in June. June generally is a bad month for pike-fishing. It is too weedy for trolling, and too soon for trimmering. By this means the pike get a rest, and with ́that their confidence returns. They are neither alarmed by persons walking on the shores, nor the motion which they get an inkling of, of the bait-fish cast upon and drawn through the water: the river, in a word, is more quiet; and hence, when one begins to cut holes amongst the weeds, or deposit the trimmers in the natural spaces left at the turns of the current, dike mouths, and small holes and hollows, the fish do not suspect, after eyeing the live bait for half-anhour or so, that there is anything wrong. Do not start, my friend! "Eyeing the live bait for half-an-hour"-those are the words: and so a pike will, for I have watched him, and seen him do it. I have seen him sail round it; sink himself to the bottom; glide up again, and take another circle round it, and eventually turn away from it, or go slap at it, and seal or escape his fate as the one or the other of these performances crowned his manoeuvres. Again: trimmering is mostly done with a boat, and there is nothing in a boat to give the alarm to pike. Unlike to persons and motions on shore, the boat glides quietly along the stream; the trimmer is set, and nothing more occurs for an hour at least, to disturb the fish in that part of the water where the lines are set for the day.

A man who is really fond of trolling seldom cares much for trimmering, and vice versa. "Oh," says the troller, "you are off trimmering again, are you? It is always a puzzle to me how any one can find an amusement in that dull work." The patron of the cork and bullet is not a whit behind him of the pole and snap: "How it

is that my friend John Porter can discover any interest in flinging that poor devil of a dead roach all over the river," says the other, "I am quite at a loss to know. To me it is the greatest mockery on earth. He swears he has a rise, and he pulls out a weed as long as his arm. He exults in a run, and he lands safely a rotten stick which has got foul of his tackle by the under current. It's poor stupid work, that trolling! Come with me for a day's trimmering, if you would witness real sport." Now each of these has its pleasures and its votaries; and I, who have followed both, always found diversion in either in its season. "There is a time for all things," says the old proverb; and I, who am a lover of an old adage, am also well content to take things as they are summer or winter, good or evil. Were it not so, we should all take to the turf, leaving the rivers alone; or to the fields, deserting the woods and "the stinking vermin." Therefore, as the trolling season in my estimation is over for 1845, let us take a peep at its friend and follower—that of the

trimmers.

There is one advantage in trimmering-that it is pursued at a season of the year when all the delights of early rising may be enjoyed in perfection. No one thinks of leaving his bed with the first peep of day in February, March, and April; but it is not so in July, August, and September. Can anything exceed in beauty the fragrance and stillness of a July morning? Is it not a perfect paradise to stroll down to the river-side at four o'clock; while nature is just awakening around, and nothing heard to disturb the quiet and repose of the time, except the distant village clock, the birds' early orisons, and the splash along the stream of the carp, bream, and pike? He who would excel in trimmering must not be a sluggard. He must rise with the lark. He must put in practice another of my old saws: "Early to bed, and early to rise,

Will make a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.”

He must have his casting-net upon his shoulder by a little after five, and all his bait-fish ready by about six. The trimmers are then to be set. It requires two and a boat to do it properly. It is too much labour for one man to cast, sprit, and put in the lines. Besides, if there is a wind, it is next to impossible to hold the boat up at a hole, and put in a trimmer as it ought to be; and although shoving the sprit into the mud, and tying it with a cord to the stern of the boat, may make a very good shift now and then, it is "making a toil of a pleasure"-(Saw the third).

The bait-fish having been caught, and if they are plentiful at intervals-I had almost said at different stations-along the line intended to be trimmered, it is better not to have too many in the peck at one time; for their scales get rubbed off, and the fish themselves bruised and sickened, before they can all be baited, which prevents their working well, and, if the day is hot, soon ends their lives. Two dozen are plenty to begin with, if relays can be obtained; and if not, say four, which will bait four dozen hooks-enough for one day in all

reason.

The arming-wire is to be inverted near the belly of the bait-fish

88

TROLLING AND TRIMMERING.

half-an-inch beyond his gills, and brought out along his side, between the back-fin and the tail, so that the hook lies even with the back and belly of the bait. The pike always strikes his food across, and having given him three or four bites-much as a terrier shakes a rat-gorges him. It is apparent, therefore, that the hook is not to be where the pike champs; because if he gets pricked, he throws up the bait and makes off.

The bullet is to be placed at such a depth as to bring the cork into mid-water, and the bait-fish within about eight inches of the surface. If the day is cold and windy, let the bait-fish lie half-a-foot deeper. It is well to have the bullet heavy enough; for when the pike runs, it is not felt, and unless it is sufficient to keep the bait in its place where there is a stream, all the advantage of fishing in natural or cut holes, among weeds, is lost. One might as well throw the trimmers in at random, and so save both time and trouble.

The trimmer rollers should invariably be painted white, and numbered in dozens: it prevents not only the loss of the tackle, but, it may be, a good fish as well.

It is almost useless to trimmer in a dead water, especially on a hot day. You want a stream, not a rapid one-for pike are not fond of rapid waters, nor can you trimmer to advantage in sharp currentsbut water of moderate flow; or if it be a river where the navigation is carried on by stanches, and not by sluices, the running off of two or three stanch-waters in the course of the day is the grand thing for trimmering it brings the pike out of their haunts without alarm, and, making all astir in the river, ensures splendid sport.

The largest and best pike will always be taken by trimmers. Good fish are frequently taken by trolling, from 8lbs. to 12lbs. ; but it is seldom that one gets beyond. With trimmers we arrive at 20lbs. and 25lbs. weight, and generally average 6lbs. to 10lbs.; whereas the troller cannot say so much for his generalities.

The boat has an advantage, in carrying the spoil, beyond panier or pocket; and not the spoil only, but the good things of this life which the troller's pockets fall short of. And then for luncheon and dinner in trimmering, there is always some overarching willow, alder, or sallow; some quiet shade, where, after a bathe, with the casting-net suspended on one side, and the sprits and boat-hooks hung around on the other, the sportsman finds in the good cheer and good company advantages which our solitary friend of the snap and pole must look for in vain. These are among the advantages which trimmering possesses above trolling. The day may be diversified with angling: perch-fishing, carp and chubb-fishing, whipping for dace with the fly, and humble roach and bleak-fishing, to the true lover of our gentle craft, may fill up the hours between setting and taking up the trimmers. These remarks apply to those days when the lines are put in at morning and taken up at evening, and the day whiled away along the banks of the river, or amid the thickets and groves upon the margin. But when one means mischief in trimmering, the lines are to be looked at every hour, and then there is quite as much to do as any two can wish for, or even three accomplish.

I always felt the height of enjoyment in a good day's trimmering,

and, in fact, prefer it in its season to trolling. There is the casting to begin with; and although it is now many a year since I first essayed to throw the bullets at once into a ring, and then to fit any hole among the weeds, the art itself has not lost one jot of its fascination, though I have bid farewell to the first and boyish feelings of pride in its accomplishment. Then come the cutting of the holes and setting of the trimmers. A man who is fond of the sport soon knows the river as well-its deeps and shallows, weeds and gravels, currents and lulls-as the forester knows every hazel bush and spreading tree, or the gunner of the marshes every fresh or shoal. This it is that fills his mind, and directs where the holes are to be cut or the bullets dropped down; a trimmer to be left at the first ozier-bed, or two on each side "the old boat-house pits." Next comes "the taking up"-the anxiety from seeing the rollers drawn across the river-the line as taut as a tight-rope-up the stream; a heavy splash twenty yards off, as the boat approaches the hole; and by and bye, after many an effort to take him safely in, a fish of 16lbs. in the boat-peck.

From the little that has been done in the spring, I have no doubt that such will be the case this season, and that '45 will rank one of the best in the trimmerer's journal for many a year.

June, 1845.

ON THE GAME LAWS, SHOOTING, &c.

BY CECIL.

Through the various paths of this chequered life it is observable. that as man, in his strenuous endeavours to approach perfection, improves upon the management of his ancestors, something transpires to check his progress, and so far to disappoint his expectations. This is observable, in many instances, in the field. Since the invention of the comparatively unerring detonator, various trifling causes have combined to retard the murderous properties which, in skilful hands, that deadly weapon is calculated to wield. In fact, had all things remained in the same state as they were prior to the improvement in fowling-pieces, the various tribes of game would by this time have been nearly annihilated. I am just old enough to remember the common use of the old-fashioned flint and steel, and can perfectly recollect the very different condition of the land upon which game (especially partridges) was then found. You entered a wheat-stubble which was nearly up to your knees, and the bottom was a thick mat of grass and weeds. This afforded good shelter for the birds, and they would, in the early part of the season, lie close, and wait for your approach; your dog having previously found them without being per

plexed by their having run perhaps a quarter of a mile. But now it is very different: you find the same number of corn-fields, or rather stubbles, in such on altered garb, that a man who had been absent during the last twenty years would be, in all probability, so much in doubt as to exclaim, "What grain has been growing here!" The stubble is scarcely higher than your shoes; and such has been the advance in agricultural science, that scarcely a weed is to be seen, certainly nothing to present shelter for game; and the moment you enter the field, away flies the covey to some distant spot, or, if not disposed to take wing, they run to the farther extremity, and probably through the next fence. How marvellously, therefore, are your canine attendants puzzled, finding upon the game at the place where it has lodged, and soon discovering by the scent that it has moved; unless very steady indeed, the dogs begin to draw in the direction it has taken; or, if the dog who found them should remain at his point till the approach of his master, not finding any thing before him, he makes a cast as if the birds had taken wing; again he gets upon the scent, and is again deceived; and this repeated probably two or three times, the birds are either lost or flushed, without the possibility of obtaining a shot. Turnips, high grass, or potatoes, present the principal shelter; and even the former of these are very different to what they were in days of yore. On most well-conducted farms they are planted on ridges, along which the birds will run at an amazing pace; and thus the shooter and his dogs are baffled in the most perplexing

manner.

The natural wildness of the birds is thus increased, and, as a matter of course, the more frequently they are disturbed, the wilder they will become: it is therefore of the greatest importance that they should be kept quiet, and the molestations of cur-dogs and similar nuisances most scrupulously guarded against. These circumstances cause birds to be constantly on the watch, and consequently the opportunities of approaching them within range of shot is wonderfully diminished. Whoever attempts to lay down invariable rules where and how game is to be found will, in practice, find themselves egregiously disappointed. Partridges, in particular, are very capricious in their habits; change of weather, the proportion of food, the circumstance of their having been disturbed, and other causes which are not easily accounted for, will often induce them to resort to places and situations in which they are not usually found. This subject does not often engross the attention of the owner of an extensive and well-preserved manor, where he is sure to find plenty of game somewhere or other; but to those whose limits are confined, or the game is not very plentiful, it is an object of some consequence. No one would think of beating a fallow field, or one sown with wheat, in October or November, under an impression that he could obtain a shot; but I have very frequently found coveys in such situations, and, having marked them down where shelter was more propitious, have succeeded in my object. Having tried the most usual places unsuccessfully, it is a recourse perfectly justifiable to run the dogs over other ground; particularly if you are convinced there are birds in the neighbourhood. One reason may be assigned for partridges leaving an accustomed