Dace Fishing - Fishing for Dace

Dace are gregarious—are great breeders—very lively—and during summer fond of playing near the surface. Their haunts are deep water, near the piles of bridges, where the stream is gentle, and has a sandy or clayey bottom.
They like deep holes that are shaded by water-lily leaves, and under the foam caused by an eddy; in the warm months they are to be found in shoals on the shallows and gravels.

ROACH AND DACE.

The baits for dace are red-worms, gentles, and small flies, natural or artificial, used as in fly-fishing for trout. In angling for dace with worms, maggots, &c. the tackle cannot be too fine, the float small, the hook No. 9, the shot a foot from it; by baiting the place with a few maggots before fishing, the diversion will be increased.
If you angle in an eddy between two mill streams, and the water is only two or three feet deep, there will be a greater chance of success than where it is deeper; bait and strike as in roach fishing. The ground-bait may also be the same.

Fish for dace within three inches of the ground, especially where the ant fly is the bait under water. In fishing, take advantage if you can of a still, warm, gloomy day, or go in a summer’s evening to a gravelly or sandy shallow, or tail end of a mill-stream, and as long as the light continues the dace will yield diversion.


Excerpt from the book:
EVERY BOY’S BOOK: A COMPLETE ENCYCLOPÆDIA OF SPORTS AND AMUSEMENTS.
EDITED BY EDMUND ROUTLEDGE.
With more than Six Hundred Illustrations
FROM ORIGINAL DESIGNS.
LONDON: GEORGE ROUTLEDGE AND SONS,
THE BROADWAY, LUDGATE.
NEW YORK: 416, BROOME STREET.
1869.