Gudgeon Fish - Fishing for Gudgeon

Gudgeon Fish is one of the most delicious fish for eating, although small in size. It bites freely from the latter end of spring until autumn, in gloomy warm days, from an hour after sunrise to within the same space of its setting; and during the rest of the year, in the middle of the day, when it is warmest.

In angling for gudgeon the tackle must be very fine, a single hair or fine gut fine, a hook No. 8 or 9, a short rod and line, and a small tapering cork float.
The gudgeon will take the small red-worm greedily, and blood-worms—the first is perhaps the best.
A rake or the boat-hook should be kept frequently stirring the bottom. To the spot so stirred gudgeon assemble in shoals, expecting food from the discoloring of the water.
They are apt to nibble at the bait; the angler ought not, therefore, to strike till the float goes well down.

GUDGEON AND BREAM.

Should any young angler desire a good day’s fishing for gudgeon, and a pleasant walk into the bargain, he should seek out some sequestered gravelly stream, and providing himself with a rake with a long handle, he may have sport till he is tired of it.
He will find the fish scattered up and down every river in the shallows during the heat of summer, but in winter they get into deeper water.
Gudgeon are to be fished for there with your hook always touching the ground.

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.