256 ANGLERS' EVENINGS. 



In Nicholas Cox (1686) we find the first mention of its 

 use with large trout, or salmon. With one exception, 

 which I shall name further on, its real use does not appear 

 to have been recognised by any writer until the present 

 century, as in 1797, in Sir John Hawkins' edition of 

 Walton, revised by Hawkins, Jun., it is mentioned in the 

 notes of Hawkins as something new and only to be used 

 for la7'ge trout, or salmon. Walton himself did not use it 

 for trout-fishing, and had a very primitive method of 

 dealing with a fish which he found too big : — 



Venator. — " Oh me ! look you, masler, a fish ! a fish ! — Oh, master, 

 I have lost her." 



PisCATOR. — " Ay marry, sir, that was a good fish indeed ; if I had had 

 the luck to have taken up that rod, then 'tis twenty to one he should not 

 have broke my line by running to the rod's end, as you suffered him. I 

 would have held him within the bend of my rod, (unless he had been fellow 

 to the great Trout that is near an ell long, which was of such a length and 

 depth that he had his picture drawn, and now is to be seen at mine host 

 Rickabee's, at the George, in Ware,) and it may be by giving that very great 

 Trout the rod— that is, by casting it to him into the water— I might have 

 caught him at the long run ; for so I use always to do when I meet with an 

 overgrown fish ; and you will learn to do so too hereafter ; for I tell you, 

 scholar, fishing is an art, or at least, it is an art to catch fish.'' 



Cotton does not agree with this method, though he has 

 no better method to offer. Thus in the Coitipkat Angler, 

 Part H. :— 



PisCATOR. — ' ' I must here also beg leave of your master, and mine, not 

 to controvert, but to tell him, that I cannot consent to his way of throwing 

 in his rod to an overgrown trout, and afterwards recovering his fish with his 

 tackle : for though I am satisfied he has sometimes done it, because he says 

 so, yet I have found it quite otherwise." 



And now, having arrived at -my climax, as it were, in 

 treatinsr of English Angling Works, I should like in 



