CHAPTER VII 



HOURS FOR ANGLING, AND MISCELLANEOUS ADVICE 

 AND EXPERIENCES 



" Who woll vse the game of anglynge must and ryse erly." 



— JvLYANS Barns, " Boke of St. Albans," i486. 



It is perhaps unkind as well as ungrateful to 

 the reverend and illustrious mother of angling to 

 attempt to controvert such an unqualified state- 

 ment as the one of hers which heads this chapter. 

 Her views on the subject of early rising for an- 

 glers prevailed for centuries, though a few auda- 

 cious writers ventured to differ from her; but 

 their influence on public thought was trifling, and 

 for centuries the majority of anglers groaned be- 

 neath the yoke of this, as well as other, mediaeval 

 nostrums. H. R., in "The School of Recreation," 

 1684, says, "Salmon bite best in May, June, and 

 July, at three o'clock in the afternoon." This was 

 a feeble, disconnected, and rather vague statement. 

 Thomas Fairfax, in " The Complete Sportsman," 

 about 1 760, tells us " His [the salmon's] best bit- 

 ing time is at nine in the forenoon and three in 



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