THE COMPLETE ANGLER 71 



or never lose its hold : but, on the contrary, a pike, 

 a perch, or trout, and so some other fish, which have 

 not their teeth in their throats, but in their mouths, 

 which you shall observe to be very full of bones, and the 

 skin very thin, and little of it : I say, of these fish the 

 hook never takes so sure hold, but you often lose your 

 fish, unless he have gorged it. 



YEN. I thank you, good master, for this observation ; 

 but now, what shall be done with my chub or cheven 

 that I have caught ? 



Pise. Marry, Sir, it shall be given away to some poor 

 body, for I'll warrant you I'll give you a trout for your 

 supper : and it is a good beginning of your art to offer 

 your first-fruits to the poor, who will both thank you 

 and God for it, which I see by your silence you seem 

 to consent to. And for your willingness to part with 

 it so charitably, I will also teach more concerning chub- 

 fishing : you are to note that in March and April he is 

 usually taken with worms ; in May, June, and July, he 

 will bite at any fly, or at cherries, or at beetles with 

 their legs and wings cut off, or at any kind of snail, or 

 at the black bee that breeds in clay walls. And he never 

 refuses a grasshopper, on the top of a swift stream,* 

 nor, at the bottom, the young humble-bee that breeds 

 in long grass, and is ordinarily found by the mower of 

 it. In August, and in the cooler months, a yellow 

 paste, made of the strongest cheese, and pounded in 

 a mortar, with a little butter and saffron, so much of 

 it, as being beaten small, will turn it to a lemon colour. 

 And some make a paste, for the winter months, at which 

 time the chub is accounted best (for then it is observed 

 that the forked bones are lost, or turned into a kind of 



* In the Thames, above Richmond, the best way of using the 

 grasshopper for chub, is to fish with it as with an artificial fly ; 

 the first joints of the legs must be pinched off ; and in this way, 

 when the weed is rotten, which is seldom till September, the largest 

 dace are taken. H. 



