182 THE COMPLETE ANGLER 



come alive from her, being then little live eels, no bigger 

 nor longer than a pin : and I have had too many 

 testimonies of this to doubt the truth of it myself ; and 

 if I thought it needful I might prove it, but I think it 

 is needless. 



And this eel, of which I have said so much to you, 

 may be caught with divers kinds of baits ; as namely, 

 with powdered beef, with a lob or garden-worm, with 

 a minnow, or gut of a hen, chicken, or the guts of any 

 fish, or with almost anything, for he is a greedy fish : * 

 but the eel may be caught especially with a little, a very 

 little lamprey, which some call a pride, and may in the 

 hot months be found many of them in the River Thames, 

 and in many mud-heaps in other rivers, yea, almost as 

 usually as one finds worms in a dunghill. 



Next note, that the eel seldom stirs in the day, but 

 then hides himself ; and therefore he is usually caught 

 by night, with one of these baits of which I have spoken : 

 and may be then caught by laying hooks, which you are 

 to fasten to the bank, or twigs of a tree ; or by throwing 

 a string across the stream with many hooks at it, and 

 those baited with the aforesaid baits, and a clod, or 

 plummet, or stone, thrown into the river with this line, 

 that so you may in the morning find it near to some 

 fixed place ; and then take it up with a drag-hook, or 

 otherwise. But these things are, indeed, too common 

 to be spoken of ; and an hour's fishing with an angler 



* To this truth I myself can bear witness. When I dwelt at 

 Twickenham, a large canal adjoined to my house, which I stocked 

 with fish. I had from time to time broods of ducks, which, with 

 their young ones, took to the water. One dry summer, when the 

 canal was very low, we missed many young ducks, but could not 

 find out how they went. Resolving to take advantage of the low- 

 ness of the water to clean the canal, a work which had not been 

 done for thirty years before, I drained and emptied it, and found in 

 the mud a great number of large eels. Some of them I reserved 

 for the use of my family ; which being opened by the cook surprised 

 us all ; for in the stomachs of several of them were found, undigested, 

 the necks and heads of young ducks, which doubtless were those of 

 the ducks we had missed. H. 



