THE COMPLETE ANGLER 195 



than a gudgeon. He is an excellent fish, no fish that swims 

 is of a pleasanter taste ; and he is also excellent to enter 

 a young angler, for he is a greedy biter ; and they will 

 usually lie abundance of them together, in one reserved 

 place, where the water is deep and runs quietly ; and an 

 easy angler, if he has found where they lie, may catch 

 forty or fifty, or sometimes twice as many, at a 

 standing. 



You must fish for him with a small red-worm ; and if 

 you bait the ground with earth, it is excellent. 



There is also a Bleak, or fresh-water sprat, a fish that 



BLEAK 



is ever in motion, and therefore called by some the river- 

 swallow ; for just as you shall observe the swallow to be 

 most evenings in summer ever in motion, making short 

 and quick turns when he flies to catch flies in the air, by 

 which he lives, so does the bleak at the top of the water. 

 Ausonius would have him called bleak from his whitish 

 colour : his back is of a pleasant sad or sea-water green, 

 his belly white and shining as the mountain snow ; and 

 doubtless, though he have the fortune, which virtue has in 

 poor people, to be neglected, yet the bleak ought to be 

 much valued, though we want Allamot salt, and the skill 

 that the Italians have to turn them into anchovies. This 

 fish may be caught with a Paternoster line ; * that is, 



* A rosary, or string of beads, is used by the Roman Catholic 

 devotees to assist them in numbering their pater-nosters, or prayers ; 



