210 THE COMPLETE ANGLER 



great earthen pot, or barrel of three or four gallons, 

 which is better, then wash your barrel with water and 

 honey, and having put into it a quantity of earth and 

 grass roots, then put in your flies, and cover it, and 

 they will live a quarter of a year : these in any stream 

 and clear water, are a deadly bait for roach or dace, or 

 for a chub ; and your rule is, to fish not less than a 

 handful from the bottom. 



I shall next tell you a winter bait for a roach, a dace, 

 or chub, and it is choicely good. About All-hallontide 

 and so till frost comes, when you sete men ploughing 

 up heath ground, or sandy-ground, or greenswards, then 

 follow the plough, and you shall find a white worm 

 as big as two maggots, and it hath a red head : you 

 may observe in what ground most are, for there the 

 crows will be very watchful and follow the plough very 

 close : it is all soft, and full of whitish guts ; a worm, 

 that is, in Norfolk and some other counties, called a 

 grub ; and is bred of the spawn or eggs of a beetle, which 

 she leaves in holes that she digs in the ground under 

 cow or horse-dung, and there rests all winter, and in 

 March or April comes to be first a red, and then a black 

 beetle. Gather a thousand or two of these, and put 

 them with a peck or two of their own earth, into some 

 tub or firkin, and cover and keep them so warm that 

 the frost or cold air or winds kill them not : these you 

 may keep all winter, and kill fish with them at any time ; 

 and if you put some of them into a little earth and honey, 

 a day before you use them, you will find them an excellent 

 bait for bream, carp, or indeed for almost any fish. 



And after this manner you may also keep gentles 

 all winter ; which are a good bait then, and much the 

 better for being lively and tough. Or you may breed 

 and keep gentles thus : take a piece of beast's liver, 

 and with a cross stick, hang it in some corner, over a 

 pot or barrel half full of dry clay : and as the gentles 



