THE COMPLETE ANGLER 217 



gut ; put the body, as little bruised as is possible, on a very 

 little hook, armed on with a red hair, which will shew like 

 the cadis-head ; and a very little thin lead, so put upon 

 the shank of the hook that it may sink presently. Throw 

 this bait, thus ordered, which will look very yellow, into 

 any great still hole where a trout is, and he will presently 

 venture his life for it, it is not to be doubted, if you be not 

 espied ; and that the bait first touch the water before the 

 line. And this will do best in the deepest water. 



Next let me tell you, I have been much pleased to walk 

 quietly by a brook with a little stick in my hand, with 

 which I might easily take these, and consider the curiosity 

 of their composure : and if you shall ever like to do so, 

 then note, that your stick must be a little hazel or willow, 

 cleft, or have a nick at one end of it ; by which means you 

 may with ease take many of them in that nick out of the 

 water, before you have any occasion to use them. These, 

 my honest scholar, are some observations told to you as 

 they now come suddenly into my memory, of which you 

 may make some use ; but for the practical part, it is that 

 that makes an angler : it is diligence, and observation, and 

 practice, and an ambition to be the best in the art, that 

 must do it.* I will tell you, scholar, I once heard one 



* The author has now done describing the several kinds of fish, 

 excepting the few little ones that follow, with the different methods 

 of taking them, but has said little or nothing of float-fishing : it 

 may not be amiss here to lay down some rules about it. Let the 

 rod be light and stiff, and withal so smart in the spring, as to strike 

 at the tip of the whalebone ; from fourteen to fifteen feet is a good 

 length. In places where you sometimes meet with barbel, as at 

 Shepperton and Hampton, in Middlesex, the fittest line is one of six 

 or seven hairs at top ; and so diminishing for two yards, let the rest 

 be strong Indian grass, to within about half a yard of the hook, 

 which may be whipped to a fine grass or silk-worm gut ; and this 

 line will kill a fish of six pounds weight. But for mere roach and dace 

 fishing, accustom yourself to a single-hair line, with which an artist 

 may kill a fish a pound and a half weight. For your float, in slow 

 streams, a neat round goose-quill is proper ; but for deep or rapid 

 rivers, or in an eddy, the cork, shaped like a pear, is indisputably the 

 best ; which should not, in general, exceed the size of a nutmeg ; 

 let not the quill, which you put through it, be more than half an inch 

 above and below the cork ; and this float, though some prefer a 



