xlii The Complete Angler 



hold, on the first day ; afterwards they would not 

 look at it at all. The Vade Mecum man, like Dr. 

 Hamilton, recommends a light fly for a light day, 

 a dark fly for a dark day and dark weather ; others 

 hold the converse opinion. Every one agrees that 

 the smallness of the flies should be in proportion to 

 the lowness of the water and the advance of summer. 1 

 Our ancestors, apparently, used only one fly at a 

 time ; in rapid rivers, with wet fly, two, three, or, in 

 lochs like Loch Leven, even four are employed. 

 To my mind more than two only cause entangle- 

 ments of the tackle. The old English anglers knew, 

 of course, little or nothing of loch fishing, using bait 

 in lakes. The great length of their rods made reels 

 less necessary, and they do not seem to have waded 

 much. A modern angler, casting upwards, from 

 the middle of the stream, with a nine-foot rod, 

 would have astonished Walton. They dealt with 

 trout less educated than ours, and tooled with much 

 coarser and heavier implements. They had no fine 

 scruples about bait of every kind, any more than 

 the Scots have, and Barker loved a lob-worm, fished 

 on the surface, in a dark night. He was a pot- 

 fisher, and had been a cook. He could catch a 

 huge basket of trout, and dress them in many 

 different ways, broyled, calvored hot with ant- 

 chovaes sauce, boyled, soused, stewed, fried, battered 

 with eggs, roasted, baked, calvored cold, and 

 marilled, or potted, also marrionated. Barker 

 instructs my Lord Montague to fish with salmon roe, 



*I have examined all the Angling works of the period known 

 to me. Gilbert's Angler's Delight (1676) is a mere pamphlet; 

 William Gilbert, gent., pilfers from Walton, without naming 

 him, and has literally nothing original or meritorious. The book 

 is very scarce. My own copy is *' uncut," but incomplete, lacking 

 the directions for fishing " in Hackney River ". Gervase Mark- 

 ham, prior to Walton, is a compiler rather than an original 

 authority on angling. 



