The Fifth Day 183 



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-hallantide, and so till frost comes, when you 

 see 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 area 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 



