IOO THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 



there be some barren trouts that are good in win- 

 ter ; but there are not many that are so, for usually 

 they be in their perfection in the month of May, 

 and decline with the buck. Now you are to take 

 notice that in several countries, as in Germany and 

 in other parts, compared to ours, fish do differ 

 much in their bigness and shape and other ways, 

 and so do trouts. It is well known that in the 

 Lake Leman, the lake of Geneva, there are trouts 

 taken of three cubits long, as is affirmed by Ges- 

 ner, a writer of good credit. And Mercator says 

 the trouts that are taken in the Lake of Geneva 

 are a great part of the merchandise of that famous 

 city. And you are further to know that there be 

 certain waters that breed trouts remarkable both 

 for their number and smallness. I know a little 

 brook in Kent that breeds them to a number in- 

 credible, and you may take them twenty or forty 

 in an hour, but none greater than about the size 

 of a gudgeon. There are also in divers rivers, es- 

 pecially that relate to or be near to the sea as 

 Winchester, or the Thames about Windsor, a little 

 trout called a samlet, or skegger trout, in both 

 which places I have caught twenty or forty at a 

 standing, that will bite as fast and as freely as 

 minnows ; these be by some taken to be young 

 salmons, but in those waters they never grow to be 

 bigger than a herring. 



There is also in Kent, near to Canterbury, a trout 

 called there a Fordidge trout (a trout that bears the 

 name of the town where it is usually caught), that 



