220 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 



little live eels no bigger nor longer than a pin : and 

 I have had too many testimonies of this to doubt 

 the truth of it myself, and if I thought it needful I 

 might prove it, but I think it is needless. 



And this eel, of which I have said so much to 

 you, may be caught with divers kinds of baits, as 

 namely with powdered beef, with a lob or garden 

 worm, with a minnow, or gut of a hen, chicken, or 

 the guts of any fish, or with almost anything, for 

 he is a greedy fish. But the eel may be caught, 

 especially, with a little, a very little lamprey, which 

 some call a pride, and may in the hot months be 

 found many of them in the river Thames, and in 

 many mud-heaps in other rivers ; yea, almost as 

 usually as one finds worms in a dunghill. 



Next note that the eel seldom stirs in the day, 

 but then hides himself ; and therefore he is usually 

 caught by night with one of these baits of which I 

 have spoken, and may be then caught by laying 

 hooks, which you are to fasten to the bank or 

 twigs of a tree, or by throwing a string cross the 

 stream with many hooks at it, and those baited 

 with the aforesaid baits ; and a clod or plummet 

 or stone thrown into the river with this line, that 

 so you may in the morning find it near to some 

 fixed place, and then take it up with a drag-hook 

 or otherwise. But these things are, indeed, too 

 common to be spoken of, and an hour's fishing 

 with any angler will teach you better both for 

 these and many other common things in the prac- 

 tical part of angling than a week's discourse. 



