92 THE PRACTICAL FISHERMAN. 



Gastronomically, the gudgeon is a delicate and delicious little fish. 

 What is it Pope says ? 



Although no turbots dignify rich boards, 



Are gudgeons, flounders what the Thames affords. 



And the learned Mr. Manley opines that " it was probably to enjoy our 

 fresh-water goby Gobio fluviatilis our esteemed gudgeon, and not his 

 sea-water congener, that Ptolemy invited over to Egypt the parasite 

 Archephon from Attica. The story, as told by Dr. Badham, is that 

 this Ion vivant accepted the invitation; but when offered at supper a 

 dish of these delicacies, let it pass without taking any. Ptolemy, utterly 

 taken aback by this strange conduct, first stared, and then muttered 

 to his confidant that he must have invited to his table either a blind 

 man or a lunatic. Whereupon Alcanor good-naturedly put the guest's 

 abstinence in a new and more favourable light, by attributing it entirely 

 to modesty. ' He saw it, sire, but deemed himself unworthy to lay 

 profane hands upon so divine a little fish.' " 



Anyway, Gobio fluviatilis, if cooked as the Thames-side fishermen's 

 wives know how to cook him, is not at all a despicable fish. Better 

 than smelts, I think, if fried and served hot from the river as it were. 

 They ought not to be actually dead when tossed into the pan, and indeed 

 I know of no more enjoyable meal than a dish of gudgeons, just caught 

 from the river, cooked and eaten in the umbrageous shade of some old 

 chestnut by its side. 



Just a wrinkle as to cleaning them. After scaling with two strokes 

 of a stiff knife, cut across the belly, not longitudinally, and with the 

 thumbs of both hands exude the viscera. This is the Thames fisherman's 

 way, and ten dozen gudgeon may thus be cleaned while one, metaphorically 

 speaking, is saying Jack Eobinson. 



Let us turn back to the quotation from Dr. Badham. This author, 

 presumably an angler from his learned and enthusiastic "Tattle" on 

 fish, ought to have known better than to have made the asser- 

 tion therein contained. The gudgeon is not so greedy a feeder as is 

 believed. On the contrary, he is often very capricious, and I have 

 known the gudgeon to feed ravenously for some days, and on the 

 next to utterly refuse the bait. A brandling is also, by the by, by no 

 means the best bait. A tiny cockspur is much better, and when the 

 little fish are "on," which they generally are, with the reservation 

 referred to, between June and the first frosts of November, fifteen and 

 twenty dozen are not an excessive total of a day's sport. 



As to the modus operandi of gudgeon fishing, I cannot do better than 

 introduce my remarks on it with an exquisitely correct poetic description 



