THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 325 



CHAPTER XXI. 



Directions for making of a Line, and for the colouring 

 of both Rod and Line. 



PISCATOR. 



WELL, scholar ! I have held you too long about 

 these cadis, and smaller fish, and rivers, and fish- 

 ponds; and my spirits are almost spent, and so I 

 doubt is your patience : but being we are now 

 almost at Tottenham, where I first met you, and 

 where we are to part, I will lose no time, but give 

 you a little direction, How to make and order your 

 lines, and to colour the hair of which you make your 

 lines, for that is very needful to be known of an 

 angler : and, also, how to paint your rod, especially 

 your top; for a right-grown top is a choice com- 

 modity, and should be preserved from the" water 

 goaking into it, which makes it, in wet weather, to 

 be heavy, and fish ill-fa Vouredly, and not true : 

 and, also, it rots quickly for want of painting : 

 and I think a good top is worth preserving, or I 

 had not taken care to keep a top above twenty 

 years *. 



* The author having said nothing about eLaesing, or maJLtftg RODS in any 

 part of his book, it was thought proper, to insert the following directions, 

 for fishing-at-the-bottom whether with a running- line or float the 

 feed or cane-rod is, on account of its lightness and elasticity, the best, es- 

 pecially if you angle for those fish which bite but tenderly, as Roach and 

 Dace. And of these, there are rods that put up, and make a walking 

 tick. There are others, in many joints, that put up altogether in a bag, 

 and are therefore called bag-rods; these last are very useful to travel 

 with, as they take up but little room. Next to these, is the hasel : but 

 that is more apt to warp than the cane these, as also excellent fly-rods, 

 are to be had at all the fishing-tackle shops in London, and therefore 

 need no particular description : only be careful, whenever you bespeak a 

 rod of reed or cane, that the workman does not rasp down into the bark, 

 which grows round the joints, a fault which the makers of rods are often 

 of; the consequence whereof is, that the rod ii thereby made 

 T 



