THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 55 



quickly, to be such meat as will recompense your labor, and disa- 

 buse your opinion. 



Or you may dress the chavender or chub thus : 

 When you have scaled him, and cut off his tail and fins, ana 

 washed him very clean, then chine or slit him through the mid- 

 dle, as a salt fish is usually cut ; then give him three or four 

 cuts or scotches on the back with your knife, and broil him on 

 charcoal, or wood-coal that are free from smoke, and all the time 

 he is a broiling baste him with the best sweet butter, and good 

 store of salt mixed with it ; and to this add a little thyme cut 

 exceedino; small, or bruised into the butter. The cheven thus 

 dressed hath the watery taste taken away, for which so many 

 except against him. Thus was the cheven dressed that you now 

 liked so well, and commented so much. But note again, that if 

 this chub that you ate of, had been kept till to-morrow, he had 

 not been worth a rush. And remember that his throat be washed 

 very clean, I say very clean, and his body not washed after he 

 is gutted, as indeed no fish should be. 



Well, Scholar, you see what pains I have taken to recover the 

 lost credit of th.e poor despised chub. And now I will give you 

 some rules how to catch him ; and I am glad to enter you into 

 the art of fishing by catching a chub, for there is no fish better 

 to enter a young angler, he is so easily caught, but then it must 

 be this particular way. 



Go to the same hole in which I caught my chub, where in 

 most hot days you will find a dozen or twenty chevens floating 

 near the top of the water : get two or three grasshoppers as you 

 go over the meadow, and get secretly behind the tree, and stand 

 £is free from motion as is possible ; then put a grasshopper on 

 your hook, and let your hook hang a quarter of a yard short of 

 the water, to which end you must rest your rod on some bough 

 of the tree : but it is likely the chubs will sink down towards the 

 bottom of the water at the first shadow of your rod, for a chub is 

 the fearfuUest of fislies, and will do so if but a bird flies over 

 him, and makes the least shadow on the water : but they will 

 presently rise up to the top again, and there lie soaring till some 

 shadow affrights them again : I say when they lie upon the top 

 of the water, look out the best chub, which you, setting yourself 



