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THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 



First, note, that he grows not to the bigness of a trout ; for the 

 biggest of them do not usually exceed eighteen inches. He lives 

 in such rivers as the trout does, and is usually taken with the 

 same baits as the trout is, and after the same manner ; for he 

 will bite both at the minnow, or worm, or fly : though he bites 

 not often at the minnow, and is very gamesome at the fly, and 

 much simpler, and therefore bolder than a trout ; for he will rise 

 twenty times at a fly, if you miss him, and yet rise again. He 

 has been taken with a fly made of the red feathers of a parakita,* 

 a strange outlandish bird ; and he will rise at a fly not unlike a 

 gnat or a small moth, or indeed at most flies that are not too big. 

 He is a fish that lurks close all winter, but is very pleasant and 

 jolly after mid-April, and in May, and in the hot months : he is 

 of a very fine shape, his flesh is white ; his teeth, those little 

 ones that he has, are in his throat, yet he has so tender a mouth, 

 that he is oftener lost after an angler has hooked him, than any 

 other fish. Though there be many of these fishes in the delicate 

 river Dove, and in Trent, and some other smaller rivers, as that 

 which runs by Salisbury ; yet he is not so general a fish as the 

 trout, nor to me so good to eat or to angle for. And so I shall 

 take my leave of him ; and now come to some observations of 

 the salmon, and how to catch him. 



* The little parrot. 



