THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 143 



him,* that is, harm him as little as you may possibly, that he 

 may live the longer. 



And now, having given you this direction for the baiting your 

 ledger-hook with a live fish or frog, my next must be to tell you, 

 how your hook thus baited must or may be used ; and it is thus : 

 Having fastened your hook to a line, which, if it be not fourteen 

 yards long, should not be less than twelve ; you are to fasten 

 that line to any bough near to a hole where a pike is, or is likely 

 to lie, or to have a haunt ; and then wind your line on any forked 

 stick, all your line, except half a yard of it, or rather more, and 

 split that forked stick with such a nick or notch at one end of it, 

 as may keep the line from any more of it ravelling from about 

 the stick than so much of it as you intend ; and choose your 

 forked stick to be of that bigness as may keep the fish or frog 

 from pulling the forked stick under the water till the pike bites ; 

 and then the pike having pulled the line forth off the cleft or nick 

 of that stick in which it was gently fastened, he will have line 

 enough to go to his hold and pouch the bait : and if you would 

 have this ledger-bait to keep at a fixed place, undisturbed by wind 

 or rather accidents, which may drive it to the shore-side (for you 

 are to note, that it is likeliest to catch a pike in the midst of the 

 water), then hang a small plummet of lead, a stone, or piece of 

 tile, or a turf in a string, and cast it into the water, with the 

 forked stick, to hang upon the ground, to be a kind of anchor to 

 keep the forked stick from moving out of your intended place till 

 the pike come. This I take to be a very good way, to use so 

 many ledger-baits as you intend to make trial of. 



Or if you bait your hooks thus with live fish or frogs, and in a 

 windy day fasten them thus to a bough or bundle of straw, and 

 by the help of that wind can get them to move across a pond or 

 mere, you are like to stand still on the shore and see sport pre- 

 sently, if there be any store of pikes ; or these live-baits may 

 make sport, being tied about the body or wings of a goose or 



* This i3 the passage on which that eminent moralist Lord Byron founds 

 a charge of cruelty against Walton. It is certainly more agreeable to the 

 angler not to use live baits when it can be avoided, but when you do, it 

 is well to use means that they be not dead, which is all our author means 

 to say. Walton understood the pike well. — Jim. Ed. 



