106 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 



CHAPTER XL 



Viator. So, Sir, now we are here, and set, let me have my 

 instructions for angling for trout and grayling at the bottom ; 

 which, though not so easy, so cleanly, nor, as 'tis said, so genteel 

 a way of fishing as with a fly, is yet, if I mistake not, a good 

 nolding way, and takes fish when nothing else will. 



Pisc. You are in the right, it does so : and a worm is so sure 

 a bait at all times, that, excepting in a flood, I would I had laid 

 a thousand pounds that I killed fish more or less with it, winter 

 and summer, every day throughout the year ; those days always 

 excepted, that upon a more serious account always ought so to 

 be. But not longer to delay you, I will begin, and tell you, that 

 angling at the bottomi is also commonly of two sorts, — and yet 

 there is a third way of angling with a ground-bait, and to very 

 great effect too, as shall be said hereafter, — namely, by hand, or 

 with a cork or float. 



That we call angling by hand is of three sorts. 



The first with a line about half the length of the rod, a good 

 weighty plumb, and three hairs next the hook, which we call a 

 running line, and with one large brandling, or a dew-worm of a 

 moderate size, or two small ones of the first, or any other sort 

 proper for a trout, of which my father Walton has already given 

 you the names, and saved me a labor ; or indeed almost any 

 worm whatever ; for if a trout be in Ithe humor to bite, it must 

 be such a worm as I never yet saw, that he will refuse : and if 

 you fish with two, you are then to bait your hook thus. You are 

 first to run the point of your hook in at the very head of your 

 first worm, and so down through his body till it be past the knot, 

 and then let it out, and strip the worm above the arming, that 

 you may not bruise it with your fingers, till you have put on the 

 other, by running the point of the hook in below the knot, and 

 upwards through his body towards his head, till it be but just 



