112 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 



CHAPTER XII. 



PiscATOR. Angling in the middle, then, for trout or grayling, 

 is of two sorts ; with a penk or nninnow for a trout, or with a 

 worm, grub, or cadis, for a grayling. 



For the first, it is with a minnow, half a foot, or a foot, within 

 the superficies of the water ; and, as to the rest that concerns 

 this sort of angling, I shall wholly refer you to Mr. Walton's 

 direction, who is undoubtedly the best angler with a minnow in 

 England : only in plain truth I do not approve of those baits he 

 keeps in salt, unless where the living ones are not possibly to be 

 had ; though I know he frequently kills with them, and per- 

 adventure more than with any other ; nay, I have seen him re- 

 fuse a living one for one of them ; and much less of his artificial 

 one,* for though we do it with a counterfeit fly, methinks it should 

 hardly be expected that a man should deceive a fish with a coun- 

 terfeit fish. Which, having said, I shall only add, and that out 

 of my own experience, that I do believe a bull-head, with his 

 gill-fins cut oflT, at some times of the year especially, to be a 

 much better bait for a trout, than a minnow, and a loach much 

 better than that : to prove which I shall only tell you, that I have 

 much oftener taken trouts with a bull-head or a loach in their 

 throats, for there a trout has questionless his first digestion, than 

 a minnow ; and that one day especially, having angled a good 

 part of the day with a minnow, and that in as hopeful a day, and 

 as fit a water, as could be wished for that purpose, without rais- 

 ing any one fish ; I at last fell to it with the worm, and with thai 

 took fourteen in a very short space, amongst all which, there was 

 not, to my remembrance, so much as one, that had not a loach 

 or two, and some of them three, four, five, and six loaches, in his 



• See chap. v. of Part L 



