The Compleat ^Angler 



But take this rule with you, that a chub newly taken and newly 

 dressed, is so much better than a chub of a day's keeping after he is 

 dead, that I can compare him to nothing so fitly as to cherries newly 

 gathered from a tree, and others that have been bruised and Jain a 

 day or two in water. But the chub being thus used, and dressed 

 presently, and not washed after he is gutted (for note, that lying 

 long in water, and washing the blood out of any fish after they be 

 gutted, abates much of their sweetness), you will find the chub being 

 dressed in the blood, and quickly, to be such meat as will recompense 

 your labour, and disabuse your opinion. 



Or you may dress the chavender or chub thus : 



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

 him very clean, then chine or slit him through the middle, 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 is 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 exceeding 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 commended 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 the 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 parti- 

 cular 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 as free from 

 motion as is possible ; then put a grasshopper on your hook, and let 



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