The Compleat ^Angler 



not often ; and the land-frogs are some of them observed by him to 

 breed by laying eggs, and others to breed of the slime and dust of 

 the earth, and that in winter they turn to slime again, and that the 

 next summer that very slime returns to be a living creature ; this is 

 the opinion of Pliny, and Cardanus (in his tenth book De Subtilitate) 

 undertakes to give a reason for the raining of frogs : but if it were 

 in my power, it should rain none but water-frogs, for those I think 

 are not venomous, especially the right water-frog, which about 

 February or March breeds in ditches by slime, and blackish eggs in 

 that slime : about which time of breeding the he and she-frogs are 

 observed to use divers summersaults, and to croak and make a 

 noise, which the land-frog, or paddock-frog, never does. Now of 

 these water-frogs, if you intend to fish with a frog for a pike, you 

 are to choose the yellowest that you can get, for that the pike ever 

 likes best. And thus use your frog, that he may continue long 

 alive : 



Put your hook into his mouth, which you may easily do from the 

 middle of April till August, and then the frog's mouth grows up, and 

 he continues so for at least six months without eating, but is sustained 

 none but He whose name is Wonderful knows how : I say, put your 

 hook, I mean the arming- wire, through his mouth and out at his 

 gills ; and then with a fine needle and silk sew the upper part of his 

 leg, with only one stitch, to the arming-wire of your hook ; or tie 

 the frog's leg, above the upper joint, to the arming-wire ; and, in so 

 doing, use him as though you loved 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 



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