The Compleat ^Angler 



better keep it on your hook, you may knead with your paste a little 

 (and not much) white or yellowish wool. 



And if you would have this paste keep all the year, for any other 

 fish, then mix with it virgin wax, and clarified honey, and work them 

 together with your hands before the fire ; then make these into balls, 

 and they will keep all the year. 



And if you fish for a carp with gentles, then put upon your hook 

 a little piece of scarlet about this bigness f""i, it being soaked in or 

 anointed with oil of peter, called by some oil of the rock ; and if 

 your gentles be put two or three days before into a box or horn 

 anointed with honey, and so put upon your hook as to preserve them 

 to be living, you are as like to kill this crafty fish this way as any 

 other; but still, as you are fishing, chew a little white or brown 

 bread in your mouth, and cast it into the pond about the place where 

 your floats wims. Other baits there be ; but these, with diligence 

 and patient watchfulness, will do it better than any that I have ever 

 practised, or heard of : and yet I shall tell you that the crumb of 

 white bread and honey, made into a paste, is a good bait for a carp ; 

 and you know it is more easily made. And having said thus much 

 of a carp, my next discourse shall be of the bream ; which shall not 

 prove so tedious, aud therefore I desire the continuance of your 

 attention. 



But, first, I will tell you how to make this carp, that is so curious 

 to be caught, so curious a dish of meat, as shall make him worth all 

 your labour and patience ; and though it is not without some trouble 

 and charges, yet it will recompense both. 



Take a carp (alive if possible), scour him, and rub him clean with 

 water and salt, but scale him not ; then open him, and put him, with 

 his blood, and his liver (which you must save when you open him) 

 into a small pot or kettle ; then take sweet marjoram, thyme, and 

 parsley, of each half a handful, a sprig of rosemary, and another of 

 savory, bind them into two or three small bundles, and put them to 

 your carp, with four or five whole onions, twenty pickled oysters, 

 and three anchovies. Then pour upon your carp as much claret 

 wine as will only cover him, and season your claret well with salt, 

 .cloves, and mace, and the rinds of oranges and lemons; that done, 



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