The Compleat ^Angler 



and will repair to your ground- bait, not that they will eat of it, but 

 will feed and sport themselves amongst the young fry that gather 

 about and hover over the bait. 



The way to discern the pike and to take him, if you mistrust your 

 bream-hook (for I have taken a pike a yard long several times at 

 my bream-hooks, and sometimes he hath had the luck to share my 

 line), may be thus : 



Take a small bleak, or roach, or gudgeon, and bait it, and set it 

 alive among your rods, two feet deep from the cork, with a little red 

 worm on the point of the hook ; then take a few crumbs of white 

 bread, or some of the ground-bait, and sprinkle it gently amongst your 

 rods. If Mr. Pike be there, then the little fish will skip out of the 

 water at his appearance, but the live-set bait is sure to be taken. 



Thus continue your sport from four in the morning till eight, and 

 if it be a gloomy windy day, they will bite all day long. But this is 

 too long to stand to your rods at one place, and it will spoil your 

 evening sport that day, which is this : 



6 H AA 



