The Compleat ^Angler 



body ; a mouth very wide, and usually gaping. He is without teeth, 

 but his lips are very rough, much like to a file. He hath two fins 

 near to his gills, which be roundish or crested ; two fins also under 

 the belly ; two on the back ; one below the vent ; and the fin of his 

 tail is round. Nature hath painted the body of this fish with whitish, 

 blackish, and brownish spots. They be usually full of eggs or spawn 

 all the summer (I mean the females) ; and those eggs swell their 

 vents almost into the form of a dug. They begin to spawn about 

 April, and (as I told you) spawn several months in the summer ; and 

 in the winter, the minnow, and loach, and bull-head dwell in the 

 mud, as the eel doth ; or we know not where, no more than we know 

 where the cuckoo and swallow, and other half-year birds (which first 

 appear to us in April) spend their six cold, winter, melancholy 

 months. This bull-head does usually dwell, and hide himself, in 

 holes, or amongst stones in clear water ; and in very hot days will 

 lie a long time very still, and sun himself, and will be easy to be seen 

 upon any flat stone, or any gravel ; at which time he will suffer an 

 angler to put a hook, baited with a small worm, very near unto his 

 very mouth ; and he never refuses to bite, nor indeed to be caught with 

 the worst of anglers. Matthiolus commends him much more for his 

 taste and nourishment, than for his shape or beauty. 



There is also a fish called a sticklebag : a fish without scales, but 

 hath his body fenced with several prickles. I know not where he 

 dwells in winter, nor what he is good for in summer, but only to 

 make sport for boys and women-anglers, and to feed other fish that 

 be fish of prey, as trout in particular, who will bite at him as at a 

 penk, and better, if your hook be rightly baited with him ; for he 

 may be so baited as, his tail turning like the sail of a windmill, will 

 make him turn more quick than any penk or minnow can. For note, 

 that the nimble turning of that, or the minnow, is the perfection of 

 minnow fishing. To which end, if you put your hook into his mouth, 

 and out at his tail, and then, having first tied him with white thread 

 a little above his tail, and placed him after such a manner on your 

 hook, as he is like to turn, then sew up his mouth to your line, and 

 he is like to turn quick, and tempt any trout ; but if he do not turn 

 quick, then turn his tail a little more or less towards the inner part, 



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