The Compleat ^Angler 



CHAPTER XI 



IAT. So, sir, now we are here, and set, let me have 

 my instructions for angling for trout and grayling 

 at the bottom ; which though not so easy, so 

 cleanly, nor (as 'tis said) so genteel a way of fish- 

 ing as with a fly, is yet (if I mistake not) a good 

 holding way, and takes fish when nothing else will. 

 Pise. You are in the right, it does so : and a 

 worm is so sure a bait at all times, that, excepting in a flood, I would 

 I had laid a thousand pounds that I killed fish, more or less, with it, 

 winter or summer, every day throughout the year ; those days always 

 excepted, that upon a more serious account always ought so to be. 

 But not longer to delay you, I will begin, and tell you, that angling 

 at the bottom is also commonly of two sorts (and yet there is a third 

 way of angling with a ground-bait, and to very great effect too, as 

 shall be said hereafter), namely, by hand ; or with a cork, or float. 

 That we call angling by hand is of three sorts. 

 The first, with a line about half the length of the rod, a good 

 weighty plumb, and three hairs next the hook, which we call a 

 running-line, and with one large brandling, or a dew-worm of a 

 moderate size, or two small ones of the first, or any other sort, proper 

 for a trout, of which my father Walton has already given you the 

 names, and saved me labour ; or, indeed, almost any worm whatever ; 

 for if a trout be in the humour to bite, it must be such a worm as I 

 never yet saw, that he will refuse ; and if you fish with two, you are 

 then to bait your hook thus. You are first to run the point of your 

 hook in at the very head of your first worm, and so down through 

 his body, till he be past the knot, and then let it out, and strip the 

 worm above the arming (that you may not bruise it with your fingers) 

 till you have put on the other, by running the point of the hook in 

 below the knot, upwards through his body towards his head, till it 

 be just covered with the head ; which being done, you are then to 

 slip the first worm down over the arming again, till the knots of both 

 worms meet together. 



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