"The Compleat ^Angler 



deceive a fish with a counterfeit fish. Which having said, I shall 

 only add, and that out of my own experience, that I do believe a bull- 

 head, with his gill-fins cut off (at some times of the year especially), 

 to be a much better bait for a trout than a minnow, and a loach much 

 better than that ; to prove which I shall only tell you, that I have 

 much oftener taken trouts with a bull-head or a loach in their throats 

 (for there a trout has questionless his first digestion) than a minnow ; 

 and that one day especially, having angled a good part of the day 

 with a minnow, and that in as hopeful a day, and as fit a water, as 

 could be wished for that purpose, without raising any one fish ; I at 

 last fell to with the worm, and with that took fourteen in a very 

 short space ; amongst all which there was not, to my remembrance, 

 so much as one that had not a loach or two, and some of them three, 

 four, five, and six loaches, in his throat and stomach ; from whence I 

 concluded, that had I angled with that bait, I had made a notable 

 day's work of it. 



But after all, there is a better way of angling with a minnow, than 

 perhaps is fit either to teach or to practise ; to which I shall only add, 

 that a grayling will certainly rise at, and sometimes take a minnow, 

 though it will be hard to be believed by any one, who shall consider 

 the littleness of that fish's mouth, very unfit to take so great a bait : 

 but it is affirmed by many, that he will sometimes do it ; and I 

 myself know it to be true, for though I never took a grayling so, yet 

 a man of mine once did, and within so few paces of me, that I am 

 as certain of it, as I can be of anything I did not see, and (which 

 made it appear the more strange) the grayling was not above eleven 

 inches Jong. 



I must here also beg leave of your master, and mine, not to 

 controvert, but to tell him, that I cannot consent to his way of 

 throwing in his rod to an over-grown trout, and afterwards recover- 

 ing his fish with his tackle. For though I am satisfied he has 

 sometimes done it, because he says so, yet I have found it quite 

 otherwise ; and though I have taken with the angle, I may safely 

 say, some thousands of trout in my life, my top never snapt (though 

 my line still continued fast to the remaining part of my rod by some 

 lengths of my line curled round about my top, and there fastened, 



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