CHAPTER III. HOW TO FISH FOR, AND TO DRESS 

 THE CHAVENDER, OR CHUB 



PISCATOR AND VENATOR 



PISCATOR. The Chub, though he eat well thus dressed, 

 yet as he is usually dressed, he does not : he is objected 

 against, not only for being full of small forked bones, 

 dispersed through all his body, but that he eats waterish, and 

 that the flesh of him is not firm, but short and tasteless. The 

 French esteem him so mean, as to call him Un Villain ; never- 

 theless he may be so dressed as to make him very good meat ; 

 as namely, if he be a large Chub, then dress him thus : 



First scale him, and then wash him clean, and then take 

 out his guts ; and to that end make the hole as little and near 

 to his gills as you may conveniently, and especially make clean 

 his throat from the grass and weeds that are usually in it, for 

 if that be not very clean, it will make him to taste very sour ; 

 having so done, put some sweet herbs into his belly, and then 

 tie him with two or three splinters to a spit, and roast him, 

 basted often with vinegar, or rather verjuice and butter, with 

 good store of salt mixed with it. 



Being thus dressed, you will find him a much better dish 

 of meat than you, or most folk, even than Anglers themselves 

 do imagine ; for this dries up the fluid watery humour with 

 which all Chubs do abound. 



But take this rule with you, that a Chub newly taken and 

 newly dressed, is so much better than a Chub of a day's keeping 

 after he is dead, that I can compare him to nothing so fitly as 

 to cherries newly gathered from a tree, and others that have 

 been bruised and lain a day or two in water. But the Chub 

 being thus used and dressed presently, and not washed after 

 he is gutted ; for note, that lying long in water, and washing 

 the blood out of any fish after they be gutted, abates much of 



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